In the week that the Chilean miners began to emerge from their tomb into the glare of 24/7 media, two spectacularly under-reported events were barely breaking the surface here in Cape Town.
In the first, a young mother reported to the police that someone unknown to her had offered to mind her baby at the local outpatients department while she went to the toilet. A day later the child was found buried under rubbish near the girl’s home in Khayalitsha. She was dead and the mother has been charged with the murder.
Two days later, a lorry driver delivering his goods noticed a young woman with a baby, standing on the pavement. A little later, as he passed the same spot, he sensed there was something wrong. He stopped and crossed the street, finding himself standing over a manhole. On opening it he found the baby up to the neck in putrid water. Alive.
Karen and I have been working with a project in the township of Dunoon. This is the place, out on the M5 beyond Milnerton, where, late last year, the murders of Zimbabwean immigrants were carried out in a xenophobic frenzy. It’s a hard place where children and women are not safe. The project is “an after-school club” where the kids play, do puzzles, and eat while their mothers are still at work. This period is when they are at the most risk of rape and violence at the hands of the drunken men in their community - fathers, uncles and older brothers.
Tomorrow we take the sandwiches we made from the ten loaves of bread and 1.5k’s of poloni bought at the local supermarket today. It will be their manna for the day.
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