the abandoned ones

The following is taken from today's Cape Time's editorial entitled, "Abandon Hope".

"Every life is different and it would be disrespectful and presumptuous to speculate about why so many young women have abandoned or murdered their children over the past month.

In a single month in Cape Town there have been seven incidents involving mothers and abandoned or murdered children. On October 5th, a six week old boy was dumped in Khayalitsha. His mother has been arrested. On October 8th, a five day old baby was found in a manhole in Killarney Gardens and ten days later, the body of another newborn was found in a stormwaterdrain in Khayalitsha. In Philippi, a day or so later, a 28 year old woman was charged with murder and attempted murder after apparently poioning herself and her daughters, killing the younger child. Over the next week, two babies were found abandoned in Delft. And on October 26th, in Bishop Leavis, a one year old child and her mother survived a suicide attempt.

Unless and until the women concerned choose to tell their own stories, we cannot know what exactly drove each of them to do what for most of us seems unthinkable.

But there are at least two common threads which link their tragic stories; poverty and the failure of society to offer them any hope. Abandoned, in most cases by the fathers of their children, they also seem to have been abandoned by the authorities".

Two young Xhosa men from Dunoon, near Killarney Gardens came to the men's forum meeting on Saturday last. At the end they expressed their wish that there should be a gathering for men in their own township. And at the end of a bad month for mother's and their children, there is this ray of light, this flutter of a butterfly's wing, this potent and unpredictable thing called "hope".

We must never abandon hope. Never.