President Jacob Zuma has been urged to deal with violent attacks on the Western Cape's children during his State of the Nation address on Wednesday.
In the space of three days, in a single policing area:
Two weeks ago a ten-year-old girl from Saldanha Bay was allegedly abducted before being raped and murdered.
Her body has still not been found.
A seven-year-old who went missing in Villiersdorp in March has also not been found.
These and other crimes against children have prompted Cape Town Child Welfare and the DA to call for the reinstatement of specialised policing agencies like the Child Protection Units.
The units were shut down across the country a few years ago when Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi announced that doing so was necessary as part of a national restructuring programme.
Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa is expected to make an announcement on the issue during his budget vote speech in two weeks.
"There is a favoured proposal on the table which is being considered. While 'reinstatement' is a harsh term, the proposal is about a refined approach which will focus strictly on child protection issues," Mthethwa's spokesperson, Panyaza Lesufi, said.
The DA's Dianne Kohler-Barnard said centralised policing was not working and that specialised units were the common-sense approach to effectively tackling crimes against children.
Cape Town Child Welfare chief Niresh Ramklass said the city's children were in "crisis".
"Babies are the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. They are coming under attack from the very people who need to protect them," he said.
Ramklass said that in 2008, about 100 babies had been abandoned. At least 10 percent of these children had not survived.
"Some parents have gone to the extreme of killing their children. They have no right to take lives. This needs to stop," said Ramklass.
He said the incidents were concentrated in the Cape metropole.
While the Child Protection Unit had done sterling work during its existence, the expertise and specialised nature of skills were lost when the unit's work took on other general policing matters.
On the possibility of the unit's reinstatement, Ramklass said: "That would be wonderful. It's really what the country needs."
In Mfuleni, the search for six-week-old Asenathi Sogonga, who went missing from her 15-year-old mother's house on Saturday night, continues on Wednesday.
On Sunday, local residents searching for baby Asenathi made a grisly discovery: the body of another baby, which was found in some bushes in Bardale, another Mfuleni settlement.
Community Police Forum member Sandile Makhendlana, who is involved in the search for Asenathi, said the dead baby's mother had been arrested and charged with murdering her child.
Mfuleni station commissioner Senior Superintendent Luyanda Damoy confirmed that the matter was being investigated.
In the Saldanha Bay incident, ten-year-old Monteshca Kekana's body has not been recovered, but a 32-year-old man has been arrested and charged with the crime.
More than two months have passed since the disappearance of seven-year-old Relebohile Thubela, who went missing in Villiersdorp.
Relebohile disappeared from an apple orchard on Ouwerf Farm in the suburb of Vyeboom on March 28. A search was launched and called off several weeks later.
Her underwear and shorts were found a day after her disappearance and on Tuesday police found a blanket some distance away.
THE CAPE ARGUS
