A 19-months’ old baby was found abandoned in Ha-Tsolo last weekend. Her 19-year-old mother had locked the house, leaving the baby to feed on her own excreta, according to villagers in the area. The mother recently moved to villages close to the Thetsane Industrial Area in search of jobs in the textile factories. The young woman, whose names we will not mention to protect the identity of the child, is living in a rented house and the village authorities say there is no indication that she is working.
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Last weekend the Ha-Tsolo chief and his crime prevention committee became aware of the child’s plight and went to the house to investigate.
They were in for a state of shock.
The baby was feeding on her own waste.
The Ha-Tsolo chief’s assistant, ’Mathembile Mohlakeng, told thepost that the teenager is said to have a habit of leaving the one-year-seven-months child in the house when she goes job-hunting.
“Sometimes she does not come back despite that she would have left her baby alone in the house,” Mohlakeng said.
Mohlakeng said they managed to track her down to a local taxi rank, after she heard that she was wanted and told one of her friends that she was afraid to go to the house.
“She was handed over to the chief who in turn handed her over to the police,” Mohlakeng said.
“The police warned her. Luckily her relatives from (her village) had heard our call and said they were coming to fetch the baby.”
In another incident, a woman with three children who also stays in Ha-Tsolo was found in a depressing situation in one of the rented houses.
The woman is one of thousands who lost their jobs in the textile factories in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and her husband has since left for South Africa to look for a job.
The husband, Mohlakeng said, has not called and the woman says she does not know where he is in South Africa.
The husband had also lost his job in one of the factories in the Thetsane Industrial Area.
The woman’s first child, a nine-year-old girl, does not attend school because the mother says she does not have shoes.
The second one, a three-year-old, waits at a nearby tuckshop asking for handouts from strangers.
The last one, a one-year-old, is permanently on her mother’s back because she cannot walk by herself because of malnutrition.
Former First Lady ’Maesaiah Thabane and a local businessman bought groceries for the two families on Monday.
The malnourished one-year-old child has since been sent to the local clinic for medical help.
Nkaku Kabi, the All Basotho Convention (ABC) leader, said the biting poverty that is wreaking havoc in the country should not be solely blamed on Prime Minister Sam Matekane.
He said it is the responsibility of everyone to work hard and wage war against hunger and poverty.
“Some people take this as a joke and want to shift blame to the Prime Minister only,” Kabi said.
“This is wrong on all fronts,” he said.
Kabi said Matekane should not be left to fight poverty on his own.
“Everyone should feel obliged to have a significant role to resuscitate the economy,” he said.
“What has transpired in Ha-Tsolo is a living example of how Basotho are suffering.”
Majara Molupe
