Baby Savers South Africa fights back

Organisations are going to court to challenge the constitutionality of Children's Act provisions

- Umamah Bakharia

Members of Baby Savers South Africa, a national coalition of organisations that provide temporary protection for abandoned infants, are taking legal action after the Gauteng department of social development issued a directive to shut down such centres.

Baby savers, or baby drop-off boxes, are secure devices where mothers who are not able to take care of their infants can safely and anonymously leave them. The devices trigger an alarm in the centres where they are installed to alert caregivers that a baby has been left in one.

The coalition comprises 27 organisations across Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Namibia.

The Gauteng social development department however believes that such facilities encourage child abandonment and deny children their rights to identity and family.

"The baby box takes away any form of responsibility of the biological mother to care for the child and further disregards the future role and responsibility of the biological father," it said in a letter sent to organisations in 2023, declaring baby savers illegal and ordering their immediate closure.

Since then, seven out of 12 baby-saver organisations in Gauteng have closed their operations, fearing legal repercussions, but others are fighting back.

"We, as baby-saving organisations, see the work that we do to ensure safe child protection, but the Gauteng department of social development sees it as a criminal aspect," said the founder of New Beginnings Baby Home, Tahiyya Hassim.

New Beginnings Baby Home, which houses 30 abandoned or abused children, began operating during the Covid-19 pandemic after Hassim noticed a spike in child abandonment cases.

Hassim is in the process of re-registering her organisation as a child and youth care worker.