Wrapped in a white linen cloth, and surrounded by garbage - a rotten cabbage, cans and burning plastic bags - lay a newborn baby, said to have been burned by her mother shortly after her birth.

The unknown baby girl, whose skin was grey and pink from the burns, was found burning in fields separating Soweto and Orlando by someone scavenging through the rubbish. He called out to neighbours at about 9am yesterday.

Only a metre away from Orlando Street, the main road, the baby - perfectly formed but with an exposed umbilical cord and placenta - lay dead still in a foetal position, shielding her face.

Angry neighbours, who refused to be named, said the infant was one of many brutally dumped almost every month in the fields.

"How can someone do this to their own child? The mother of this child must be revealed. This is a brutal way of getting rid of a child. How can she [the mother] even sleep at night?" asked one woman.

The baby was still burning when she was found by a local fireman, who wrapped her in a white cloth and called the police.

She is not the first infant found in the area. Baby Simpiwe was found alive on June 28 in a sports bag in a nearby field.

Police spokesman Captain Phephi Matlou said the police "could not tell how old the baby was due to the severe burns, but they had opened a case of concealment of birth against the unknown mother".

"No one in the area could give us information or tell what they had seen. They don't know who the mother is," she said.

This baby has become the latest statistic in the increasing number of children dumped by their parents across South Africa.

Statistics reveal that the abandonment rate has reached as high as 30 babies a month. Gauteng provincial hospitals treated 208 abandoned babies in 2007, and 273 dumped babies in 2008.

"How do you burn a child, even if it is dead? Why not use a hospital to abort if you don't want the child, or give the child to someone who wants to have children but can't? No sane adult would do this," said one community member.