Many young black mothers would rather abandon their children than give them up for adoption, which they fear would provoke retaliation by their ancestors.
This is according to the findings of a year-long research project on child abandonment and adoption by a consultant to the National Adoption Coalition of SA, Dee Blackie.
The report on the study, released yesterday, gives insights into the increase in child abandonment and the decline in adoption rates.
Blackie said some mothers, interviewed in Alexandra, Johannesburg, in Soweto, and in Tembisa, on the East Rand, believed that their ancestors would regard abandoning a child as better than giving it up for adoption.
"Formally relinquishing one's rights to a child is seen as a conscious act and, in the eyes of the ancestors, this would amount to rejecting a gift of the ancestors," she said.
"The punishment for doing this could be extreme suffering and bad luck, and in some cases a woman might even be rendered infertile."
Restrictive legislation, poverty, urbanisation, violence, HIV/Aids, gender inequality and diminishing family support also contributed to child abandonment.
Blackie started working on abandonment and adoption in 2010 after seeing a picture of a dead newborn on the front page of The Times.
She said there were inadequate statistics on infant abandonment but most child protection agencies said the number of abandonments had increased considerably over the past decade.
Child Welfare SA has estimated that more than 3 500 babies were abandoned in 2010.
Door of Hope's Marcelle Coertze said her organisation had taken in 21 babies in Johannesburg alone since January. Of the 297 people on the Registry of Adoptable Children and Parents in November, only 29 were candidates for 429 children.
This was largely attributable to most of the prospective adoptive parents wanting a child of their own race.
The widespread belief that bringing a child of unknown ancestry into a family caused problems was also linked to the low adoption rate, Blackie said.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 
