Sad life of toddler sold for R100

The love and care that Jamie Faith Naidoo received when a policewoman breastfed her and hospital patients cooed over her were rare in her short life.

At least 1500 mourners heard yesterday how her drug addict mother had allegedly sold the girl when she was six months old for just R100 and how she was later removed from a place of safety into the care of a grandmother who did not want her.

Three-year-old Jamie's lifeless body was found in her grandmother's bed in Chatsworth, south of Durban, last week. It was covered in bruises and marks resembling cigarette burns and she had broken limbs.

Her maternal grandmother, Salatchee Basanich, 55, and her 31-year-old mother, Patricia Kershnee Ishwarlal, a sex worker, have been charged with her murder. They have not been asked to plead.

The stranger who had bought Jamie as a baby in 2011 had alerted the police and the child had been taken to Addington Hospital, where she was breastfed by a policewoman, who was a new mother, to calm her down.

She was later taken to a place of safety, where, according to an official report read at the funeral by Havenside Civic Association spokesman Mubarak Mohamed, she had flourished.

"Who removed her from a place of safety to a gruesome death? As a community we need to know," Mohamed said.

KwaZulu-Natal Social Development MEC Weziwe Thusi said she was angry and ashamed that Jamie's death happened on her watch.

"I will make it my business that everyone who failed this little girl pays for it."

Basanich and Ishwarlal will apply for bail next week.