Cape Town - An angry Philippi community believe a woman whose toddler died while she was at a shebeen drinking must be arrested.
The two-year-old boy died on Tuesday afternoon, and his mother had no idea until her neighbours went to the shebeen to fetch her.
The mother of four then went to their shack and found her son dead.
The family lives in the Kampies informal settlement near Philippi Police Station.
A neighbour says she heard the boy crying in the shack.
“The mother left the child alone in the shack. She actually locked him inside and went to the shebeen around the corner,” says the neighbour.
“I heard the baby cry. He was crying for some time, and when I went to check, I didn’t have access. I went to get a girl who was small enough to go in through the window.”
The neighbour says the young girl told her that the toddler was “cold and barely breathing”.
“I called the community leaders and told them about the child, and they came, and the door was kicked down.
“I went to feel the baby, and he was having difficulty breathing. He died a few minutes later.
“I went to get the mother, and she was drinking beer. I told her what happened, and she didn’t look like a concerned person.”
The woman said when people heard the tot had died, they started assaulting the mother for neglecting her youngest child.
“When she got home, people hit her. The people are angry because when we checked his nappy, his skin was badly damaged from nappy rash.
“The child was so tiny that he was just skin and bones.”
The neighbour said people were also angry because they live just a stone’s throw away from the clinic, adding: “That mother deserves to be in jail for leaving her child to die alone in that shack.”
The cause of the child’s death is not clear at this stage.
The mother told the Daily Voice she went to the shebeen to pay a debt: “My son had a fever and shortness of breath. I had been waiting for the ambulance. I thought while I was waiting for the ambulance, I should go to the shebeen and settle my debt."
Meanwhile, the father of the deceased boy said he wants to keep his three remaining children – a six-year-old girl and four-year-old twin boys.
“When they were living with me in Ottery, my baby was fine, he started being sick when she (mother) moved in with her sister, and now he passed on.
“I asked her several times to go to the clinic to get medical help for my child, and she refused. I am really heartbroken. All I want is to take my children. I don’t want to lose another child.”