In the quiet corners of Botswana’s towns and villages, children of all ages constantly find themselves out in the cold. Some are found thrown by the roadsides, others in the bushes, while yet others grow up in homes where neglect has slowly done its damage, out of sight until it is too late. What was once an occasional shock has become a pattern.
Child abandonment, particularly of newborns is emerging as a silent crisis, revealing the fragile intersections between youth behaviour, weakened family structures and the absence of preventative support within communities. Tshidilo Stimulation Centre manager, Mr Ramoremi Mphothwe says these stories rarely begin with abandonment, rather they begin much earlier in moments where guidance is absent and risk is normalised. Alcohol-fuelled social spaces, he explains, often lead to unprotected sexual encounters and unintended pregnancies and when reality sets in, young women are left isolated, overwhelmed and afraid.
“Child abandonment is not a sudden decision but a final step after many opportunities to intervene have already been missed,” he says. Those missed opportunities surface daily at the Maun Police Station. Behind the front desk, the crisis does not announce itself dramatically, it arrives quietly case by case, file by file.
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Between 2024 and 2025, police in Maun recorded 44 cases of child neglect, involving children as young as newborns and as old as 15. Many of those cases are still unresolved, not because they are unimportant but because the systems meant to protect children often move slower than expected. Thirty of the cases remain stalled, awaiting social inquiry reports and others sit under investigation, complicated by silence from those who report them but cannot or will not help police trace those responsible.
Maun Station Commander, Superintendent Joseph Lepodise says repeated offenders remain one of the most troubling aspects of the trend, pointing to cycles of neglect that continue long after the first warning signs are visible. During this period in 2025, two newborns were abandoned in circumstances that officers still recall vividly, with one having been thrown into the bush and another who was left beside the road, wrapped in plastic. In both cases, police responded immediately, rushing the infants to Letsholathebe II Memorial Hospital, a race against time to ensure that life continued where it had nearly been discarded.
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