The bodies of two girls, aged two and three,
were found dumped in community toilets on Tuesday morning after they went
missing on Saturday.
Protests then broke out with residents accusing
the police of failing to protect the community.
President Jacob Zuma urged people not to take
the law into their own hands.
t is a scorching hot day as I stand on the
corner of Oyster Street, just a few feet from the communal toilet in which the
toddlers were found dead. But it is a chilling feeling looking around the
shanty town, with its unpaved roads with black sewer water running down the
middle, and thinking that somewhere here lives a child murderer.
Remnants of the yellow police cordon are still
flapping in the wind, watched by shocked residents sitting by the roadside.
A few streets away is the girls' home, where I
spoke to one of their young mothers in mourning. She told me her daughter was a
fun-loving little girl with a bubbly character. She said that those responsible
must be punished - and by that she meant the death sentence.
If you ever want to see the face of poverty and high
unemployment in modern day South Africa, Diepsloot is the place to come. It is
the first post-apartheid shanty town. It did not exist under white minority
rule and so tells a story of the long road to freedom that still needs to be
travelled.
"These gruesome incidents of extreme
torture and murder of our children do not belong to the society that we are
continuously striving to build together," South Africa's Sowetan newspaper
quoted Mr Zuma as saying.
"We condemn these murders in the
strongest possible terms."
Lieutenant Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said three
people had been taken in for questioning and that police were also searching
for a fourth person, the South African Press Association reports.
He said they were also investigating a
possible link between the murders and that of a five-year-old girl who was
found dead in the same area in September.
"It is suspected that she was sexually
violated and strangled. A suspect who was taken in for questioning relating to
the murder was later released," Lt-Col Dlamini said.
According to South Africa's Star newspaper,
residents in Diepsloot, a poor community north of Johannesburg, barricaded
roads and burnt tyres on Tuesday
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