”We have lots of calls from people wanting to adopt. The first thing they always ask is ‘does the child have HIV’. These people don’t want a child they know is going to die,” says Jane Mwase, resident manager at Nkosi’s Haven. Tens of thousands of South African children orphaned or rejected by their extended families as a result of HIV/Aids find themselves in the care of the state.

South Africa awoke to its second post apartheid experience of terror on Wednesday with reports that a series of explosions had rocked the township of Soweto south of Johannesburg.