and may be seen by a psychologist. Karabo Ngidi, a lawyer with the centre, said “What’s going to happen must be in the best interests of the children. Biology is an important aspect but not the only one.” The families are of Zulu ethnicity and so Zulu tradition, culture and customary law will be a factor, she added. It is also still possible the ex- partner of the mother taking legal action could be the biological father of the girl who was switched. It is not the first child-swap case to come to light in South Africa. In 1995, two mothers were awarded damages after their sons, born in 1989, were accidentally switched at the Johannesburg hospital where they were born. In 2009, in Oregon in the United States, Dee Ann Angell and Kay Rene Reed discovered that they had been mistakenly mixed up at birth in 1953 when a nurse brought them back from bathing. In 2013, in Japan, a 60-year-old man swapped at birth from his rich parents to a poor family was given compensation. He grew up on welfare and became a truck driver, whereas his biological siblings – and the boy brought up in his place – attended private secondary schools and universities. Bruce Laing, a clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, said the long-term effects of a baby swap could be “profound”, “terrifying” and “incredibly traumatizing”. He told The Times of South Africa: “An increasingly