Mom Tells Court Why She Tried to Sell Baby

A Pietermaritzburg woman put up her 19-month-old son for sale on the internet because her boyfriend found out he was not the father, and demanded she pay back R24 000 he had paid in child maintenance.

Zama Madlala, 20, said she did not know what to do and was desperate. She thought of getting some money by selling her baby for R5 000.

This is what she told magistrate Rose Mogwera in the Pietermaritzburg Regional Court on Monday when she pleaded guilty in relation to three charges under the Human Trafficking Act. The minimum sentence is life imprisonment unless there are substantial and compelling reasons not to impose it.

Reading out her plea, attorney Jeffrey Mthimkhulu said she became pregnant in 2013, aged 17. “I was no longer attending school. I was in love with two boyfriends. When I became pregnant, I didn’t know who the actual biological father was, but I told the two of them I was pregnant.”

One of them denied paternity and disappeared while the other said he wanted to see the baby first. When he did, he accepted the child was his. He then gave her R1 300 every month for the child.

This year, the couple had an argument and the boyfriend demanded a paternity test.

A DNA test was done. Two weeks afterwards, he sent her an SMS saying the child was excluded from being a biological son of his.

Madlala admitted that in September she placed an advert on Gumtree advertising the sale of the baby for R5 000.Two days later, she said, an Indian woman called to say she was interested in the child and would call when she had the cash. Three days later she called to say she was going to get a loan and she called again to say she had received it.

They agreed to meet at the KFC in Commercial Road. The woman told her she would be wearing a pink shirt.

At the KFC the woman offered to buy her son something. Madlala said the child only ate cereal, so the woman bought her a bottle of coke and an ice cream cone.

The woman asked to hold the child and Madlala handed him over. She then accepted money in a plastic packet, which amounted to R5 000 cash in R200 banknotes.

But the woman was a policewoman, the meeting was a set- up and Madlala was arrested.

Magistrate Mogwera asked why she wanted to sell the child as it was not spelt out in the plea. Madlala then explained about the paternity issue.

Mthimkhulu wanted the case to be adjourned for pre-sentencing reports.