INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
This baby was found in a drain in Khayelitsha. Photo: Ayanda Ndamane
Two of the Cape’s worst mothers appeared in the same court for crimes against their children on Thursday.
Petronella Mosterd, 36, is accused of dumping her newborn in a drain near her Macassar home.
While Babalwa Mkhosana, 28, is charged with child abuse after she allegedly tied her five-year-old son to a bed for hours.
Mkhosana told her family she had to rush to work and that is why she locked the boy and her two-year-old niece in her Sir Lowry’s Pass Village shack last week.
Cops say neighbours heard the children scream and called the police.
Warrant officer November Filander says: “The officers discovered the two children aged two and five years old left alone at home.
“The five year old boy’s leg was tied to the bed while the two-year-old girl managed to cry for assistance.”
The young mom’s family was at court to support her and breathed a sigh of relief when she was released on free bail.
Mkhosana’s family also shielded her from the Daily Voice camera lens.
Her relatives hid her under a jacket and escorted her into a vehicle before whisking her away from Somerset West Magistrates’ Court.
Happy that they had evaded our lensman, a relative shouted: “We fooled you!”
Earlier this week, Mkhosana’s friend Nosimo Gwarubana slammed the arrested mom.
“Her children could have burnt in the shack while she was out working,” she says.
“Babalwa has many friends and I don’t understand why she didn’t take the children to them.”
Mkhosana is set to appear in the Somerset West Magistrates’ Court in March.
Meanwhile, Mosterd’s case will be heard next month in the regional court.
She was charged with attempted murder after cops found her baby girl in a drain last October.
Community members say the woman gave birth to her fourth child and simply threw it away.
“She said she couldn’t take care of her children,” says one of her neighbours.
“But she keeps having children, why does she open her legs if she cannot afford having kids?”
Residents who saw her dumping the baby alerted cops who arrived in time to save the child who has now been named Miracle.
“She didn’t try hard to hide the evil deed because it was in the morning when people were already awake,” says a witness.
She was released on bail in November last year. – Daily Voice
See the article here:
‘Monster mothers’ in court