Woman arrested for perjury after lying about baby kidnap

A 36-year-old woman who reported her newborn baby kidnapped has been charged for perjury after police found that she had lied about the crime.

Police last night revealed that following her arrest, the woman had confessed to making up the whole story about how the eight-day-old baby was snatched from her along the busy Bendile Street in Zola North, Soweto, on Friday.

Instead, provincial police spokesperson Lt-Col Mavela Masondo said she revealed how she had struck a deal with a colleague not to terminate but give her the child once it's born.

A police source said according to the woman, the biological mother was apparently impregnated by a married man.

The source said the woman, who works as a financial analyst, had told police that she and her partner had been struggling to conceive and she was desperate to have a baby. She is a mother of a teenager from a previous relationship. 

"She is said to have developed a phantom pregnancy and her belly appeared to be like that of a pregnant woman,” said the source.

Masondo said: "According the woman, the two [woman and the colleague] had a deal that she would raise the child once she's born. The child was handed over to her after it was born but the colleague changed her mind and fetched the baby on Monday [June27].

"She then had to make up a story as her partner, who works at the mines in Rustenburg [in the North West] was returning home and would expect to see the baby.

"The case was to make her partner believe that the baby had been kidnapped."

In an earlier interview with Sowetan, she wept uncontrollably as she recalled how Hlelokuhle was snatched from her.

She said on Friday, she, the baby and her 16-year-old daughter went to a home affairs office in Johannesburg to get Hlelokuhle's birth certificate and the teenager's identity document.

After disembarking a taxi on Bendile Street, one of the busy main roads in the area, she was approached by an armed man and a woman.

“We were anticipating loadshedding by the time we get home, so I decided that we to go past the Shoprite and get us something to eat. After that we walked home,” she said.

“As we were walking, two people who looked like a couple, walked towards us. The guy walked past me, but the lady stopped in front of me. I thought she was going to ask for directions. Seconds later, I feel a gun on my back and the guy saying 'let’s take them all into the car’.

“The lady then responded to him, ‘no need for that because she will give me the baby’ and she grabbed the baby out of my hands.”

She said out of shock, she froze and couldn’t call out for help as she watched the pair get into a white car and disappear with her child.

“No one around us would be able to see what had happened. The man with the gun was standing so close to me that people would not be able to see he had a gun against me.

“I wish I had screamed. Maybe if I screamed, someone would have helped me.

“My daughter and I ran home where we got money to board another taxi,” she said.

She said she was so confused she did not think of calling the cops.

“All I am asking is that they bring my child back. I am willing to make a plan if money is what they want.

“My biggest fear is that they killed my child and sell her body parts for muthi.”

Her partner, Bongani Zulu, 36, said he had been excited to welcome their first child together as they had been trying for a baby for years.

“This child was a blessing to us. We had been trying to have a child for some time with no success,” the sobbing father said.

“I couldn’t wait to hold her in my arms. I rushed home [from work in Rustenburg, North West] that Friday (June 24] to see my little girl.

“I don’t know if my partner was being followed from the shopping centre or if they had followed her from hospital. I really don’t know.

“I question why God allowed our wish to hold her in our arms and then have her snatched out of the same arms. If he didn’t want us to have her, he shouldn’t have allowed us to have her.”

Later yesterday after he was seen at the police station, Zulu said he had nothing more to say.

Masondo said the woman would appear in court soon.