Durban - Baby X’s mother testified on Monday that her children were her life and that she had loved the little girl.
She pinned all the blame on her mother for Baby X’s death, saying her mother hated Baby X because she would go to the toilet on the floor and because her father was a coloured man and “she hated black children”.
However, under cross-examination in the Durban High Court, senior State advocate, Cheryl Naidu, suggested to Baby X’s mom that her own mother was not the monster she made her out to be.
“You’re painting a picture of (your mother) to distance yourself from what happened in the house,” said Naidu to Baby X’s mother.
“That’s not true,” she replied.
Baby X’s mother, 31, and her grandmother, 51, are on trial for the murder of the infant on November 19, 2014 in their Chatsworth home.
The women have pleaded not guilty to the murder as well as charges of child abuse, assault and sexual assault against the little girl’s two older siblings, who are now 9 and 12 years old.
The grandmother also pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting and raping the little girl who died from a blunt head trauma after fatal child abuse.
The women nor the little girl can be named, to protect the identity of the dead girl’s surviving siblings who are the complainants in the matter.
On Monday, Baby X’s mom confidently told Durban High Court Judge Mohini Moodley about her troubled childhood and of her adult life living in Durban shelters, spending some nights at home.
She testified to having been in a motor car collision in 2001.
In her statement made to the court at the start of the trial, she had said that since this accident she suffered a mental defect where she could not distinguish right from wrong.
However, under cross-examination, the State pointed to various examples illustrating that Baby X’s mom did in fact understand the difference between right and wrong.
When she gave birth to her third and fourth child, the complainants in this matter, she placed them in a children’s home as she could not afford to care for them.
“I was going to give them up for adoption, but my mum lied to the social worker saying I ran away. She then became their foster parent.
“When I was seven months pregnant with (Baby X), I came to live with her again because she said they had no lights or water and I was worried my kids would starve. So I went back home because I was scared for the kids,” she testified.
She moved out with Baby X when the little girl was three months old.
She told the court that a metro policewoman had taken Baby X away from her and taken her to a place of safety.
Under cross-examination, she told the court the policewoman had accused her of trying to sell Baby X.
She testified that she went to see Baby X at the orphanage and saw that she was undernourished and had sores all over her body.
Because she lived at a shelter, she asked her mother to get Baby X from the orphanage.
The night of Baby X’s death she told the court she had stayed at a shelter with her two daughters and only learnt about Baby X’s death from a woman in town who was talking about the Chatsworth murder.
At the house, a “man” had told her she needed to identify Baby X’s body because she had died.
“I told him I didn’t have money for a burial,” she said.
She was taken to Bayview police station where she was later charged.
She never identified Baby X’s body and said the first time she saw her daughter’s dead body was when post-mortem pictures were shown to the court.
Neither woman reacted to these photographs.
The trial continues.
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