Durban - The Chatsworth mother accused of abusing and murdering her 3-year-old daughter claimed on Monday she loved the child.
She said her own mother, a co-accused in the trial, “hated” the child because she was not toilet-trained and the father was coloured “and she did not like black children”.
“She would say she had a demon inside her and if I looked in her eyes I would see it,” the mother testified on Monday.
She and her mother are charged with the gross mistreatment and murder of “Baby X”, who was found dead on her bed in her Chatsworth home in November 2014.
The pair also face dozens of other charges relating to the sexual and physical abuse of the baby’s older brother and sister who have already testified in the trial before Durban High Court Judge Mohini Moodley.
On Monday the mother - who claims to have diminished responsibility as a result of head injuries she suffered in a road accident in 2001 - took the stand, describing her own life of abuse allegedly at the hands of her mother and her father who she alleges raped her when she was 15.
She said he could have fathered her first child, which she gave birth to when she was 16 and put up for adoption.
She went on to have another girl, who always lived with that father’s parents, the two children who testified, now 12 and 9, before having Baby X in 2011 and another little girl in 2013.
She says she could not afford to look after her children and, with the blessing of the children’s court, they were raised by her mother, who insisted they call her “Mom”.
She also stayed at the Chatsworth house from time to time in-between living at various shelters in Durban when she was working as a “vendor” selling goods she bought from cheap wholesalers.
Baby X was living with her when she was removed by a metro police officer while she was working on the beachfront.
“She accused me of trying to sell the child. I was not doing that.”
But that was how the baby ended up with her mother, she said. “I also moved in but moved out when my next baby was about a year old. She stayed with me until she was 2½ and she did not have a mark on her body.”
She said her mother hated her, abused her even as an adult, and she had no say over her own children.
She denied ever abusing the children or forcing them to beg, although she admitted that she used to smack Baby X for “playing with her private parts”. Once, on the instruction of her mother, she tied the baby’s legs together to stop her doing the same thing.
Under cross-examination by State advocate Cheryl Naidu, she said she had a “slight problem” with her brain, but “if it involves me and my kids, then I remember... they are my life”.
Asked why she had let her mother care for her children, she replied: “I thought she would treat them well.”
She denied forcing her children to beg.
When Naidu pointed out that the older two children had both said she had taught them about “hustling”, she claimed to have never heard the word.
The Mercury