Mom says love and financial problems made her poison her kids
A MOTHER who stands accused of feeding rat poison to her son of 3 and baby of 10 months admits she was suicidal because she had love and money problems.
Thobile Mbatha, 29, a former police officer from Tsakane near Springs, pleaded guilty in the high court in Pretoria to poisoning 10-month-old Mapempeni Madoda and 3-year-old Siyamthanda Junior Mbatha.
Mapempeni died and Siyamthanda survived.
But she says she did not preplan her action, and the State has entered a plea of not guilty of murder on her behalf.
The defence claims that there was a possibility the baby may also have survived had staff at the clinic where he was taken to acted faster and referred him to a hospital.
It is claimed that Mbatha drove to the clinic with the sick child. A nurse and a doctor at the clinic claimed Mbatha snatched the baby from the examination room and left the clinic. They say they were in a state of shock at her behaviour, as they had planned to get an ambulance to transfer the child to hospital.
They were also adamant that Mbatha did not tell them the child had ingested poison.
The witnesses said they had been informed by a frantic and near-hysterical family member that the child had fallen out of bed. This is what Nomonde Sikhulu – the accused’s niece – told the court her aunt had told her.
The defence claims that Mbatha had a rat infestation, and that the children may have found the rat poison.
In a lengthy statement, the mother said she had been cheated on and left in financial distress.
“Faced with these circumstances, I found there was little or no reason to live. I decided to swallow some rat poison to end my life. Then I thought there would be no one to care for my children. I decided to poison them as well,” she said.
Mbatha said she subsequently regretted her actions, and rushed the children to a clinic. She gave an explanation of how she met the children’s father, and how they shared a commitment to be faithful. However, a year later a woman called her to say she was pregnant with the father’s child.
When she had been pregnant with Siyamthanda, her husband had wanted her to have an abortion.
She said that after she’d had children, her relationship with her husband deteriorated and he often failed to come home.
He also resigned from the police force and was unemployed for a year, during which time she incurred debt as she had to support him. When he rejoined the police, he refused to support her, she claimed.
The case continues.