REPORTER’S NOTE: A (non) story of desperation in desperate times

IT STARTED with a call.

It was a woman who needed my help because her niece’s baby had been stolen shortly after birth from a Durban hospital.

I didn’t waste time. I grabbed a photographer and drove to the victim’s home in Mayville.

We found her crying in the RDP house she called home. She was with the child’s father, who owned a small delivery business and saw to all her financial needs.

The mother was 21, had dropped out of school in Grade 9 and, not surprisingly, didn’t have a job.

She cried the entire time I was with her. Between sobs, she told us what happened.

She thought the baby was going to be born but couldn’t get hold of the father. She managed to find a woman she knew to take her to a hospital.

Once there, two nurses who the friend knew took them to a room where, with the help of two doctors, she gave birth to a baby girl.

She saw the baby. It was alive and seemed normal, but she did not hold her. Perhaps she was not allowed to. She couldn’t remember.

She was then given something to sleep. When she woke up, she was alone. The nurses told her the baby was dead and she should go home. When she asked to see the corpse, they told her to return the next day.

She did, with her boyfriend, but there was no corpse or death certificate. What’s more, the hospital did not have a maternity ward and denied a baby had been born there.

She tried to get in touch with the friend who drove her to the hospital but this woman had “disappeared”.

I got back to the office to discuss the story with my editor. He was sceptical – but he always is. So, I focused on what he asked me to do – get proof that she was pregnant. And that’s when things started to get confusing.

She had pictures of what looked like her pregnant belly, but there were no records of the clinics or hospitals she claimed to visit.

She agreed to a medical examination. The result showed that she had not been pregnant in the last five months.

Eventually, I tracked down the friend who she claimed took her to hospital. What she said confirmed the obvious – there had been no pregnancy.

I struggled to understand why someone would lie about giving birth, but then it dawned on me: she was desperate. Desperate to escape her reality. And a baby with a man who could give her a better life was her solution.

It is the story of too many women in our society: desperate people in desperate times resorting to desperate measures.

I wasted a week on this story, but I learnt more about our society this week than I have in my entire life.