No jail for baby Olwethu’s kidnapper

A woman who kidnapped a three-week-old baby from a Home Affairs office in 2014 was shown mercy by the Pietermaritzburg court.

Durban - The woman who kidnapped a 3-week-old baby from the Pietermaritzburg Home Affairs office in 2014 was shown mercy by the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court this week when she was handed a wholly suspended sentence.

Nokulunga Mzila, 25, who pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, and who has since given birth to her own child, was sentenced to five years suspended for five years on condition she was not convicted of a similar crime during this time.

Mzila abducted a baby boy, Olwethu Madlala, from the Home Affairs office on April 14, 2014.

Olwethu’s mother, Nonhlanhla Madlala, had taken her baby to register his birth. Mzila offered to hold the baby while Madlala filled in the forms. She then disappeared with the infant.

Mzila was arrested at Edendale Mall two months later when Madlala spotted her shopping.

In her guilty plea, Mzila said she was pregnant in early 2014 and was living with her fiancée. They were expecting the child to be born in April.

However, she went into early labour in March and her fiancée drove her to hospital, where she gave birth to a stillborn baby. Her fiancée was unaware of the stillborn birth.

Devastated, she returned to her parental home.

When her fiancée insisted on seeing the baby, Mzila said she did not have the courage to tell him the baby had died, and kept putting him off, despite him shouting at her and demanding to see the child.

She said in April 2014, she went to the Home Affairs offices in Pietermaritzburg. While there, she met Madlala, whom she said seemed to have difficulty comforting her baby while trying to complete her forms..

Mzila said she began speaking to Madlala, who then allowed her to carry the baby.

“While I was carrying the baby, my fiancée called me and began shouting at me. At this point I became overwhelmed with emotion, especially with having the baby in my arms, and coupled with the loss of my own baby and the immense pressure from my fiancée, I walked away with the baby and took him to my parents home,” Mzila said.

When sentencing Mzila, Magistrate V Ngobese said he took Mzila’s personal circumstances and emotional state into account at the time that she committed the crime.

The magistrate also considered that Mzila was the mother of an infant, born in June, and that the child needed his mother.

Madlala said she was not satisfied with the sentence and believed Mzila should have received jail time.

“I can never forgive her for what she did,” Madlala said.

Daily News