Ballito mom accused of murdering daughter (4) to appear in court on Thursday

North Coast residents woke up on Freedom Day last Wednesday with the horrifying news of a four-year-old toddler drowned in a bucket of water, allegedly by her mother.

The Ballito woman was charged with murder and made her first appearance in the KwaDukuza magistrate’s court last Thursday.

The 45-year-old mother is in custody at Umhlali Saps pending further investigations and the finalisation of DNA results.

Her next court appearance will be on Thursday, May 5.

The mother allegedly told police her daughter was “difficult and troubling her”, so she decided to drown her.

A police source told the Courier that the woman said the child did not go to school because she was sick and was continuously complaining of a sore throat and stomach pains.

Feeling overwhelmed, she told police she filled two buckets with water and placed them in the shower.

She reportedly tied the girl’s hands with duct tape and holding her by her ankles, forced her daughter’s head into the bucket.

She allegedly held the child in that position for about 20 minutes until the child stopped moving.

After realising the child was dead, she took tablets and benzene with the intention of committing suicide but she woke up at 5pm.

She apparently contacted her husband in Kenya and told him what had happened.

This incident comes after another Ballito mother, Fungai Nyamadzawo, was charged for allegedly killing her six-year-old daughter two years ago.

She initially told police her daughter was kidnapped. The body of the child, Alexia Nyamadzawo, was found in a sugarcane field.

Lizette Lancaster, a manager at the Institute for Security Studies, said between April 2020 and March 2021, 900 children between the ages of 0-17 were murdered according to Saps crime statistics.

“Thereafter we have noticed an upward trend in the quarterly statistics in keeping with the upward trend in the number of murders in general.

“We do not have a breakdown of the number of children murdered by parents. However, traditionally, older children are most likely to be killed by their peers in fights or gang violence. Younger children are more likely to be murdered by a caregiver, relative or partner of a parent for a complex number of reasons.

“We have to investigate such a case with compassion to understand what went wrong. Many stressors contribute to such an extreme act by a parent, whether mental, physical or financial,” said Lancaster.

While horrifying, filicide is more common than you may think.

Filicide is the term used to refer to a parent (or caregiver) who kills his or her child under the age of 18.

A study in the journal Forensic Science International looked at three decades worth of filicide cases (between 1976 and 2007) and found they occurred about 500 times a year in the US.

Forensic psychiatrist Phillip J. Resnick, pioneer in the study of filicide research, published a seminal article in 1969 identifying five main reasons for filicide based on the motive of the perpetrator:

1. Altruism: This is when the parent kills the child perceiving this to be in the child’s best interest. Examples of this are a child suffering for a terminal illness or preceding the parent committing suicide, as the parent may believe it unfair to leave the child behind.

2. Acute psychosis: The parent kills the child based on ideas that are inconsistent with reality. For example, the parent believes the child has been possessed by the devil.

3. Unwanted child: The child is regarded as a hindrance.

4. Accidental: The child’s death is an unintentional result of physical abuse.

5. Spousal revenge: The murder is enacted to exact revenge on the other parent.