–– Yamikani Katunga
The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
The Sale of A Baby
With Black Friday upon us once again, nothing could prepare Zimbabweans for the darkness of the headline detailing the twisted trio of a 16-year-old mother along with her mother and another woman engaging in a sadistic sales agreement. The teen and her mother, Evelyn, appeared in court having been charged with human trafficking for selling her infant for 180 USD. The buyer is a woman named Tore who had apparently been plagued with miscarriages, and upon connecting with Evelyn on Whatsapp opportunism ensued. Rather than abort the seven-month-old pregnancy they conspired with a nurse, induced premature labour, faked a death certificate, and conducted the sale. Only to be ousted by a tip-off nine months after the baby’s birth.
Upon hearing such a bizarre chain of events, many will rightly ask, what could cause such heinous plots in the hearts of men?
Here are three possible reasons to help understand why this mother would sell her baby.
- Economic Bankruptcy
The Zimbabwean economy is a husk of its former glory. Once the breadbasket of Africa, a basket case is the more fitting semblance it bears today. This is owing to the autocannibalistic corruption facilitated by a thirty-year dictatorial regime. In its three decades of a desperate Joab-like clutch to political power, the current ruling party, ZANU-PF has been more concerned with Marxist identity politics than sound economics. As a result, Zimbabwe’s economy has been in a tailspin for years with rampant inflation, unreliable monetary policy, low business confidence, and scant rates of employment.
This has all but eroded the middle-class and marred hopes of upward mobility. However, the weight of it all is endured most by the bottom wrung of the ladder. Proverbs 29:2 says “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, But when a wicked man rules, people groan.” It is a heartwrenching outcome of failed governance that this mother’s groans have so driven her to such dire desperation as to sell her priceless grandchild for USD 180 (R3,200), which is even less than a month of South African minimum wage at approximately R4,400.
This story is just one of many anecdotes in which people are driven to such desperation by the economic bankruptcy of Zimbabwe.
- Moral Bankruptcy
In the sinking of the Titanic and the sinking of Birkenhead 60 years earlier, Captain Smith and Colonel Seton, respectively, instructed that women and children were to take priority on lifeboats. In the case of the latter, hundreds of men perished as they sank into shark-infested waters. These decisions were made even though men have a greater likelihood of surviving such calamities.
Calls for self-sacrificial protection of the most vulnerable rightly elicit heartwarming sentiments from those who hear of such events. It gives a sense that there is something praiseworthy in the moral fabric of a culture, albeit merely external. On the other hand, when the most vulnerable are sacrificed for the benefit of those to whose care they have been entrusted, this invokes the feeling that something has gone eerily awry in a culture. One of the curses promised to Israel if they refused the blessing that comes with obedience to the LORD was a situation so desperate that mothers would abandon natural love for their children and would rather exploit their baby’s very bodies for sustenance (Deuteronomy 28:53-56).
In our case study, these actors are all so morally corrupt that not only was ending the life of the unborn child an option, but they were seemingly persuaded to do otherwise by a twisted sense of pursuing the lesser evil at best, and at worst, the opportunity to make a quick buck. The debacle is only compounded by the woman purchasing the child instead of going through legal channels for adoption, the nurse who connived to induce the teen mother prematurely, and the grandmother faking a death certificate to cover up their tracks.
The whole controversy is an outrage that reeks of moral bankruptcy.
- Spiritual Bankruptcy
Such a sadistic scandal invokes shock in the mind of anyone who hears it. The shock, fitting of such a story, is owing to God’s common grace ever-working through the consciences of depraved men so that we are used to living in societies that are not always as evil as they can be. However, a spiritually dead and sinful heart is the common ingredient found within all men (Jer. 17:9, Rom. 3:23, Eph. 2:1). This fiasco teaches us that if the pot is allowed to simmer long enough untended by the grace of God, it will eventually bubble over into such atrocities as these.
It is a righteous ruling to bring the conspirators of this wicked collusion to justice in the court of law (Rom. 13:4). However, we must do well to remember the following: good policies can enrich an ailing economy, and good parenting can enrich external morality; but there is no terrestrial treasure chest deep enough to resolve the spiritual bankruptcy of being dead in trespasses and sins. Only the free heavenly gift of grace offered by the Lord, Jesus Christ is sufficient to save sinners like this terrible trio—yea, even you and me; giving us new hearts, and new life.