Kuda Mahachi’s 4-year-old Son's Leg Amputated

Maritha said he learnt that her son was getting along well not only with his father but with his stepmother, Rose Mahachi.

She said, however, out of the blue, her calls to Mahachi were no longer going through and her WhatsApp messages were no longer double ticking. She said:

There was no reason for them to block me. I knew something was wrong after I was blocked on WhatsApp and my calls were blacklisted.

Maritha claimed that on 19 April, her phone rang, on the other end of the call was Mahachi’s grandmother. She said:

She said my son is sick and he is at her house in Cowdray Park. I asked her how is he in Cowdray Park because as far as I knew he was in South Africa and she said he had been in Zimbabwe since last Thursday.

I lost it and asked how come I was not informed that he had been returned, after all, I am his mother.

I told the grandmother that I was going to come to collect him the next day. But she insisted that I drop everything and come see my son.

That made me realise that something was wrong with my son. I was panicking, so I called a relative and we went together to Cowdray Park.

I found my son sleeping and heavily bandaged on the head and I thought it was not that bad.

When I removed the blanket that was covering him, because I wanted to carry him in my arms, I was shocked to find him with burns all over his body.

She said the grandmother had not taken the boy to the hospital but was instead trying to treat him herself.

Maritha also said Mahachi and Rose had somehow found a malayitsha who agreed to smuggle the severely burnt child to Zimbabwe.

She said her son, who had been burnt in South Africa, travelled 863 kilometres on the road, unaccompanied by a medical nurse or a relative. Said Maritha:

The journey from Johannesburg to Bulawayo is about 10 hours and he was alone. What kind of father does that to his son?

Mahachi has money and he can afford to have his son treated in South Africa.

I took my son to a private surgery and they quickly called an ambulance that took him to Mpilo Hospital.

The doctor said taking him to the hospital using any other car was not appropriate, but his father put him in a Quantum bus. How cruel can one be?

Maritha said her son told her how he was burnt while staying with his father and stepmother in South Africa. She said:

My son is four years old but he is not stupid and he has been talking. He says his father was abusing him.

One of his front teeth is missing after his father hit him with some kind of iron bar and he has an injury on the forehead.

His back is scourged from being whipped with a phone charger cable by his stepmother.

But that is nothing compared to what his father did to him. He told me that his father beat him and then boiled water using a kettle and poured it on him.

Maritha said doctors had to amputate the child’s right foot from the ankle as the foot had been injured beyond repair.

She said the police interviewed her and told her that the case was being handled by the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol).

In a telephone interview with B-Metro, Mahachi denied that he burnt his son or that he was burnt in South Africa. Said Mahachi:

I am the father of the child and I am not aware that he is burnt. As far as I know, I sent him to Zimbabwe in one piece.

Don’t listen to lies. There is nothing like that. My son is okay. My son was not burnt.

If he was burnt then he was burnt in Zimbabwe, not here in South Africa.

Go ahead and write your lies, already I see your stories on social media.

Mahachi’s wife, Rose, also denied that the child was hurt in South Africa. She said:

My brother, people hate us. We don’t know why and we don’t know what we did to them.

More: B-Metro