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Leonard Ncube Victoria Falls Reporter
A TEENAGER who was impregnated aged 14 and gave birth to a disabled baby was pressured to kill the tot by its father as a condition for marrying her. Habarathi Mary Ndlovu, now 16, of Jambezi, told Victoria Falls magistrate Sharon Rosemani this week that Victor Ndlovu, 28, told her that he would not marry her unless if the disabled child was dead.

The child is stunted and could be deaf and dumb as she cannot speak, Habarathi said.

Habarathi, who lives with her grandmother, said she briefly stayed with Victor before she gave birth, but they were separated after their disabled child was born and he went to work in Beitbridge.

“My daughter is not growing at all, she’s two-years-old now but she still can’t talk. When she was an infant, she used to breastfeed through a tube which she stopped using when she was six months. Her father neglected us as he didn’t support his daughter at all,” said Habarathi.

She has never seen her own father and her mother’s whereabouts are unknown.

The teenager said Ndlovu told her to kill the child for him to marry her.

“He doesn’t want the child. He told me that the baby should die first before he can marry me because she’s disabled,” she told court.

She said she was failing to raise $30 needed for her daughter to undergo a scan and wanted the Maintenance Court to order Ndlovu to take care of his daughter.

She applied for $100 per month for the tot’s food, medication, clothes and others.

The magistrate awarded her $30 per month starting this month after the baby’s father said he was unemployed.

He denied that he had abandoned his family, stating: “I’m not working at the moment. I used to do part time jobs at an orange plantation in Beitbridge and I went and paid a cow for lobola.”