The rule of law can be cruel sometimes

Monitor Editor | Monday September 8, 2014 12:30

What makes the case interesting is perhaps  the colour factor. It pits white vs black, and naturally sentiments black should win in Botswana. The case first appeared in South Africa’s True Love magazine, a traditionally pro black magazine.

Tempers are flaring in Botswana, the land of July and Kopo,  with some racially blurred anger boiling at the act of a white woman ‘stealing’ a Motswana child.  Naturally those supporting the black parents would love to see the government come out guns blazing to teach this white woman a lesson; that this is Botswana, that she cannot just have it easy, taking a baby from a Motswana woman. Who does she think she is?.

But the law’s fairness in the matter can be hard to swallow for those extremists who view such matters on racially blurred lines.

We learn this week from a lengthy  statement by the Attorney General that  there is nothing wrong with the way the white woman has taken the child away from its mother. The  adoptive mother followed all the right channels of adopting a minor. In fact the adoptive mother has had the child since she was three months old. That is to say, she  raised her until she was five years old, having legally adopted  the child at the age of  one.

There is no doubt that there may be a stronger bond between the white mother and the child since they have been together for over five years, than there is between the child and its biological mother who gave  it  away when it was only three months old.

Interestingly the father of the child, who has not known the child or supported it materially all this time, only surfaced  in 2012, when the child was five years old, to claim it as his. The two Batswana parents in this matter have failed to live up to  the saying that blood is thicker than water.  They failed to provide parental care and love to their child, who may be better off in Mey’s hands.

The Court of Appeal ruled in Kirsten Mey’s favour and the biological parents lost the child. The rule of law has to be respected. This is justice,  as much as it may seem unfair to some people.