A WOMAN has tried to kill herself after her baby mysteriously changed its sex, it was reported on Wednesday.
Baby Kingsize Mupambare was born a boy at Marondera Hospital on January 22 this year, according to medical records, but mysteriously “changed to a girl” on Thursday last week, the Herald newspaper reported.
The baby’s mother, Tamari Mutsamwa, 21, was receiving counseling this week after drinking poison in a suicide attempt. Her quick-thinking husband rushed her to hospital after she took a concoction, police said.
An expert from the Zimbabwe Traditional Medicine Practitioners’ Council said he believed the child had been bewitched.
Sekuru Kennedy Kachuruka Mbewe advised that the “sex change” could be reversed by “prophets” or traditional healers, but added that the magic can be left to “wear-off” over time allowing the baby to return to being a boy.
He said the sex change magic was of foreign origin, and was often used by sex workers to punish non-paying clients.
“The client would wake up the next morning to discover that his manhood has disappeared, but in actual fact it will be there. In Shona, we call it mushonga wekupofomadza [medication that makes one blind],” Mbewe said.
But the traditional healer said the trick could also be used by spiteful individuals, and fears that Mutsamwa may have been the target of an attempt to “seal her womanhood” and make her “so stiff that no man would touch her”.
He adds that he believes Mutsamwa may have sat the child on a bed which had been “treated” by the magic spell’s owner resulting in the child’s “sex change”.
Sekuru Mbewe said: “We discourage people form using such magical powers. People who possess them should be exposed as they are a blemish to society at large.”