Mabel Banda would like to take her child back to Malawi, but the nine-year-old’s South African guardians are applying for custody
Heather Hogan
A Rhema pastor is embroiled in a custody battle over a nine-year-old girl, left in his care by her mother, an illegal Malawian immigrant, who now wants her back.
To complicate matters, the child, Tarin Banda, was born in Johannesburg and is a legal South African citizen but might still face deportation along with her mother – to Malawi, where she has never been – if her mother wins the custody battle. Yet, if the pastor wins, her biological mother fears Tarin may never know her family or roots.
Tarin’s mother, Mabel Banda, left her with Pastor Gordon Calmeyer and his wife Stella seven years ago for safe-keeping while she went to find a job. Tarin was almost two at the time and for most of the seven years that followed things went smoothly, with the Calmeyers caring for her.
It apparently did not worry Banda that she was leaving her child with the Calmeyers and their sister-in-law, Linda Heaton, her former employer, because she knew the family well. They were all members of Rhema and Calmeyer was her pastor.
“Seeing that I had stayed with … [Heaton] for some time and seeing that they all had Christian backgrounds, I never thought that they could have any evil intentions,” says Banda.
Although Tarin knows Banda is her biological mother and calls her “Mommy Mabel”, it is the Calmeyers who have her love and affection and the full titles of “mommy” and “daddy”.
Approximately two years after she’d left her daughter in their care, Banda wanted to take Tarin to Malawi to meet her family, but, she said, the Calmeyers and Heaton started crying and said Malawi is nothing but “bush” and Tarin would get diseases if she went there.
Banda says she tried to take Tarin to Malawi on other occasions, but Calmeyer always managed to make excuses. She resents the fact that they took Tarin on holiday to the United States years later and “that Tarin thinks America is wonderful and Malawi is some bushy place with snakes”.
Calmeyer, however, says they had planned to all go to Malawi together after the trip to the US,but on their return, Banda was extremely ill in hospital and the trip to Malawi was put off.
At one point Rhema social workers were appointed to oversee the bonding between Banda and her daughter, but Banda claims they only hindered the process.
The conflict came to a head one evening last month when Banda and her brothers decided to fetch and take Tarin away from the Calmeyers once and for all. They showed up at the Calmeyer home while the pastor was away – but left without her.
Meanwhile, a well-meaning Rhema social worker reported Banda to the Department of Home Affairs, never dreaming that the child could be deported along with her mother.
Calmeyer applied for custody in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, but nothing changed so he filed an urgent appeal for custody in the Johannesburg High Court. He was granted de facto custody of the girl pending the outcome of an application for adoption in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court at the end of May.
Surprisingly, despite their bitter court battle, both parties say they wouldn’t deny each other access to Tarin should the other party lose the custody battle. Both claim they have the girl’s best interests at heart.
“I love Tarin so much. She is beautiful, cute and very bright; she thinks like a 15-year-old,” says Banda.
“I know they love my child as well, that is why I wanted to give them an opportunity to have access to her as well … I never wanted to take her away from them, but if they want custody then I want my child back.”
But Calmeyer says Tarin fears the thought of Malawi and struggles to sleep – whether it’s the strange environment that she knows nothing about or the thought of going there and never seeing her friends or South African family again is anybody’s guess, but she is terrified.
“I don’t like this whole thing that’s going on,” says Calmeyer. “I would like to resolve this by other means [besides the route taken now] unless a social worker says it is against the well-being of the child.”
Calmeyer has gone as far as saying he would gladly have Banda stay with his family so that she and Tarin can bond, and he would take care of any medical expenses that may arise.
He says he was and still is even prepared to plead her case of probable deportation to Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi on humanitarian grounds in order for her to stay in South Africa for Tarin’s sake.
Tarin apparently has her own opinion on the route the courts should take, says Calmeyer.
She keeps saying to him, “Why doesn’t the court ask me?” and, “This is my life and I will decide where I want to go.”