Madonna Fights Like A Trojan
HAS Madonna hatched a classic plot to smuggle young David Banda from his native Malawi and into a new life in London?
As the Sun reports, Madonna has spent £5,000 on a rocking horse for her would-be new boy. A worker at Harrods, the Knightsbridge store where the horse was sired, tells the paper: “The rocking horses are hand made and top spec. They are beautiful, traditional toys.”
The paper produces a picture of what a rocking horse might look like. There is a tail, a mane and four legs placed on rockers. And there’s a hatch in the belly through which 13-month-old David can enter, hide and thereby escape Africa for a new life in Marble Arch.
Of course, we may be mistaken. But things are getting tricky and, as the Express says, Madonna faces a court fight to adopt the boy. The paper says human rights groups and child agencies are contesting the singer’s automatic right to adopt.
Malawi’s High Court has granted custody of the boy to Madonna and her husband Guy, a departure from the country’s rule that prevents adoption by non-residents.
And Malawi-based charity Eye of the Child has submitted a request for an injunction. The group’s spokesman, Boniface Mandere, says the government has not “followed the law”. And there are others. The Mail hears from Justin Dzonzi, a lawyer representing Malawi’s Human Rights Consultative Committee. Dzonzi will argue in the country’s High Court that the adoption is illegal. Says he: “We are simply asking that she {Madonna] follows the laws of this country.”
And the law is important. So important that, as the Star announces in a headline: “MADGE JAIL FEAR OVER BABY DAVID.”
It seems that the child’s father, “sad peasant farmer Yohane”, only placed his son in an orphanage temporarily. And that the boy was offered up for adoption without his knowing.
Says Yohane: “The orphanage made me sign a letter to show that I was handing him over to their charge. But I suppose deep in my heart I always imagined that when he was better, or I had another wife [David’s mother died shortly after childbirth] I would go and get him back. I did not think anyone would want to take him away.”
Yohane is in the Mirror, holding aloft a picture of David. Elevated from the ranks of “sad peasant” to maker of wooden handles, the Mirror says it “is easy to imagine how apprehensive Yohane was when he was summoned to her courthouse last Thursday”.
Using our imagination, we see the poor, simple black African, fashioning a shard of wood into a handle for a door, a luxury he will never know. Perhaps he’s naked. What chance does he stand in the presence of men in funny clothes and a woman with hair made from spun gold and skin the colour of a rare white rhino?
“She smiled a lot,” says Yohane. “And later she thanked me for surrendering my child into her care.” He adds: “But in court I did understand I was agreeing to give up my baby for adoption.”
In exchange for a magical wooden horse…
Posted: 16th, October 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
