Sunday Night: Aussie woman’s heartbreaking search for answers

EXCLUSIVE: When Matt Doran promised he would help Abigail Prangs find her mother he never thought he would end up in jail on fake charges.

There’s a saying in Zimbabwe that I can’t shake: Rine manyanga hariputirwe. That which has horns, cannot be buried. But some African secrets are buried so deep that sometimes the truth presents as little more than a whisper.

Two months ago, I promised a young woman from the Sunshine Coast that I would help her find her mother. It was a bold promise; the secret of her birth has endured for 36 years, and the country harbouring it is particularly skilled at taking the unspoken to the grave.

To my bosses, I pitched this story as a Hollywood spectacular, played out in a rural village on the outskirts of Harare. But to me this transcended that: what could be more important than helping a young mother mould her identity from the broken pieces of her past?

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After being abandoned as a newborn, Abbi Prangs is looking for answers.

When Abigail Prangs asked me, “Who is my mum?”, it was surely one of the saddest questions on earth; my own mother is my world. Abigail is resilient, but this was a glimpse at her hidden heart.

Abigail Prangs was roughly a day old when in 1983 she was somehow squirrelled out of the maternity wing of Harare Hospital, driven four kilometres to an industrial area, and dumped in the bush near the Magambuzi River. History says that is where she should have died — a newborn, alone, exposed to the August sun and the animals that scavenged the area. Most infants abandoned in Africa are discovered dead, or condemned to orphanages.

But something wonderful happened. A cyclist found Abigail naked, wrapped in a Harare Maternity Hospital blanket, beneath a small tree. She’d prove to be a baby who rarely, if ever, cried. But on this occasion, her little screams saved her life.

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With the help of Sunday Night reporter Matt Doran, Ms Prangs has returned to Zimbabwe to find out the truth.

An officer from nearby Waterfalls Police Station ferried the newborn back to the very hospital where she was likely born. She went into the system with a question mark next to her birth date, and, in the field where her name should have been, staff wrote, ‘Baby Unknown’.

Baby Unknown, 3050 grams, quickly stole the hearts of hospital staff. One of the doctors would carry her around the wards as he made his rounds. She would mature into a mother-of-four regarded by her many friends as mischievous and deeply sassy, but back then, she was an angel. Alone in the world, unwanted by her own mother, but still beaming.

Fate had another ace up its sleeve for this little girl. Two, in fact: Mike and Kathy Prangs, a white couple who’d heard the story, and went to the hospital to have a look.

Kathy and Mike Prangs.

Kathy cries as she sinks into the memory of their first meeting. She describes it as something like instant love. Back in 1983, a foreign couple taking custody of a Zimbabwean child was virtually unheard of. They faced opposition from Harare’s social welfare officers, who questioned their motives and preferenced local parents who’d have given Abi a vastly different life.

But the Prangs aren’t pushovers, and took their fight to the top. When they couldn’t win an audience with Robert Mugabe, they bent their minds to another solution — his wife, Sally. When Mrs Mugabe met the couple and saw the love they had for Abigail, the abandoned baby girl’s new life was sealed.

As a baby, Abii was abandoned outside a hospital, and #adopted by Aussie parents. She wanted to find out where she came from - but the answer was wilder than she imagined. @MattDoran22 joins Abii on a story of #family, perseverance and corruption - Sunday at 8:30pm on @Channel7. pic.twitter.com/Bfk4lZzKrI

— Sunday Night (@SundayNightOn7) 10 May 2019

When Abi was seven, they emigrated from Zimbabwe to Maroochydore, where Abi would marry Ty Hill, a sparky, and become every bit a true-blue Aussie. They have four children: Ama’rhi, Ziah, Koko and Jeriah.

Abi’s Queensland accent’s as thick as you’ll find it, punctuated at times by the most subtle hints of bogan. I’m quite sure she’ll attempt to disembowel me for saying that. Sometimes people ask her how long she’s lived in Australia. “Alright, mate,” she’ll shoot at ‘em with a huge smile. “Probably bloody longer than you have, right.”

This Sunday Night, we join this remarkable young mother as she returns to Zimbabwe for the first time in three decades, to find answers. It’s a journey that will take her and her young family from the heights of joy, to the depths of despair, and back again. A story of stunning twists and turns, and above all, one woman’s search for the truth.

Abigail’s birth certificate

The investigation leads deep into Zimbabwe’s national archives, and to dusty case files hidden in Harare’s central hospital. Abi’s story takes me, and her taskforce of local volunteers, into clay-walled huts in rural Zimbabwe, where we beg and plead and sometimes even dance our way around a series of strange impediments. At one point a farmer told me that to arrest a run of bad luck we should eat “a couple of hooves” from a newly-slaughtered beast. I thanked him insincerely and told him we’d take our chances.

Abigail returns to the place where she was abandoned to unravel the mystery of her past.

In a memorable diversion, this story even takes us into the holding cells of Harare Central Police station, and not as visitors. It’s not a very lavish joint. I was escorted there at night by a handful of unhappy officers, one of them a despicable bloke with meaty hands and an agenda. He became for me a totem of the Mugabe-era corruption that still pulses here. He looked at me with undiluted loathing, and something more, and when we pulled in to the police station car park to be greeted by a dozen armed officers, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “Welcome to Harare Central”.

I was arrested at 10pm and held overnight for around ten hours. One gentleman, who thankfully at the time was incapacitated with handcuffs, was itching for a brawl. At one point he looked at me, and my producer Stephen Rice, who at the time was for my benefit projecting false calm, and signalled an intent to slice our throats. I’ve since been told that it was only down to the connections of our lawyer that we didn’t share a cell with him over the five-day Easter weekend.

Doran was arrested and held overnight on false kidnap claims.

Here’s a little comedy: we were questioned over an allegation of attempted kidnapping. They seized our passports and considered putting us before a magistrate. I have a number of personality flaws — a wrenching addiction to chocolate, and an actual inability to arrive anywhere on time, ever — but I strenuously deny that a penchant for the kidnapping of Zimbabweans is among them.

As the story goes, we attempted to snatch the director of a DNA testing company, Tinashe Mugabe, off a Harare street. In his statement of complaint, I’m described as short, which is offensive, but then he goes on to use the word ‘muscular’, which goes some way towards redemption.

Tinashe Mugabe claimed Matt Doran attempted to kidnap him.

Essentially, he claims I tried to bundle him into a car and abduct him. But when police saw our vision revealing I’d actually just carried out an interview, and that Tinashe Mugabe drove off in his own vehicle, entirely unencumbered, they threw out the case, laughed at the bloke and threatened to charge him with fabrication of evidence. In spite of my immense dislike for Tinashe, driven largely by the fact that he is a weasel-human hybrid peddling the private details of Abigail’s confidential DNA reports to a vile subsection of the Zimbabwean media, we instructed police not to pursue those charges. I hate paperwork almost as much as I hate kidnapping.

This Mother’s Day, join Abigail as she returns to the place where she was abandoned to unravel the mystery of her past. This is a story of traditions, with a most untraditional narrative.

Watch Abigail Prangs’ story on Sunday Night 8.30pm tonight on Channel 7. Continue the conversation @SundayNightOn7