Mom calls sangomas to trace son

2003-11-18 20:15

Zenzele Kuhlase

Hazyview - Mpumalanga police have yet to start looking for a nine-year-old boy who disappeared a month ago after staying with a sangoma.

The boy's heartbroken mother, Maggie Silubane, 46, of Mshadza tribal trust near Hazyview has lost all hope she'll find her son alive.

She has spent R1 800 on soothsayers who've told her that her child, Nicholas, has been killed for muti and is lying dead in the veld.

After media questions last week, Mkhuhlu station commissioner Captain John Ngwenya instructed two officers to investigate, but they failed to start the probe at the weekend as promised.

On Tuesday, Captain Ngwenya said he'd been busy and hadn't received any feedback from the investigators.

Silubane has asked relatives as far away as Gauteng if they know where her son is, but nobody has seen him.

She said she had asked her aunt, who is a sangoma, to care for her son while she was at work in Sabie.

Dreams about the missing child

She dropped him off on October 7 and when she returned three days later the boy had disappeared.

Silubane later found a packet with his shredded shirt outside her gate and her aunt warned her to stop searching for the boy.

"At night, I dream that Nicholas is crying and asking me to come and fetch him.

"He complains about how hot it is," she says, choking back tears. "If he is dead, I want to bury him in peace."

- African Eye