MEC visits family as search for missing city girl continues
A SOMBRE mood hung over the community of Platfontein yesterday as the search for a missing eightyear-old girl continued into its sixth day without any trace of the child.
Melissa Kanguya, a Grade 2 pupil from the !Xhunkwesa Combined School in the community of Platfontein, went missing last Thursday after last being seen running away from the place where she was playing with friends, allegedly in an attempt to escape a group of teenage boys. One of them allegedly attempted to rape her.
A sullen, sombre atmosphere was yesterday felt among the RDP houses dotted between leafless trees, where family members sat in the sun, staring into the distance while “waiting for a miracle” and Melissa to be found . . . or their worst fears of her death confirmed.
Melissa’s mother, Mariana Kanguya, remained emotionless during a visit from the MEC for Social Development, Gift van Staden, who arrived to express the department’s support for the family through a !Xun and Khwe interpreter.
When asked by Van Staden if there was “anything” the department could assist her with, Kanguya said that while she had a need to be assisted, “she simply did not have the words left inside her to express this need”.
Van Staden consoled the mother by saying that for as long as the child’s body has not been found “hope still remained for her to be found alive”.
Reacting to this, Kanguya shed tears, together with other community members. One baby, sitting on the lap of a female community member, assisted in drying her mother’s tears. Small children, unaware of the gravity of the situation, continued playing in the dusty roads around the house where Melissa was last seen alive by Kanguya before her disappearance.
Community leaders called on Van Staden to provide helicopters to aid in the search and Van Staden committed to “get all possible departments involved in the search”.
Extensive search and rescue operations had by yesterday afternoon not yielded any results and community members are now fearing that the police will today, a week after Melissa’s disappearance, call an end to search operations, further dispelling any glimmer of hope that she will be found – dead or alive.
However, police spokesperson, Captain Sergio Kock, yesterday said that while nothing has been found so far, the search would continue.