Pain on Mother’s Day over missing son

WHILE mothers around the country celebrated and families used the time to appreciate the mothers in their lives, yesterday brought painful memories to a Reservoir Hills mother whose son has been missing for four years.

Four years ago, Thuli Cele came home from work to find her son missing and as days, weeks and years went by, her 24-year-old son never returned.

According to an uncle who was with her son, they were sitting in the lounge when Sfiso Mteshane left their home to meet someone outside, and never came back.

Cele said she opened a missing person’s case at the Sydenham police station, but nothing came of it.

Now Cele says she has lost hope of ever finding her son alive. She said two days after he disappeared, a man who lived nearby came to demand her car, claiming that her son had sold it to him. “He demanded that I give him my car or pay back the R20 000 he had paid my son for it. I refused. I knew that my son would never do that.”

She then phoned her relative, a police officer. She said the man also claimed he was with Sfiso the day he disappeared at a shopping centre in Reservoir Hills.

“We took him to the Sydenham police station because we believed that he was a potential witness as he had admitted that he was the last person to be seen with my son. The police called his parents and questioned him. He was then released,” Cele recalled.

“He was my eldest son and I miss him very much. His absence is felt all the time, but on Mother’s Day I know that he would have spoiled me. I hate to think that the worst has happened to him, but each day that goes by without him I lose hope. The police have failed me,” she said.

She said she never received satisfactory feedback from the police to show that they were investigating the case.

“Every year on Mother’s Day or on my birthday, I wish for the best gift ever, and that would be to see my son again. To see him walk through that door and tell me that he is okay. I appeal to the police to do something to find my son, dead or alive. Otherwise my life will never be the same,” she said.

Police had not commented at the time of publication.