‘Please find her’
There is still no sign of 11-year-old Oyisa Mgqwanci or Francis Froechlick (67), who have been missing since 5 and 14 October respectively and out of frustration, community members marched up to the Knysna police station last weekend to express their grievances and seek answers.
When a leg, believed to be that of a child, was recently found in Joodsekamp, the same area where Oyisa was last seen, locals believing it was hers thought this would give the family the closure they deserve, but the family says they were told the leg was not Oyisa’s. A subsequent search in the surrounding bushes uncovered a body “in a far advanced stage of decomposition”, according to Southern Cape police spokesperson Captain Malcom Pojie.
The march on Saturday 2 November was organised by a community that has been looking for Oyisa ever since her disappearance and along with learners from Chris Nissen Primary School where she goes to school, they marched in hopes the police would prioritise finding the young girl.
Lwando Zakhe, one of the organisers said, “We need to stand up and fight this now, it cannot be accepted as normal for an 11-yearold to go missing, we cannot wait for more children to go missing in order for us to do something about it. This is every parent’s nightmare, we feel their pain and that is why we are doing this. And we haven’t heard anything about Francis either, who was also reported as missing. Their lives matter and that is why we are standing up for them.
“Pojie said they are still waiting for the laboratory results. “It’s impossible for us to say when we’ll have them but we can ask them to prioritise the matter. The DNA results are the only way we can determine whether the leg was Oyisa’s.”