WOMAN’S 2 CHILDREN STOLEN BY NEIGHBOUR

MALIBENI – A young mother is living with perpetual distress and trauma after her two ‘bundles of joy’ were stolen from her four months ago, allegedly by a neighbour who was also a friend.

Sibongile Shongwe (31) had just given birth to a beautiful bouncing baby girl who was then taken together with another child; a two-year-old girl.
This happened at Malibeni area, a rural community which lies along this country’s north-eastern border which it shares with neighbouring South Africa.
The children were taken away from the mother on May 9 this year, which means that she has not seen them for four months.

They were allegedly taken by another young woman from the area, who currently resides in the neighbouring country’s capital city, Pretoria.
According to Shongwe, the woman who allegedly took the children duped her into believing that she was going to assist them get South African birth certificates.

Assist

She said it was the woman who approached her and offered to assist the minors get South African birth certificates, so they could be eligible for that country’s child support grant.

“Since I’m poor and unemployed, I accepted her offer. What made me agree was that the children are officially South Africans since their fathers are citizens of that country,” said Shongwe.

She said the woman had initially planned to take the children with her to Johannesburg where she would apply for the birth certificates.
However, Shongwe said she was not comfortable handing over her minor children to somebody else to travel with them to a destination as far as Johannesburg.
As such, Shongwe said they agreed with the woman that the birth certificates would be applied for at home affairs offices located at a small town of Mgobudze, which lies close to the South African/Eswatini border.

Shongwe started to have cold feet but she said the other woman kept on encouraging her to take the children to Mgobudze to apply for the birth certificates.
“On May 8, which is the day before the children were taken, she (woman who allegedly stole the children) slept here at home.

She said we needed to go there in the morning. Another reason she slept here was because we were to start at the clinic before heading to the home affairs offices,” said Shongwe.
On May 9, the two women crossed into the neighbouring country through an informal entry/exit point (sicanco) located at Malibeni.

Boarded

They then boarded public transport to Mgobudze Clinic, which is located not far from the border.
According to Shongwe, while they were queuing at the clinic, she went to the bathroom to answer the call of nature, leaving her children with the woman.
When she returned, she did not find the woman in the queue.

Her initial assumption was that the woman was inside the facility perhaps being attended to by nurses, Shongwe said.
She alleged that she began searching for the woman and her children but she couldn’t find them.

“When I enquired from some vendors at the gate of the facility, they told me that they had seen the woman boarding a kombi with the children,” Shongwe alleged as she fought back tears. She said she began borrowing cellphones from people so that she could call the woman.

She said she asked somebody else to call the woman since she feared that she would drop the call if she heard her voice. Shongwe said when the woman was called; she informed the caller that she was at Tonga, a town located closer to Nelspruit.

Shongwe stated that she had to ask for bus fare from complete strangers as the woman had allegedly taken her purse. Fortunately, some sympathetic people gave her money, hence she was able to board a kombi from Mgobudze to the informal entry/exit point.

Devastated

She returned home without her two minor children and she has not seen them since that fateful day. Nomsa Mahlalela (67), the grandmother of the children, said the family was devastated when Shongwe broke the news of how the children had been taken away from her. She said they immediately informed local police.

In addition, she said they approached the woman’s family to enquire about her whereabouts.
“They told us that they did not know where she was. They only told us that they had relatives in South Africa and that she could be residing with them,” said Mahlalela.

She said when the woman was called on her South African number on subsequent days; it was not available on the network.
As such, they returned to her family and spoke to the woman’s mother, who is also a community police.

Requested

“We requested that she should accompany us to South Africa so that we could search for her daughter from the homesteads of their relatives. The mother agreed but after some days, she came to my home with the police,” said Mahlalela. According to Mahlalela, local police warned her not to set foot again at the parental home of the woman who allegedly stole the children.

She said the police accused her of ‘abusing’ and harassing the family of the woman who allegedly stole the children.
Mahlalela said she was disappointed when local police insinuated that the mother of the children had consented that the children should be taken to South Africa.

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