South African police were last night examining DNA samples from a Pretoria couple who said they were the parents of a white teenager who emerged this week from a rural black township, claiming he was kidnapped 12 years ago and raised as a goatherd.
Sarie Botha said the brown-eyed, blond boy known as Happy Sindane was her son Jannie, who disappeared in 1992 at the age of six after going to a cafe to play a videogame.
Botha (45), said she had recognised him from television pictures of the youth who walked into a police station in Bronkhorstspruit and asked to be reunited with his biological parents. ”This is Jannie. He looks just like his older brother, Fanie,” she told the Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld.
South Africa has been agog at the tale since Sindane turned up in Bronkhorstspruit, a small town north of Pretoria, claiming he had been kidnapped by a domestic worker and then worked for a black family as a herd-boy in rural Mpumalanga province.
He can speak only Ndebele, the language spoken by black people in the region, and a smattering of Afrikaans. He does not remember his original name.
The Bronkhorstspruit magistrate’s court has ordered that he be housed in a place of safety and has severely restricted media coverage under the terms of the Child Care Act.
A justice department official said the court would rule next week on the age of the youth after he had been properly examined by a physician.
Sindane claimed he had only a ”movie-like” memory of his life before the alleged abduction, but said he could remember that his family spoke Afrikaans.
He claimed he was kidnapped by the family’s maid, who was named as Rina. She gave him to a couple who took him to a rural area.
Before being secluded, the youth told local media that he had been reared by a black family, the Sindanes, in the township of Tweefontein.
He tended cattle and goats and did menial jobs in the homestead. He remembered little of his previous life — save having had a small dog — but, since recognising his face on a television programme about missing persons in 1994, he had dreamed of finding his biological parents.
”Since then, I told myself, the day I meet my parents, everything is going to be all right,” he said. He claimed that his foster father had abused and threatened him, hardening his resolve and he had contacted the police. ”I will be relieved if I can meet my parents. It is my dream.” – Guardian Unlimited Â