Bongani Philip Mkhumbuza has been missing since 2002.
It was during the end of school time in 2002. He was at his grandmother’s house in Soweto, and my sister gave him money to pick up school clothes.
He disappeared just like that.
My child didn’t come home so I looked all over. One day, I was in Hillbrow, it was an orphanage, and I found him. I took him home. But he didn’t stay, he ran away. I don’t know why he ran. There was everything inside the shack. The fridge was full, and even the social workers went in there and they saw it’s not about him being hungry.
It’s been like this. I come back with him and he runs away, until now. It’s been long since I’ve seen him.
Even now, I just go out but I don’t know where I’m going to. I didn’t take a cellphone, I didn’t take a bag, I didn’t take anything when I left this morning.
He’s my child. I must know where he is, how he lives. If he doesn’t want to come back to me, that’s okay, but it’s hard. You know when I’m eating, and I sleep with the blankets – the pain. I can’t stay without my child. There’s no woman who can stay without her child. I am both the mother and the father.
I can’t remember the last time I saw him. What I know is that he was a child who didn’t fail at school. I still have his reports. He was a clever boy.
If he’s dead, I just want to see his bones then bury them. If the government buried him already, I don’t have the money to take out the bones to bury him again.
His name is Bongani Philip Mkhumbuza.
Elizabeth Mkhumbuza, a domestic worker from Soweto whose 26-year-old son is missing, as told to Ra’eesa Pather