Cruel hoax only deepens family’s pain

For a moment this week, a distraught Nelson Mandela Bay mother believed her missing son had been found.

Little Nakane Lizane, 4, went missing in May at his Wells Estate home.

Nakane, who was wearing blue jeans, grey takkies and a light-coloured T-shirt with a denim jacket when he disappeared, had been playing outside the house with his 10-year-old brother.

After a while, their mother Zukiswa Ngele-Lizani called them to come inside, but only the 10-year-old went inside.

Nakane was later reported missing at the Swartkops police station.

Despite a mass search and R50,000 reward, there was no sign of the child.

Then, this week, Ngele-Lizani believed Nakane had been found. 

But her relief was short-lived on Monday when the police and sniffer dogs arrived at the scene and confirmed he was stilling missing.

The situation on Monday stemmed from someone in the community claiming to have seen Nakane under an Elephant Park resident’s bed earlier in the day.

Police spokesperson Captain Sandra Janse van Rensburg said it all turned out to be a hoax.

And so Ngele-Lizani and her family’s nightmare continues, a nightmare shared by many other families around the Bay who have reported loved ones missing. 

Earlier in August, The Herald’s sister publication Weekend Post reported how police had noted worrying rise in people going missing in the Bay.

Over the month of July and the start of August, hardly a week went by without the SA Police Service issuing a missing person’s note.

Aside from that, desperate family members had also taken to social media, posting on platforms such as Facebook in search of their loved ones.

While each case is unique and some of them genuine, police said they had also picked up on youngsters going missing, only to turn up with friends or love interests days later.

And while every effort must be made to find missing people and reunite them with their loved ones, we cannot afford a situation where resources are wasted searching for people who leave home for an extended period without informing anyone to go out partying.

Repeats of such cases can also, ultimately, result in a boy-cries-wolf scenario — a situation we must avoid at all costs.

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