Pretoria - Little Zinhle Ndala has been found, dead. Her tiny body was covered in plastic sheeting and she was still dressed in the green T-shirt and blue jeans she was wearing when she was last seen almost two months ago.
Her brown pumps were missing when her body was found a few blocks from her Mamelodi East home.
Police were alerted to the discovery of her body last Friday morning. And on Monday, her parents were called to a mortuary, where they positively identified her.
Zinhle, aged 9, was found in a stormwater drain near a church, public swimming pool, park and several houses at the intersection of Tsomo and Matlhare streets.
City council workers who were cleaning up the area discovered a body covered in plastic and alerted community members and the police. The cause of her death was yet to be determined and was a subject of an ongoing police probe.
“I still feel like this is all a dream that I can’t wake up from. She was still wearing her green T-shirt and blue jeans. Her hair still looked very neat,” said her aunt, Mavis Ndala.
“We went as a family to identify her body. I have never seen so much pain in our family. Her grandfather, the last person to see her alive, could not stop crying. We had to carry both him and her mother out of the government mortuary at Steve Biko Hospital,” she said.
Ndala said despite the long search not bearing any positive result, the family had not lost hope and was hoping someone had at least taken Zinhle and was looking after her.
The only relief, she said, was that “insensitive callers” would stop bothering them by claiming to have seen Zinhle.
“We would receive between 10 and 15 calls a day from people asking us to deposit money if we ever wanted to see her alive. Others said the money was needed to transport her back home from Durban,” she said.
“The most painful call that will forever haunt me was from a woman who told us that if we wanted to find Zinhle, we didn’t have to search far as she was very close to our home. And in the end, that was exactly where she was found - very close to her home.”
Ndala said despite what happened to Zinhle, the family hoped no other child suffered the same fate.
Zinhle was reported missing on January 4 while playing outside her home in S&S section, Mamelodi East, with her friends. It was late in the afternoon.
Her family noticed Zinhle was missing when she did not go home to watch soapies on television at about 5pm as she normally did.
The family went out to the streets and asked her friends and almost everyone in the vicinity if they had seen her. The answer was all the same: no. This sent them into a panic.
Her mother Thokozile Ndala and other family members appealed through newspapers and social media platforms for information that would lead to her safe return. But she never returned home.
Days later, they were shocked and hurt by a Facebook post stating that Zinhle had been found raped and murdered. But they never lost hope of seeing her alive again.
Her aunt said they printed posters and flyers and handed them out at shopping malls, taxi ranks and around the neighbourhood. They still did not receive any information on her whereabouts.
Her mother made this appeal in the Pretoria News at the time: “I want them to just bring my daughter back home, because she has to go to school. They have tortured us enough as a family.”
Zinhle was due to start Grade 3 at Zakhele Primary School. Her mother had prepared her powder-blue school dress in anticipation that she would return home in time for the school year. The community of Mamelodi as well as churches, political movements and other organisations rallied behind the family for weeks. In the following days, prayers were held and all efforts made to locate her; the intention was to spread the word in the hope that someone, somehow, somewhere, may have seen her, her aunt told the Pretoria News.
When that eagerly-awaited phone call eventually arrived, it was to inform the family of the body of a young girl that had been found in the storm water drain. It turned out to be Zinhle’s.
Details of the burial will be known after a family meeting to be held later on Tuesday, her aunt said.
Pretoria News