They hardly had any food in their stomachs when the four Mmupele children, aged two, six, seven and nine years old, left home and started an 18-km walk in the sweltering North West heat in search of their mother and food – but they never reached their destination.
When their lifeless bodies were found lying on the ground out in a veld – the first two three days later and the older children more than two weeks after they took their last walk from the settlement of Verdwaal, Itsoseng – there was no doubt that they had died of hunger and dehydration exacerbated by the extreme heat, 32ºC, on that day.
The four – three boys and a girl – had not had a decent meal in weeks and the last of the food in the house, mealie meal borrowed from a neighbour, had run out the previous night. It had only been enough for a bowl of soft porridge each.
Earlier that morning, on October 24, a pregnant and anxious Kedibone Mmupele had woken up to walk the approximately 18km to Kobus Pretorius’s farm where her mother Martha Mmupele was visiting, in the hope of bringing back mealie meal and chicken pieces to feed the children.
Verdwaal – situated about 25 km outside Lichtenburg in the North West – is relatively new and was established to accommodate previous farm dwellers, some of whom still work on the farms.
The residents still rely heavily on the farms for food, and the ration of mealie meal, chicken and wages from Pretorius’s farm, given to Martha’s boyfriend – an employee – often fed the family.
“We were all very hungry because there hadn’t really been much food in the house for weeks, so by 7 that morning I was already on my way to the farm, knowing I would be back by nightfall,” the 27 year old told the Pretoria News.
Leaving the four – her sons Onkarabile (2) and Nkune (6), nine-year-old brother Sebengu and seven-year-old sister Mapule – in the care of her 15-year-old brother, she set off. She had instructed the teenager to take them to a relative’s house before going to school, she said.
Narrating the four children’s fatal journey, Itsoseng policeman Lieutenant-Colonel Johannes Mashaba said: “The four children soon followed Kedibone along the path through the veld, choosing a route that by-passed farm security but also added about 5km to their journey.”
The four had walked about 7km when they met a neighbour, Apple Dilapiso, who continued for another 5km with them. They told her they were hungry and thirsty and were following Kedibone to the farm where the older two often went with their mother Martha.
Dilapiso said: “Although the others were still walking and chatting with no problem, Nkune was exhausted because he was disabled and walked with a limp, so I carried him on my shoulders for a while.”
Dilapiso also had her sister’s one-year-old baby on her back.
She parted ways with them when she branched to the path leading to the farm where she was going. “I tried to convince them to either turn back or come with me, because they could get kidnapped but the older two were adamant that they would be safe.”
When Kedibone arrived home to an empty house later that evening she went to look for the four children at the homes of relatives and neighbours but didn’t find them.
“I ran around like a mad person, looking for them and shouting their names.”
Eventually she went home to sleep after she could not find them.
The following morning she walked back to the farm to check if they had gone there.
“They weren’t there, so my mother and I came back and immediately reported them missing with the police. We suspected they had been kidnapped,” Martha said.
A search for the children started with policemen, the Community Policing Forum (CPF) , family, friends going into the neighbourhood.
When Dilapiso heard of the search she told the family of her encounter with the children.
“I took the police to the last point I had seen them,” she said. Family members, the CPF and policemen on foot started a search of the veld accompanied by dogs and mounted policeman, and then, on Thursday they found the two younger children sprawled on the ground, dead.
“They had obviously collapsed, from hunger and dehydration and from walking in the heat for so long,” Mashaba said. The search for the older two intensified, he said, with the teams going on for kilometres towards the farm but, they could not be found.
“I still believed that they were alive, that they had been kidnapped and hoped that we would rescue them and bring them home safely,” said Martha.
With financial assistance from the municipality, the police and farmers, the children were buried the following Tuesday while the search for the other two continued, with the family holding on to the hope that they would be found alive.
But it wasn’t until the following Tuesday (November 8) that a farmer, ploughing his fields, came across the two decomposed bodies of the Mmupele children.
“They were so badly decomposed they were nothing more than skin and bones. They lay on the ground facing each other, as if they were plotting their next line of action,” the policeman said.
The girl lay on her back and her brother on his stomach, their shoes next to them.
“It also appeared that they had changed direction and had decided to take the short cut back home,” he said.
“If only there had been food for them to eat then they would never have wandered off,” Kedibone said.
With her face buried in her hands, Martha added: “We are poor and there is never enough food for the children. Life without them is unimaginable.”
Mournfully, she said that the image of her faces would fade over time, because there were no photographs of the children.
None of the four had a birth certificate – the only evidence that they ever existed are the death certificates issued after they were found.
Martha’s cousin, Tshotlego Mothibi, who has been with them throughout and was there when both sets of children were found said: “The two often break down and cry and ask themselves numerous questions about the children’s last day; questions which will never be answered.”
They ask themselves of the decision to follow Kedibone and try to imagine how thirsty and hungry they grew as they walked on.
“But what kills them the most is their condition during their last minutes, what they went through before they gave in to death.”
Charges of child neglect have been levelled against Kedibone and an investigation, by the SAPS Lichtenburg Family and Children Services Unit is under way to determine the circumstances under which the children were left.
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