Cape Town – The streets of Delft were on Sunday lined with excited residents witnessing the reunion of a mother and a son, Jane and Denzil Daniels.
Denzil, 36, finally returned home with his mother Jane, after having gone missing six years ago.
A welcome lunch was planned for the family and residents received a plate of food as part of the celebrations.
Jane was beaming with excitement.
“I have no words to describe this feeling I have. I can only think it’s a miracle. I’m so happy to have my son back home after years of believing he had died,” Jane said.
Dressed neatly in a navy blue jacket, blue jersey, jeans and takkies, Denzil excitedly waved at family and friends who welcomed him home.
Denzil suffers from a mental disorder and went missing from Delft six years ago.
In a twist of fate Denzil was found by eSwatini police officers, who reported that they found him digging through rubbish at a shopping centre.
Without legal documents to be in the country, Denzil was able to provide officials with his mother’s address in Cape Town, and eSwatini police contacted SAPS to inform them they had found a man believed to be from Cape Town.
On Friday Jane, accompanied by Delft police officers Michael Daniels and Emile Farao, met Denzil at the eSwatini- South African border.
Daniels and Farao said when they received information that Denzil was in Swaziland, they “dropped everything” and immediately went to the family home to confirm if they knew him.
“That first embrace, when they saw each other had me welling up in tears as well. It was a beautiful moment,” said Daniels.
“We decided we wouldn’t give up on Jane and Denzil and wanted to help them because that could have been my child or anybody else’s. We need to bring back that sense of ‘your child is my child’.
“We can also just thank the eSwatini police for looking after him and for the amazing work they did in helping us reunite the family. They too called him their son.”
Denzil was also reunited with his two brothers, Valentino and Tobias. His father died in December.