Durban - “If you know anything, come forward. I will live with this experience until I die. At least help lead us to his body.”
This was the plea of Johnson Xolo, 56, father of Sydenham teacher Luyanda “Peace” Xolo, who has been missing for three weeks.
Xolo said yesterday’s Father’s Day was filled with pain as he remembered what Luyanda had done for him last year. Last year he had arrived home to find it beautifully set up for a celebration.
“It was so heart-warming that I didn’t know how to ask him how he pulled it off as a student,” he said.
Even though Luyanda, a student teacher, had had to leave because schools were set to reopen, he had left money with his younger brother to buy cooldrinks.
“Some of those cooldrinks are still here,” said Xolo.
Police allege that the second-year University of South Africa student was partying with friends at Burnwood Road park on the night of June 1 when a fight broke out.
According to witnesses, he did not participate in the dispute.
“When everything subsided, they all went to Candover Road informal settlement and they continued to party. Another fight broke out and everyone ran in different directions. He has not been seen since,” said police spokesperson Colonel Thembeka Mbele.
A search was conducted in the area with negative results.
Xolo said he believed people knew where his son’s body was.
Xolo’s mother, Gugu Xolo, said her son lived at her sister’s house in Burnwood with two other young people.
She said his learnership at the university required that he teach at a school while studying.
Xolo, of Margate, had been teaching at a private academy in oThongathi (Tongaat).
“The youngsters he lives with saw him leaving for the shops nearby with local boys. They never saw him return. That afternoon, when he didn’t come back, they began searching for him.
“We have found nothing. We have searched in the bushes. On Sunday we searched hospitals. Our family went out and our congregation also helped search hospitals on Sunday, but we have found nothing,” she previously told the Daily News.