Cape Town - “Please bring my baby back to me! He is a small person who knows nothing about the world.”
These are the desperate words of a mother who has not slept since finding out that her six-month-old baby had been snatched outside a liquor store in Somerset West on Monday.
Asanda Yeko, 22, said her day started off normal with a kiss on the forehead and dropping off her baby at her boyfriend’s aunt before she headed to work.
But her worst nightmare came true, after receiving news that Ivakele had been kidnapped.
The mother of two spoke to the Daily Voice after returning home from a full day of frantically searching for her infant son.
“We haven’t stopped looking. We received a tip-off about a suspicious car with a woman and a baby in it near the airport,” she says.
“My heart raced as the car stopped because I believed we would find him and that I would be able to hold him again, but it turned out to be a false alarm because the baby was a girl.
“Who would take my baby, and why? He is still a baby who drinks on me, as we speak my breasts are full of milk.”
Yeko says it angered her even more when she learnt that the carer took her son to a liquor store from where he was abducted.
“If I knew she was doing that I would never have left him with her in the first place, but I did it because she has children and needed money to care for them,” the devastated mom explains.
“I am angry because they continued drinking when they got home while we were searching the whole community with a loud speaker calling out his name – they didn’t even have the decency to come and tell me themselves,” she says.
The sobbing mother begged anyone to come forward with information.
“Please return my child… I can’t live like this, I haven’t slept, I want to know if he is OK. Has he been fed? Is he warm enough? Do they know how to calm him when he cries?”
Ivakele was wearing a red sweater and nappy and had a blue dummy around his neck when he was abducted.
The kidnapper is described as a short, average built woman who speaks Zulu but who may be a foreign national.
Police spokesperson Wesley Twigg confirms the case and urges anyone with information to anonymously contact Crime Stop on 08600 10111.
Daily Voice