Siyabonga Sithole
The Magadla family spent their first birthday without their son, Khayalethu Magadla who turned 7 yesterday.
On Sunday, nine days ago, Khayalethu reportedly fell into an uncovered manhole down the road from his Dhlamini home in Soweto where he had spent the afternoon playing with his friends.
Since then, the search for the missing boy has been ongoing with members of the Emergency Services rescue team stationed at the park as the search effort intensified using sniffer dogs, boats and robot technology.
The family of the young boy spent most of the day entertaining visits from teachers, neighbours and other guests who came in and out of the family home in Dhlamini.
Speaking for the first time since the incident, Kholekile Magadla said he is emotionally empty and defeated.
“This is a very difficult situation. Today is made worse by the fact that Khayethu would have celebrated his 7th birthday. I am very defeated and weak and can’t bring myself to say anything,” Magadla said.
“It is a sad day today. We were meant to be buying a cake to celebrate his birthday and his brother was asking me why we have not finished his birthday cake which we celebrated recently.... With people’s prayers I feel strong even though I feel like this is a dream and I will wake up from it.
“I pray for strength as I feel that he is still here inside these pipes. The team has been discovering the piping system along the search and I think this is the reason the search is taking this long to find him. But hopefully they will eventually find him. I still believe God and my ancestors will give us a way to be able to identify him when they eventually find him. Today being his birthday, I would have loved to say happy birthday to him and know that he would be asking me for R1 as he always did every day”, said the father.
Family spokesperson Zakhele Khumalo said the family is not coping and needs to be given the space to process the everything on this very sad day.
"As you can imagine, he feels helpless and is emotionally not strong enough to continue speaking publicly. I can tell you that my friend is not coping at all. This is the toughest day of his life without his son next to him,“ Khumalo added.
EMS spokesperson Robert Mulaudzi said the rescue team had covered over 8km of the pipe system believed to part of the original manhole Khayalethu fell into over a week since his disappearance.
"We have in the past few days intensified our search mission and have covered most of the 12km stretch from the original manhole to make sure that we cover all the connecting manholes and pipe systems. We have alerted the family of our mission and briefed them on the probabilities of finding him alive. As things stand, the family is ready for anything and most importantly want us to find their missing son. Our efforts are there to ensure we do just that," Mulaudzi said.
One of the teachers at Amadlelweni Primary School, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told this newspaper that Khayalethu was a smart and responsible young man.
“He was smart and a very active learner who took part in all the activities of the school. He played and learnt well. There was no dull moment when he was around as he loved to make others laugh. Khayalethu was also a very playful, lively and intelligent young man who loved to lead prayer sessions. He was a very responsible young man and we already miss him at school,” said the teacher.