Mmatshumu Village Chief, Kgosi Keletshwareletse Lash Phetsogang called off the search when it did not yield any results
Cynthia Thanda
The year 2020 ended bitterly for residents of Mmatshumu village.
On the 17th of November, two children aged 11 and 9 years were reported missing at Makgadikgadi in Tswantsha. The children are from Letlhakane.
They were brought to Tswantsha cattle post by their caretaker to help look after their parents’ livestock.
Sources state that it was raining heavily on the day the children disappeared. They were last seen playing outside the yard. To this day their whereabouts remain unknown.
The search for the children took almost three weeks and was later called off by the Mmatshumu Kgosi when it yielded no results.
For one week during the search, Debswana mine provided food supplies to motivate the searchers. Unfortunately, the children were never found.
Another case was reported on the 13th February 2021 after a 63-year-old man of Tawana ward in Letlhakane went missing. He was, later on, found dead, his body decomposed.
His remains were buried in Letlhakane, a town 37 kilometres from Mmatshumu village.
The man’s remains were found following the rigorous search conducted with the help of Letlhakane and Mmatshumu residents until someone reported seeing something unusual at a bush around Kabegena cattle posts.
The search took two weeks. However, it took four days for Mmatshumu residents to become aware of the heavy search as the missing person was not a resident of the village.
“The villagers are living in fear. They wonder who could be next. If someone goes missing we fear for the worst, like whether they might be killed or have come across hyenas or were attacked by snakes”, Kgosi Keletshwareletse Lash Phetsogang of Mmatshumu village said in an interview with The Pan Afrikanist.
He said in such instances they look to the post mortem for assurances, but that sometimes even this process is difficult because the missing person’s bones could be scattered thus making it hard to detect the cause of death.
“We live in fear for tomorrow”, Kgosi Phetsogang said about the cases.
Cases of missing persons are not new in the village of Mmatshumu. The Kgosi’s grandmother once went missing in 1999.
Unfortunately, the search party only discovered her remains which were subsequently buried. An elderly woman also went missing during the early 1960s for three months but was later found alive at Khumaga.
It is usually herd boys and elderly people that go missing in this area and in most cases are not even residents of Mmatshumu village.
Mmatshumu police are still continuing with their investigations and expressed confidence they will eventually crack the mystery.
The villagers are urged to take precautions: To always stay indoors. Watch over their children and report immediately if they think someone is missing.
