Rilise Munyai left his house in Tshilaphala village in Venda, Limpopo, on May 23 2023 with his grandfather who was going to collect his cows that had been grazing at a nearby river. That would be the last the seven-year-old boy was seen.
Rilise is part of the 742 children who have disappeared without a trace since 2023 and whose families are still pinning their hopes on the police for their safe return.
Almost 2,000 SA children were reported missing in the past three years.
Of those, 1,252 were found and 742 are still missing, police have revealed. This means on average about 250 children who go missing in SA each year are never found.
Spokesperson for the national police, Brig Athlenda Mathe, said 740 children were reported missing in the 2022/2023 financial year but only 474 of them were found.
For the 2023/2024 financial year, 697 children were reported as missing and 472 of them were found and returned home.
In the 2024/2025 financial year, 507 were reported missing by December 17 and of these 306 were reunited with their families.
Since December, social media has been flooded with images of missing children and frantic calls from their loved ones asking for help for their safe return.
According to Bianca van Aswegen, national coordinator at Missing Children SA, there are an increasing number of cases yearly being reported to the organisation.
She said there were many contributing factors to why children go missing and the increasing crime in SA was also a contributor.
“Also, parents that are not capable of looking after children due to financial needs as well as the increasing of kidnappings and that of human trafficking in our country,” Van Aswegen said.
“We also have children that what we classify as runaways, this is mostly attributed to children being abused at home and run away due to circumstances. We have children that wander off and get lost and also our mentally challenged, autistic children that also tend to get lost,” she said.
Van Aswegen said figures from police only give a general indication of the problem the country is facing because many cases go unreported.
Some of the reasons for this, she said, include people being afraid of going to the police for help due to their mistrust of the system.
“Other children are victims of human trafficking where people sell off their own children and those children never get reported as missing.”
According to a police officer who asked to be anonymous, in some instances, fights over custody also lead to kidnapping of children.
Van Aswegen said the families of the missing children were forced to live with the trauma of not knowing where their loved ones were.
“It's a difficult time for families when they have a child that has gone missing. It is traumatic for them not knowing where their child is and if their child is still alive.”
Social development spokesperson, Bathembu Futshane, said missing children was a matter of “great concern”.
“It is something that we are monitoring closely with our stakeholders, including SAPS to see what interventions we need to implement within our basket of child protection services,” he said.
Futshane said that the department constantly embarked on child protection campaigns with the hope of ending the scourge of children who just go missing.
“As part of child protection campaign, educating and raising awareness, parents and caregivers are sensitised to ensure that their children are safe, they know where they are and always supervised. In addition, as part of online and offline safety, children are also sensitised about stranger danger and not meeting strangers online and offline,” Futshane said.
While some parents get a happy ending after their children are found unharmed and reunited with them, others aren't that lucky.
“Unfortunately we do have cases where children are found deceased due to either a crime that was committed against them such as murder or circumstances where children have been found deceased due to environmental factors when a child may have got lost,” said van Aswegen.
When it comes to reporting a missing child or adult, van Aswegen said there was no waiting period.
“Report immediately to your nearest police station and to us at Missing Children SA so that action can be taken,” she said.
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