All Andiswa Madakana wants, to find closure, is the return of her daughter’s remains from the police so that she can bury her.
The remains of Sisipho were found scattered a few days after she went missing from her Sangweni village. She was 14 years old. She went missing on April 9, 2020, and her remains were found on May 1. They were then taken in for a DNA analysis and were never returned to the family.
“Her birthdays are a painful reminder of the tragic loss of my daughter. We used to celebrate together, and the fact that we never buried her is most painful. The pain is unbearable, and I became very sick. I couldn’t even cope at work as the family never got any form of counselling. At work, I was given a three-month leave of absence to regroup,” she said.
Madakana said her mother, who had been living with Sisipho at the time, became so ill that she was in and out of hospitals.
This, she said, led to her taking her mother from the village to Cape Town, where she works. “Life became unbearable after Sisipho’s death. Her siblings are not coping, and this has affected us as parents and the entire family badly. Her siblings always ask about when her funeral will be.”
Madakana has serious ill feelings about how the police handled her daughter’s case and treated her family.
“The police neglected us in this case, and there are no two ways about it. They played me for five full years, only to find out that the case was closed without informing the family. All they did was make unfulfilled promises.
“They would be annoyed every time we asked about the progress of the case. They would say the Madakana case was not the only case they were working on,” she said.
Her inability to bury Sisipho, she said, is a constant pain in her life that leaves her defeated.
“I wish the Gatyana police could feel my pain as a parent whose child’s remains are still kept by them five years on. There’s nothing I can do without them; I am helpless. I have been begging them; I begged them from the beginning, but my cries fall on deaf ears. I feel like a defeated parent by how things have been unfolding up to now. The only way I will ever get closure would be to get the remains of my child and bury them. I’m appealing to authorities and anyone who can help to step in,” said an emotional Madakana.
Eastern Cape police spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Siphokazi Mawisa, was approached for comment, but had not responded at the time of going to print on Tuesday.
