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Police Probe Tale of 'White Herd Boy'
« on: May 22nd, 2003, 9:15am » |
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Police Probe Tale of 'White Herd Boy'
By Andrew Quinn
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A white South African teen-ager who says he was kidnapped by a maid and raised as a herd boy in a rural black township was being kept in seclusion Wednesday as police probed his tale of abduction and abuse.
Citing child welfare laws, officials ordered a news blackout on the case of the blond youth, who goes by the name "Happy Sindane" and is fluent only in the African language of Ndebele.
"He's in a place of safety at this stage," said Justice Department (news - web sites) spokesman Heinrich Augustyn. "This is to protect the boy."
Sindane appeared at a police station in Bronkhorstspruit, west of Pretoria, Monday and told officers he had been kidnapped by a black domestic worker at the age of six.
Now believed to be 18, Sindane spoke to several reporters on Tuesday before officials blocked media access.
According to media reports, Sindane said he had only a "movie-like" memory of his life before the alleged abduction, saying he recalled that his family spoke Afrikaans and lived in Johannesburg.
Sindane said he was kidnapped by the family's maid, who turned him over to a couple who took him to a rural area where he lived for the next 12 years, eventually in the care of an older man he referred to as his grandfather.
Sindane said he was forced to leave school to become a herd boy, and sometimes had to spend all night outside looking for strayed animals.
The youth, who has only a smattering of Afrikaans, a Dutch-related language originating from 17th century white settlers, also said he worked for a while on an orange farm before turning to police to escape what he said was abuse.
South African newspapers jumped on the story this week.
Wednesday, the Afrikaans-language Beeld newspaper reported that one white Pretoria family believed Sindane might be their son who disappeared in 1992 after going to a cafe to play videogames.
Augustyn said he believed that DNA tests would be conducted to discover more about Sindane's identity, although he said no information was likely to be released before next Monday, when a judge is due to rule on his status.
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