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Reading Time: 2 minutes

June 20, 2013Produced by Adel van Niekerk
Special Assignment exposes the police’s failure to act swiftly in the kidnap-for-ransom case of Midrand student Philasande Ngum.Philasande went missing from a shopping centre in Midrand last month but police initially failed to open a case, telling the family to return in 24 hours. No such regulations exist. But even though they returned the following day, the family was told to come back again on Monday because the officer investigating missing persons cases doesn’t work over weekends. She was eventually raped and murdered, her body found two weeks later in an overgrown field a few hundred metres away from where she studied and resided at the Midrand Graduate Institute.Philasande’s disappearance is one of thousands reported each year. It’s estimated that a child or teenager goes missing every six minutes in SA. Missing Persons SA says the first 3 hours are deemed the ‘golden hours’ to find these children unharmed or alive. Why then do police seemingly fail to act with urgency and the necessary skills in these cases?We also look at a 5-year-old girl Chantall who disappeared for 24 hours in Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats.

The first 3 hours are deemed the ‘golden hours’ to find these children unharmed or alive

The little girl was found by community activists in a neighbour’s house, a known sexual predator in the community. She was hidden in a cupboard, tied up, gagged and sexually assaulted during her 24 hour ordeal. While police get bogged down with red tape, the swift actions of community activists, police forums and NGO’s are deemed critical in tracking down and saving the lives of hundreds of others like Chantall who go missing. In this episode we also revisit a case that Special Assignment investigated in 2005 – the disappearance without a trace of 8-year old Matthew Ohlsson, also from Mitchells Plain. While police have to use their last available resources to focus on the latest missing persons cases, we tell of Michelle Ohlsson’s agony sixteen years after her son went missing, and whose investigation is now deemed a cold case. Can our police handle the case load of missing children that land up on their desks? Or do law enforcers turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to their stories?

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