Cape Town - “I pray that you are safe and happy. I pray that you come home to your family and friends.”
These are words in some of the letters written to the mother of then-five-year-old Kauthar Bobbs on the ten-year anniversary of the disappearance.
The Tafelsig Sub-Forum, together with the South African Police and the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum, hosted a memorial service on Sunday.
Kauthar vanished mysteriously on October 12, 2012, while playing in a park in Tafelsig.
Candles and a photograph of Kauthar were placed on a table where several community members, police and the little girl’s mother, Lamees Bobbs and grandmother Nazley Bobbs, gathered in the streets where she once had played.
Hope has since disappeared for Bobbs, who said she had received no communication from police for years about the case.
Lamees also has a 12-year-old daughter, Aqeelah, who was only two years old when her sister vanished.
To date, police have deemed Kauthar’s case a cold case without any leads or information.
Lamees told Weekend Argus that over the past decade, there had been a lot of false hope, especially by people she had entrusted in the community and that she wished there was a cold case to investigate cases like that of her daughters.
She also spoke of the vigil.
Inside her home, poverty is evident. The family are living from hand to mouth and keep their dog inside for safety.
A large photograph of Kauthar stands on the fridge.
“The Tafelsig Forum gave our family a book where letters were written to Kauthar,” she said.
“Of course, I think of my child every day, and I miss her.
“I will never forget her. What we do need is a cold case team because there are also many murders that goes unsolved and not just the missing persons case like that of my daughter.
“People never really stood by us as a family. They always used to talk behind our backs.
“They were false, and the only people that stood by us was my family.
“Kauthar will be turning 16 on December 18.”
In 2012, the Bobbs family were the police's prime suspects.
They were questioned and interrogated by police due to their drug and gang affiliation.
Rumours surfaced that the child had been human trafficked, but this could never be supported with evidence.
Nazley had previously been arrested for drug related charges, while her uncle, Yaseen Bobbs, who was a Rude Boy gangster, was murdered in 2014.
Weekend Argus spoke to Henry Arends of the Mitchells Plain Crisis Forum, who is also the uncle of 11-year-old Stacha Arendse (corr) of Tafelsig, who was raped and murdered by her neighbour Randy Tango in 2017. Tango was sentenced to three life terms.
Arends said they were calling on a cold case squad: “We were invited by the Tafelsig Sub Forum to attend the Kauthar Bobbs memorial.
“We feel that we need resources and that the police must open a cold case unit to investigate these cases because it has been ten years since she has been missing.
“We are wanting to support parents who are in situations like this, where they do not know where their children are, is their child safe, is their child eating, where they are and where they are sleeping, who has them and what has happened to them and there is no closure, and they cannot bury their children .”
Police spokesperson Sergeant Wesley Twigg said the case had no fresh leads.
“The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are conducted by Mitchells Plain Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences unit.
“The investigation continues.”