29 April 2025
Six days later, a crack team of investigators, and a R350,000 reward … yet the families of three missing police officers and their colleagues are still in the dark about their whereabouts.
“Every minute that passes triggers something. What is happening? Are they even alive?” asked Sipho Cebekhulu, Const Linda Cebekhulu’s father.
Cebekhulu, 24, along with his girlfriend, Const Boipelo Senoge, 24, and colleague Const Keamogetswe Buys, 30, left Bloemfontein in the Free State for Limpopo on Wednesday evening last week and have not been seen since.
The trio was last seen at an Engen garage near the Grasmere toll plaza on the N1 in southern Johannesburg on Wednesday night.
National police spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe said investigations revealed that the last point their tracking device was picked up was at Gillooly’s interchange, east of Johannesburg.
The police said the trio’s vehicle’s tracking device and their cellphones have been off since later on the night they disappeared. Their VW Polo registration number is JCL 401 FS.
“It’s a matter of time before there is a breakthrough … we have launched a full-scale investigation and pulled together various experts and seasoned police officers,” said Mathe.
Cebekhulu and Buys work for Operation Vala Umgodi, a unit that fights illegal mining, and were on their way to work at the time. Cebekhulu is a crime intelligence officer and Buys work in the unit’s cybercrime division.
Senoge works at the Park Road police station charge office in Bloemfontein. She was on leave at the time she accompanied Cebekhulu and Buys to Limpopo. Sipho Cebekhulu believed his son and Senoge would return in a few days as his wife was supposed to undergo an operation on Friday, two days after he left for Limpopo.
“We are told … that the car was tracked up to Midrand, but their phones went off just after Grasmere,” Cebukhulu said. “That is the little that we know about this. It has been five days of uncertainty. His mother is still in the hospital, and she doesn’t know about this. We did not tell her.”
Source: Sowetan
