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The mystery surrounding the disappearance of school pupils in Bulawayo is baffling to say the least. What is disturbing is that there seems to be some pattern suggesting there could be some hidden hand responsible for the mysterious disappearance of the pupils.

The pupils that have so far disappeared are from Nkulumane and Emganwini suburbs which are both under Nkulumane Police Station. Since February this year, a child has been disappearing every month in the two suburbs which is very worrying and disturbing. The fact that a child can just disappear without trace is very frightening.

The police have to get to the bottom of this problem before more children disappear. It is difficult to rule out the hand of child traffickers or serial killers. Residents of the two suburbs should join hands with the police in unravelling this mystery which is threatening the lives of children.

The five children that have so far disappeared are Winnie Museredzo, 14, a Form One pupil at Ncumbatha Secondary School, Nontobeko Yolanda Nkomo, 10, a Grade Six pupil at Mgoqo Primary School, Cyril Ndlovu, 15, a Form Three pupil at Hamilton High School, Arlington Shereni, 15, a Form Two pupil at a city college and Thabo Ncube, 18, a former Founders High school pupil.

Interviews with the missing children’s parents indicate that all of them did not have any problems warranting them to runaway from home thereby raising fears that some force could be behind their disappearance. There have been cases of children running away from home to join street kids but most of the cases involved children living with step-parents but none of the missing children was staying with step-parents.

The police should therefore avail more resources to enable thorough investigations because the nation needs to find out what happened to these children.

It is only after establishing what happened to these five children that pre-emptive action can be taken to avoid the disappearance of more children. At the moment the nation is in the dark as to what happened to these children and parents’ fears are therefore understood.

Bulawayo, as a city, is now regarded as very unsafe for children. There is therefore need to restore confidence in our security system and this is only possible after resolving the mystery surrounding the disappearance of these five children.

We want to once again implore the police to leave no stone unturned in their search for the missing children.