South African police have arrested a 42-year-old man found carrying human genitalia in his wallet, four days after his nephew went missing in the south of the country, officers said on Thursday.

Suspecting the man had a hand in the disappearance of his 18-year-old nephew, police on Wednesday interrogated him until he led them to a spot in the small town of Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape province.

"We found that the hands, the head and legs were cut off from the body and we then recovered the private parts in his wallet," Mzukisi Fatyela, police spokesman for the Eastern Cape Province, told AFP.

He refused to disclose the wallet size nor the state of the human parts, but said the man will face murder charges.

AFP