Mom fighting for sons return from Zimbabwe says she hasn't spoken to them in 3 weeks

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Cape Town - A Retreat mother is appealing to the government and necessary official bodies to assist her in getting back her two sons, who have been stuck in Zimbabwe since before the national lockdown. Cecile Mbuyi Cisuaka has for the past three weeks, with the help of her son’s schoolteacher, Kerri Connor, been trying to reunite with her two sons, Ephraim Cisuaka Kadima, 7, and Manasse Balonda, 8, who were taken into care by the Zimbabwean government shortly after their father was arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle them out of the country. Cisuaka believes her two sons were abducted on March 16, the day she and her estranged husband were due to appear in court for a custody hearing. “I received a call from the Zimbabwean police, saying my husband had been arrested at the Chirundu border post, Northern Zimbabwe, after he failed to produce travelling documentation for our two sons,” she said.

Cisuaka, an asylum seeker who has been living in South Africa for 16 years, said she had been married to her husband for 10 years and both sons were born in South Africa.

A tearful Cisuaka said her husband had often taken her children from school without her consent or

knowledge.

Cisuaka said she had been to the Steenberg police station countless times, as well as to Home Affairs and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, to get assistance, but with both countries under lockdown, received very little help.

“I haven’t spoken to my children in three weeks, and I just want to hold and protect them. I don’t even know if they’re safe from Covid-19.”

Police spokesperson Noloyiso Rwexana said because the biological father had taken the boys, the mother could not open a case of abduction.

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