Delft in Cape Town, has the third-highest number of “unresolved cases of missing women ”in South Africa from January 2019 to December 2024, Parliament heard.
Yet multiple inquiries to trace missing women in Delft, starting at the police station, led nowhere.
At Delft police station, three detectives in a cramped office heaped with files, including two with a “missing person” red stamp on the front, referred all questions about missing women to the SAPS's Western Cape media office. The province's media liaison officer, Capt FC van Wyk, responded that 12 out of 71 women reported missing since 2019 have not been found.
“Up to date 12 are still missing,” Van Wyk said, noting that one of these cases goes back six years and another four years. Among the resolved cases are one femicide and one suicide, he added.
The intimate partner of the murdered woman reported her missing. However, he was arrested and a murder case opened. “One person committed suicide in Bellville and this was discovered only when her fingerprints were analysed. The investigating officer was notified accordingly,” Van Wyk said.
Enquiries to the Western Cape Missing Persons Unit (MPU) NGO, the community policing forum chair, 18 neighbourhood watches, four councillors, the Pink Ladies Organisation for Missing Children and other NGOs working in the area identified only one recent case.
MPU founder Candice van der Rheede said Simone Muller from Delft fitted the profile. Muller was 28 when she disappeared from her home on July 29 2020. “[Her sister] said somebody was looking for her at home and she was just gone,” Van der Rheede said.
Jacqui Thomas, co-founder and director of the Pink Ladies — which also assists with cases of missing adults — said their records showed three unsolved cases of adult women who went missing in Delft: in 2019, 2022 and 2023.
“I can’t say with certainty whether they are still missing or recovered as SAPS are lax about reporting back to us, especially in long-term cases,” Thomas said. “I try to set time aside to make calls but often get such a runaround that it's almost impossible to verify statuses.”
Michelle Adonis, the DA councillor for the northern Delft area, said she was unaware of any women missing in her ward. “I am on about eight community groups in four areas on WhatsApp but primarily they are sharing information about service delivery,” she said.
The NEX-Indawo Yethu campus, of the NGO HOPE Cape Town, is a community hub in Delft where Jordan de Kock works. He asked community members attending their support groups and across their platforms about women who are missing in Delft, and none came back to him with any details.
He suspects it is less of an issue than challenges such as gang violence. This year from January to March, police statistics show that Delft was the police precinct with the second-highest murder rate in South Africa, and news reports corroborate this.
During the Delft police station visit, officers from the province and city’s LEAP (Law Enforcement Advancement Programme) initiative were strapping on bulletproof vests and a convoy of vehicles pulled out in a hurry. LEAP officers are deployed to crime hotspots to make communities safer.
Delft does not seem to be a hotspot right now for missing women. “We continue to check cold cases and I always keep their flyers on my phone checking cold cases,” said Van der Rheede, showing the flyer she made for Muller. This week marks five years since she went missing.
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