POLICE in South Africa are carrying out DNA tests on a white family who believe that Happy Sindane, a teenager who claims to have spent more than 11 years as a white slave in a black township, is their son, who disappeared more than a decade ago.

Sarie Botha, 45, from the working-class area of Danville in Pretoria, contacted the police as soon as she saw the photograph of the teenager in Beeld, the Afrikaans newspaper, convinced that her search for her long-lost son Jannie was over.

“I always knew that he was alive,” Mrs Botha said. “I will be so happy if it turns out to be him. I hope it is, from the bottom of my heart.”

The slightly built 18-year-old arrived at Bronkhorstspruit police station, near Pretoria, on Monday claiming that he had been kidnapped by his family’s domestic worker when he was six.

Jannie Botha disappeared, also aged six, in March 1992, after playing video games with friends at a café. No trace of him was ever found. There were rumours at the time that the boy had been kidnapped by four white men.

Heinrich Augustyn, a spokesman for South Africa’s Justice Department, confirmed that DNA tests were under way. “But it could be more than four weeks before the results are known,” he said.

Happy Sindane is being looked after in a safe house in Bronkhorstspruit and is due to appear at the local magistrates’ court on Monday. He has been deeply traumatised by his experiences, police said.

The teenager, who has been made a ward of court under the Child Protection Act, had told police that he dimly remembered being taken to the local shops by the family’s domestic worker, Rina, who gave him away to a black couple at a construction site.

Pieter Botha, 27, Jannie’s brother, told police that he remembered there being a construction site near the family home at the time when his brother disappeared. He is convinced that Happy is his brother.

Happy told police that the black couple, Betty Sindane and Tom Banda, took him to Verena in Mpumalanga Province, where they stayed for a year. When the couple split up, he went with Betty, her three children and Koos Sindane, Betty’s father, to Tweefontein township.

Happy, a fluent Ndebele-speaker, said that he remembered attending Khuthalane primary school, where he was teased for being “a white boy”.

He told police that he had always thought that the black couple were not his real parents, whom he remembered as being Afrikaans-speakers from Johannesburg. Not a day went by without him thinking about his real mother and father, he said.

Life became difficult for Happy when Betty died because his “grandfather”, Koos Sindane, treated him like a slave. The teenager told the police that he had been made to do menial tasks, was forced to leave school when he was ten to become a herd boy and was beaten harshly when he did anything wrong.

He decided to leave Tweefontein after Mr Sindane threatened to poison him. He was taken by a well-wisher to Bronkhorstspruit police station, where he told officers his extraordinary story.

An unnamed teenager from Tweefontein, who claims to be Happy’s black “brother”, said that he was very sad that Happy had decided to leave his family. “I will miss my white brother,” the teenager said. “He and I were very close since childhood, and it is very sad to learn that he has gone.”

The black teenager said that he remembered Happy arriving at his home in 1993. They became good friends, even though he knew that Happy was not his biological brother. The teenager said that he thought Happy was given to his mother by a friend in Johannesburg.

The teenager last saw his white “brother” on Saturday. “We had food ready for him at supper time, but he never returned,” the teenager said.

Black and white issues

Under the apartheid system, The Group Areas Act regulated where the different races were permitted to live and the Pass Laws restricted black movement in and out of whites-only areas. But the entire edifice of racial segregation had already begun to collapse in the mid-1980s.

South African television and radio phone-in shows have been inundated by callers expressing astonishment and outrage that Happy, who appears to have an Afrikaner heritage, had been living in a rural black community for years without anyone reporting it to the authorities. “Everyone has been captivated by this story,” Inspector Percy Morokane said.

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• Experts baffled by vanishing sea lions
• CIA caught in a dirty and secretive war
• Double life of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab