Eastern Cape police have poured cold water on rumours that missing student activist Vusi Mahlangu has been found.
|||Port Elizabeth – Eastern Cape police on Friday said rumours circulating that student activist Vusi Mahlangu had been found, are false.
Mahlangu went missing earlier this week and police were investigating a case of kidnapping.
He was last seen while on his way to a meeting with outsourced workers at the Walter Sisulu University.
Read: Nationwide protest for missing activist
Police spokesperson, Colonel Mzukisi Fatyela said that he had received no information that the activist had been found and police were following leads.
“People are now saying so on Twitter, but this information must be verified. I have received no information that he has been found,” said Fatyela.
“SAPS can further confirm that a Multidisciplinary Task Team is following on all leads in an effort to locate Mahlangu.”
Mahlangu’s friends raised the alarm after the activist failed to arrive at a meeting with WSU outsourced workers on Tuesday.
Read: Growing concern for missing activist
Mahlangu, who hails from Mpumalanga, slept at his friend Vuyo Mtonintshi’s house and was last seen at around 10am on Tuesday before he left for the meeting. Mtonintshi said it was feared his friend had been kidnapped after Mahlangu sent an alarming message from his cellphone on Tuesday.
Mtonintshi said: “He did not arrive at that meeting … he later sent the text saying: ‘I am either kidnapped or arrested and I am bleeding … In a dark place at Mthatha, my phone is about to die’.”
Mahlangu is credited with negotiating on behalf of outsourced workers at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), where management started a process to do away with outsourcing and improving the workers’ wages. He went to the Eastern Cape to assist the outsourced university workers there.
The Marikana Support Campaign on Wednesday claimed Mahlangu was taken from a taxi and forcibly placed into a car which took him to an unknown location where he was assaulted.
African News Agency
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