Missing South Africa child found five years on, with Facebook help

A South African mother found her missing sonafter a five-year search, with social-networking site Facebook helping locate the boy, the Sowetan newspaper reported on Friday, according to dpa. However, she will still have to wait for a DNA test to confirm her parentage and for social services to allow her to take the boy home. The boy, then 3 years old, went missing in August 2006, when the mother went to visit her dying father in hospital. Children were not allowed into the intensive care unit, so the youngster stayed with a cousin in the foyer. When she returned from staying with her father in his final moments, her son was missing. "I was still in shock over my father's death and now my son was gone," the mother, now 26, told the newspaper. For five years, her search turned up no leads. But the mother says she suspected her estranged husband had snatched the boy. Last week, she was contacted via Facebook to be told her husband had died. The mother went to an orphanage to see if the young child was in its care, and found him there. According to a social development department spokesperson the wait for the DNA test and confirmation of acceptable living conditions for the child was a standard procedure for all kidnapping cases.