Child survives weeks in South African bush

DURBAN - A 3-year-old boy, who survived 21 days and nights in the hot and hazardous South African bush, is too upset to talk about it.

Michael Raadt has told his ecstatic mother that he ate "flowers" to stay alive and hid under bushes at night.

Child psychologist Anet Louw, who has examined Michael in hospital at Bloemfontein, was amazed he had survived for so long without adult help.

"I think he stands a good chance of surviving this, but he is so traumatised he does not want to talk about it."

Michael and his even tinier cousin, Thabiso Paint, aged 2, wandered off and got lost on the Luckhoff farm where they live on December 10. Thabiso was found, naked and scratched, alongside the fast-flowing Orange River three days later.

Aside from another track of tiny footprints, there was no sign of Michael and he was feared dead - probably drowned. He was discovered last Tuesday, crawling towards a remote dam in search of water, 30km from his Free State farm home by neighbouring farmer Johan Lombaard.

Although it is mostly farmland, the Luckhoff terrain is vast and isolated, thorny and rocky, with snakes and predators such as leopards. It is likely that the "flowers" the boy said he ate were berries and pods.

His mother, Mina Raadt, said she had not slept since her son disappeared, but had spent the time praying or looking for him with the police, who used tracker dogs and helicopters in their search for the missing boys.

"I thought maybe they would find his body somewhere. I didn't believe that he was still alive. He was gone for too long," she said.

Michael was found to be covered in scabs, dehydrated and suffering mild pneumonia, although the latter is fairly common among poor, malnourished children.

Lombaard was on his motorbike checking irrigation equipment on his farm when he came across Michael, wearing only a T-shirt, lying on his side near a dam. "I walked closer to see whether he was still alive. I could see he was breathing and told him he had to wait there, I was going to fetch the bakkie [van]. He just blinked.

"If the tough little tyke had walked around in the searing hot sun for another day or two, he wouldn't have made it."

Spokesman Captain Ernest Mayiki said police were delighted by the boy's discovery, but were still investigating the case and remained mystified as to how Michael "survived such tough conditions alone for so long".

- INDEPENDENT