A COMBINATION of a court report, the internet and a bored office worker resulted in a South African family finding that the man they thought was dead was actually alive and well in Ireland.
Hendrick de Wet’s family had visited morgues throughout South Africa and even hired a private investigator to find him after he disappeared two years ago.
They were weeks away from getting an official death certificate when his nephew in Australia made the breakthrough.
He was bored at work on Monday and put his missing uncle’s name into a search engine as he had done many times before.
This time, to his surprise, the Dundalk-based Argus newspaper website came up and he read a court report detailing how his uncle had been convicted of drug-running weeks earlier.
The newspaper reported that de Wet (54) was caught with 13kg (29lb) of cannabis at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Dundalk last April. He was jailed for six years at Dundalk Circuit Court.
The court heard that de Wet was from a respected family but he had developed a drink problem and his marriage broke up. He was approached in Durban by a Nigerian gang and offered €1,000 a trip to carry drugs to Ireland.
He told gardaí he had smuggled drugs into Ireland before.
De Wet’s brother, dentist Dr Harry de Wet, said he could not believe it when his nephew contacted him and told him about the court report. “The South African police didn’t even know that he had left the country,” he said.
Dr de Wet said his brother had caused a lot of pain to his family in the past eight years and had lived as a vagrant before he disappeared.
He said he was going to break the news to his brother’s estranged wife and children last night. “They are still under the impression that he must be dead,” he said. De Wet has two sons, aged 19 and 23.
The family had a long debate about whether they should tell his elderly mother or not. Dr de Wet said they had agreed that he would visit her this weekend and break the news about her son.
Dr de Wet said he was trying to look on the positive side and said it would be good for his brother to serve his time in prison as it would give him an opportunity to deal with his alcohol addiction.
