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More on KentOnline
The mother of a nine-year-old boy murdered by his father on holiday says she's been told South African authorities may not finish investigating his death for 10 years.
Noah Smith, who lived in Burham and was a pupil at Maidstone's Shernold School, had travelled to Johannesburg with his dad, Dr Vuyo Tame, for Christmas and new year celebrations at the end of 2017.
However, staff at the Radisson Blu hotel in the city found Noah and Tame unresponsive in their room on January 8, 2018, before paramedics pronounced them both dead.
An inquest at the Archbishop's Palace found Noah had been poisoned by an over-the-counter drug and possibly smothered with a pillow before Tame took his own life with a pistol he had owned, but never used, since his youth.
Now though, mum Vicky Smith has been told a huge backlog of cases in South Africa - an average of 57 people were murdered in the country every day in 2017-18 alone - means it may be a decade before they get the full answers they need from local police.
"It's been such an ordeal, and the fact it could be as long as 10 years was never mentioned,"
"Noah doesn't seem to have been given any kind of priority being a British citizen, he's just been left.
"I hadn't been angry until this point, it had just been a case of dealing with the grief and shock, but now I'm starting to feel really let down.
"I feel like they don't really understand the impact it's had on me and the family.
"It's just not good enough, there should be some kind of international standard for conducting these investigations.
I know they have a huge number of murders every day but I'm not sure they'd have come across this particular type when it was a child killed by a parent.
"Maybe they're under so much pressure but they didn't seem to take any care and attention."
The inquest heard last year from a senior Kent detective that officers in Johannesburg "missed opportunities" during their investigations.
DI Kaye Braybrook revealed that local police initially reported Noah had been strangled to death, but no bruising was found around his neck following a further post-mortem in the UK.
"The threshold of their investigation may not be as detailed as we would carry out in the UK," she said.
"There are missed opportunities around whether a pillow has been used to cause Noah's death.
"There were drinking vessels in that room that may have contained a liquid which contributed to Noah's death."
Noah, a member of St Paul's Scout Group, was remembered by his mum as a boy with "a rare, unforgettable charisma", who was in black belt training at Kung Fu and also enjoyed football and tennis.
His school colleagues also planted a tree and named a piece of playground equipment 'Noah's ark' in his memory.
Such was his popularity, even at nine years old he was receiving Valentine's Day cards from girls in Year 6.
For his mother, though, the last two years have been torturous, trying to understand what possible reason Dr Tame could have had for taking her son away from her.
"I don't think I'm ever going to really know why he did it, I think he just couldn't face the fact he had to share Noah, and couldn't have him all to himself," she said.
"There was never any suggestion of violence, it was just controlling behaviour, and I think my biggest fear was that he'd one day abduct him.
"If Noah scraped his knee while out on his bike, I'd have an email from his dad demanding a report explaining how and why it happened. That went on for years.
"It's just your worst possible nightmare. I've thought about ending my life but I don't want to do that because I've seen what happened to my family after Noah died.
"It's devastating for everyone and I don't want to make it worse for them. Essentially I'm living my life for other people.
"If I could be totally selfish I may well have done it. He's taken that away from me."
For her and partner, Mark Price, life has to go on, and part of that involves moving house and in doing so, packing up many of Noah's belongings, which have been left untouched since his death.
"I just found it too hard knowing he's not there," she said.
"I've been in touch with a few charities who are going to have some of his toys and furniture.
"That's what I had to do with his Christmas presents that year. He never came home to open them.
"I'm always trying to think about what he'd like me to do."
