Deleted vodacom number

Good day

One of the worsted services i have received in my life when i spoke to the customer care help line just now. I have been a vodacom contract customer for more than 6 years now and i have a extra pre-pair sim that wasnt in use for a year and require that number as 1 of my gmail account use that number for 2step verification. Now Vodacom is telling me the number is deleted and they cannot assist me to get the number recycled back in the number pool so it can be re-assigned. That is just pathetic to my knowledge. How is there no proper policy in place for this?

How can this number that is deleted not be recycled and get assigned to a new sim card with the simcard number?

I would really like to hear back from @Vodacom with a solution as it should be possible to for vodacom to release the deleted number back in the pool and then assign the number to a new sim.