Smuggled kids may be victims of trafficking

THE police's organised crime unit in the North West is investigating the possibility that some of the 16 children smuggled illegally into the country from Zimbabwe were victims of a human-trafficking syndicate.

Following a tip-off, police found the children, including a four-year-old boy, crammed like sardines in the back of a bakkie parked in Mafikeng's CBD on Thursday.

Three children from the group, two boys and a girl, escaped after being confronted by police. The remaining 13, including five boys and eight girls, are now being kept at the Grace shelter in Mooinooi.

North West provincial police spokesman, Brigadier Thulani Ngubane, said that what was known was that the children were brought into the country illegally.

"They had no official documentation and we know that their destination was Cape Town. We are treating it as a human-trafficking incident."

Ngubane said police were still searching for the three children who ran away.

According to the police, the suspect went to Zimbabwe on December 9 and returned to SA on December 15. He allegedly dropped the children off near the Botswana border, from where they entered SA, and later picked them up on the South African side of the border.

Ngubane said the suspect, who faces a charge of human trafficking, is originally from Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal, but was working in Cape Town.

He said police were working with officials from Home Affairs to have the children deported to Zimbabwe.

A social worker who interviewed some of the children said they were still trying to establish whether they were brought into the country to join their parents or whether they were victims of a human-trafficking syndicate.

She said that it had been established that one or two of their parents were working on farms on the outskirts of Cape Town. "We can't actually say that it was purely trafficking as some could have been smuggled, in return for payment, to join their parents. I couldn't establish whether they were forcefully taken from their homes."

She said the children were hungry and tired but that there was no sign of any physical abuse.

The 29-year-old suspect is expected to appear in the Mmabatho Magistrate's Court tomorrow.