But the Department of International Relations and Cooperation refused to say if it would act if the claim proved true.

Pietermaritzburg-based aid organisation Gift of the Givers said earlier this week that it had discovered that the Somali pirates who kidnapped the couple in October 2010 had sold them to another gang of pirates, who then sold them to a group that is demanding a ransom for their release.

The organisation's founder, Imtiaz Sooliman, said Gift of the Givers was acting as a negotiator on behalf of Pelizzari's family to secure the couple's release.

International Relations spokesman Clayson Monyela said yesterday that the department would not comment on unverified information.

"We have not received such information. We will need it to be verified before we can say what the government would need to do," he said.

The department distanced itself from the kidnapping in 2011 when the Somali pirates contacted the couple's families in Durban with a ransom demand.

Government policy is not to pay ransoms.

"The people who have taken the couple are speaking to the family because we do not pay ransoms," Monyela said at the time.

SA Navy chief Vice-Admiral Refiloe Mudimu - who was in Durban yesterday to discuss coastal security with other Southern African naval chiefs - said he was aware of the kidnappings but the navy could not act without the authority of the government.

"Maybe the issue has not reached the stage where force needs to be applied," he said.

Sooliman said The Times report yesterday on the sale of the couple might benefit the negotiations because it might prompt Somalis living in South Africa to put pressure on their compatriots to release the pair.

"Negotiations progress slowly and we probably won't hear any news for at least three weeks, but I believe this story will show Somalis in South Africa that they have to contact their countrymen and force them to release the couple.

"They must say to them that South Africa has done so much to help Somalia so [they should] just let the couple go."

Sooliman said the Gift of the Givers had sent R65-million in humanitarian aid to famine-stricken Somalia.

The couple's latest captors had demanded a $10-million ransom but after negotiations, it was reduced to $1-million, he said.

Pelizzari and Calitz were aboard the yacht Choizil with skipper Peter Eldridge when pirates boarded it off the coast of Tanzania on October 26.

They tried to convince their captors that they were working-class people who could not pay a ransom.

Eldridge refused to leave his vessel, but the couple were forced to go with their captors.

On his return to South Africa, Eldridge said the pirates had planned to use his yacht as their "mother ship" to rob other vessels and take the crews hostage. - Additional reporting by Mhlaba Memela