Rescued Ethiopians were living in filthy, derelict house 'in safe suburb'

Two mattresses pushed against a wall, a wooden chair in the corner of the living room and four rooms with litter and without furniture.

This is what was left at the scene of a dramatic rescue where the police special task force team tracing a victim kidnapped for ransom scaled walls.

At the house in Lyndhurst, Johannesburg, they found 90 undocumented Ethiopians who were being kept against their will and living under inhumane conditions.

With unkept grass and different paint colours on outside walls, the house is one of four homes on quiet Hares Road where a neighbourhood watch patrols the streets.

There was broken glass outside one bedroom window and the garden had overgrown weeds, uncut tree branches and litter.

Many houses in the area have high walls and look old.

Neighbours said the owner of the house moved out more than a month ago and they had not seen any activity until around midnight on Friday when police scaled the walls.

“I woke up to noise coming from the house. When I looked outside, I saw more than one person trying to get over the walls and immediately thought it was someone trying to steal from it,” said one neighbour who asked not to be named.

“I called the security company patrolling the area and they told me the people I was seeing were police officers.” 

National police spokesperson Brig Athlenda Mathe said a multidisciplinary team led by the task force discovered the undocumented nationals locked up and confined in the rooms.

“Investigations are under way to determine how the foreign nationals were trafficked into South Africa. Among the Ethiopian nationals was a kidnapped victim who was also rescued.  

“The victim was kidnapped in Benoni on Tuesday afternoon. His kidnappers immediately started demanding hundreds of thousands in ransom money from his family,” said Mathe. 

One neighbour described how the victims looked unwell as they were walked outside and loaded into police vehicles. 

“There were many police vans.”

The neighbour said the house was once a family home.

“One by one they started leaving. First it was two siblings. He [owner] later said he would move to Greenstone so he would rent out the house.

“A month after he left, we expected people to have moved in but nothing. There was no-one coming to put out the waste for the collectors. There was no movement at all,” said the neighbour, adding the number of people found there was shocking.

“It makes one think about your existing neighbours. If 90 people can be hidden here for so long without anyone seeing anything, your neighbour might be up to something but you don't know. I am shocked.”

Another neighbour said this was the first time something like this had happened in the neighbourhood.

“It’s a very safe and quiet community and to hear such a thing happened is beyond me. Not a lot happens in this community without a neighbour or two finding out about it. A group of 90 people found living in one house was very shocking.

“You could walk around here at night and nothing would happen to you. Even if your car were to get hijacked, the car would not leave the perimeter in which the security patrols,” said the neighbour.

Mathe said two alleged human traffickers and kidnappers who were found on the property have been arrested.

She said they were likely to face charges of kidnapping and human trafficking. They are expected to appear in the Palm Ridge magistrate’s court soon.

“The case has been handed over to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations [Hawks] for further investigations.”

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