The growing trend of kidnappings in SA can be attributed to a combination of two things: a lack of credible and effective policing in SA, and an economy in which many desperate South Africans have given up hope of a legitimate income and are committed wholeheartedly to a career in crime.
For the most part, crime pays in SA. There is little chance of being arrested and even less of being convicted. For many — rich and poor — it is a risk worth taking, and citizens have long become accustomed to the brazen, inventive, violent nature of many crimes. From pretending to be a food inspector to score a free meal at a restaurant, to robbing a police station, our felons are nothing if not inventive.
Not much shocks us these days, but the increase in the number of children being kidnapped is a worrying shift that has rung alarm bells for even the most imperturbable among us.
The kidnapping of an eight-year-old girl and her dramatic rescue on Monday night, is a case in point.
She was abducted on November 4 while on her way to school. Armed men in a bakkie snatched her from her lift club vehicle outside Amber Court in Yusuf Gool Boulevard, Gatesville.
It is believed a ransom demand was made. On Monday, police raided a shack in Khayelitsha and rescued her, who by then had been missing for eight days.
As of Wednesday afternoon, several suspects had been arrested.
There have been several high-profile child kidnappings reported this year.
TimesLIVE Investigation revealed that kidnappers have secured more than R750m in ransoms since 2017.
The most tragic occurred in September, when the body of eight-year-old Lukhololwam Mkontwana was found in Nyanga, Cape Town, a week after he was abducted. His mother said she had received a R100,000 ransom demand but was unable to pay it. No arrests have been made.
In August Shanawaaz Asghar was kidnapped at gunpoint in Kensington. He was reunited with his family the following day. The family have declined to say if a ransom was paid. No arrests have been made.
Last week, Gauteng police arrested a man after a tip-off that he was planning an attempted ransom kidnapping of a minor in Lenasia, south of Johannesburg.
Earlier this year, the young Moti brothers were kidnapped in Polokwane and held for three weeks, before being returned, allegedly after a ransom was paid. No arrests have been made.
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis says the spate of kidnappings in Cape Town requires urgent action from SAPS top management.
Earlier this year, a TimesLIVE Investigation mapped out how, since 2017, dozens of SA and foreign kidnapping syndicates have emerged from splits within Mozambican kidnapping gangs and new organised crime groups muscling in on SA’s kidnapping scene.
It revealed that kidnappers have secured more than R750m in ransoms since 2017.
Children, of course, are an easy target. They are small, malleable and unlikely to fight back much, and their desperate parents are usually willing to sell their souls to raise the ransom.
It takes a heartless villain to snatch a child, but sadly SA has a large supply of these. And a low rate of arrests in these cases, along with the suggestion that ransoms have been paid on the quiet, will only worsen the problem and make it an increasingly lucrative option for syndicates.
SA has already developed a global reputation for rape, GBV, muggings, armed robberies, cash-in-transit heist, state corruption and other crimes. Do we really want to add child kidnappings to the list?
Police must act fast to implement a zero-tolerance action plan to stamp out this heinous trend. It requires a mammoth co-ordinated effort between all spheres of policing and intelligence.
It can be done, but is our government up for the job? History suggests party politics, self-enrichment and marketing gimmicks may take priority.
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