Cape Town - Three kidnapping victims; Abirah Dekhta, 8; a 27-year-old Chinese woman and Good Hope Construction owner Ismail Rajah have all been found in Khayelitsha, a trend police say is “very worrying”.
Police Minister Bheki Cele has expressed outrage that Abirah was held captive in a shack in Town Two for about 10 days and questioned why residents were “quiet”.
The child was rescued during an intelligence-led integrated operation from the area on Monday evening. She was kidnapped from a lift club vehicle on November 4 while on her way to school.
Seven people, including a woman who was allegedly cooking and feeding the child, were taken in for questioning.
“If you see a child in a house and you know they are not from that household, you need to ask yourself questions. You can’t tell me that no one saw anything. If you did, but decided to keep quiet then you are part of the crime because this happened right in front of your eyes. Among the people taken for questioning is a woman who was feeding this child. What if that was your child? People of Khayelitsha, let's work together. This is not the first victim to be found here,” said Cele.
Last week a Chinese woman, the wife of a Blue Bottle Liquor store manager in Bellville, was reunited with her family after being kidnapped last month.
Businessman Rajah was kidnapped in March and rescued in June.
Cele said the kidnapping issue was rife not only in the Western Cape, but also in Gauteng that was leading in the number of cases, while KwaZulu-Natal also had the same problem.
“However, we are making strides. This question of crime is for all of us. We have to work together to eventually put an end to this,” he added.
He said additional resources would be allocated to bolster efforts.
Between April 2021 and March this year, 39 cases of kidnappings were reported, and there were 16 from the period April to June.
Recent cases between September and November include the kidnapping of 35-year-old Ukrainian woman Anna Penev.
According to police, the modus operandi included business people and wealthy individuals.
Western Cape police commissioner Thembisile Patekile said in the arrests made, most suspects were locals, but police were not ruling out the involvement of foreign nationals as there were suspects from other nations who had been arrested.
Patekile was referring to the two Mozambican nationals who were among four men busted for the alleged abduction of Rajah.
“The problem that we sometimes have is that the families would work on their own and pay a ransom demand. Sometimes their loved one is not even released, but instead the suspects would demand more money. We urged families not to pay that ransom but work with us, the police. Khayelitsha is a hotspot where kidnapped victims are kept, we urge the community to take a stand against this,” Patekile said.
He said all of the victims rescued were very traumatised and the first thing done was to take them for medical assessments.
Khayelitsha Development Forum chairperson, Ndithini Tyhido said Town Two community leaders had confirmed to him that while they had been aware about the kidnapped child through media reports, they had no idea she was being held right under their noses.
“It's not that people kept quiet, they didn’t know and residents are very angry,” Tyhido said.
“On behalf of the executive committee, Khayelitsha and the entire community, we apologise to the family of the child for the mistreatment and abuse against their child.
“In Town Two there are very good residents who work with police on any matter they would know. It’s one thing to want to fight crime and another to deal with issues of urban design.
“Khayelitsha is a victim to the apartheid spatial planning design and the establishment of many informal settlements increased the concentration of shack dwellings which have no access roads or house numbers. This makes policing difficult. To top this, with all the mass murders and other violent crime, we are still not seeing increased installation of CCTV cameras. If we had them, the child could have been found earlier,” Tyhido said.
Cape Times