A knot formed in the pit of the young mother’s belly as she looked around the post office.
She tried to tell herself everything was okay – surely the polite social worker who was with her baby boy must be here somewhere.
Asanda Tiwani had her three-month old baby, Akahlulwa, cradled in one arm and her two-year-old son, Ebonga, clutched at her free hand as they went in search of Akahlulwa’s twin, Kwahlelwa.
After one last look around the drab beige post office and with her heart pounding faster and faster, she quickly walked outside. Voortrekker Road in Parow, Cape Town was busy, filled with cars and taxis and people.
Asanda (then 29) looked up and down the street before hurrying back towards the bustling taxi rank. Perhaps she had misunderstood what the young woman had said, and they were supposed to have met back there to go back to her Khayelitsha home.
Then, she claims, her cellphone beeped, interrupting her thoughts. Its screen was lit with a message that has haunted her for weeks.
The text was the start of a chilling nightmare.
“Take a taxi back to Khayelitsha, I have noticed that taking care of the children is very difficult. I will take care of him until you guys are alright,” the message apparently read.
The Tiwani family’s world was turned upside down when Kwahlelwa was kidnapped in 2020.
His story is just one of many that are pointing to a worrying trend in SA: an alarming rise in kidnappings and other organised crimes.
The body of Lukhololwam Mkontwana, the eight-year-old from Philippi in the Cape Flats, was recently discovered under a tree and his face was faced with duct tape after he was kidnapped on 27 September 2022.
The boy’s mother, Noxolo Mkontwana, said she got a a call on Friday afternoon from someone saying her son had been kidnapped and the kidnappers wanted a R100 000 ransom.
This comes after the discovery of the body of four-year-old Tamia “Mia” Botha in Paarl.
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Another victim, Lesego Tau, who survived kidnapping ordeal went on for over four hours was forever changed by the trauma she experienced that day in 2021.
At one point she heard someone on the other end of a phone call say: ‘Just finish her off. We are done.
“‘I made peace that they were going to kill me, but I thought, I need to fight. I have to fight. If they are going to kill me, I might as well fight,’” reports the BBC.
“She fought her way out of the car, but the kidnappers grabbed her and started hitting and scratching her. She got away and ran across the road into the oncoming traffic.”
Crime statistics for the first quarter of the 2022/2023 financial year show a 59.1% increase in the number of kidnappings in South Africa. Most (42.1%) of these kidnappings are related to hijackings, followed by robbery-related kidnappings (15.6%).
Although ransom and extortion-related kidnappings accounted for 2,5% of the total number of kidnappings, they are thought to be one of the most underreported crimes, according to the report.
Ransom and extortion kidnappings are often regarded as the most lucrative types of kidnappings, according to Peter Olyott.
“Although a number of these syndicates are foreign-based, there has been an uptick in kidnappings committed by local copycats who have identified the potential profitability of this crime,” explains the CEO of Indwe Risk Services.
“They can range from small-scale syndicates which target individuals in vulnerable communities to sophisticated ones which target high-net-worth individuals, with kidnappers demanding payment by wire transfer or even cryptocurrency.”
Kwahlelwa’s dad, Siyanda Thongani (then 34), said he was desperate for his baby boy to be returned.
His voice trembled as he recounted how the young woman, who introduced herself as Monica and claimed to be a social worker from the Nonceba Family Counselling Centre in Khayelitsha, arrived at their home on 10 January 2020 with promises of government-sponsored support.
To his family, this Good Samaritan seemed like the lifeline the unemployed parents had been praying for.
“She offered to assist us with obtaining birth certificates for the twins, monthly food parcels as well as a R1 000 food voucher,” Siyanda told Drum.
A day after their son was kidnapped a teenage learner at Claremont High School, Karabo Tau (18), was arrested. Shortly after, Ely Kibunda (22), reportedly Tau’s boyfriend, was also detained and charged with kidnapping the baby.
However, charges against Kibunda were soon dropped while Karabo maintained that she’d been forced by police to confess to a crime she did not commit.
South Africa is among the world’s most notorious ‘mafia states’ – which includes the likes of Guatemala, Brazil and Russia, according to a recent report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).
It paints a chilling picture of how organised crime is on the rise in South Africa, with findings based on analysis of 15 illicit markets and kidnapping being among the 15 areas of organised crime examined.
Kidnapping has shown a steady increase since 2008, with the only drop occurring during the first Covid-19 lockdown in early 2020.
The GI-TOC report, published in September, ranks SA South Africa ranks fifth in Africa, while, globally, South Africa is 19th – ahead of countries such as Libya, Brazil and Russia.
“Crime syndicates spare no one. In 2019, Vodacom announced that between 1 500 and 2 000 batteries were stolen from its cellphone towers every month,” reported the City Press recently.
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“The taxi industry has connections with most of the organised crime syndicates and is responsible for most assassinations in the country. The industry is unregulated and there are serious allegations that taxi bosses are behind the attacks on the buses and trains.
“The GI-TOC report refers to the Gcaba brothers of KwaZulu-Natal as the ‘Dons of Durban’. They are led by Mandla Gcaba, who owns a ‘taxi empire’; his brothers are Roma, Thembinkosi and Mfundo.”
While racketeering, theft of metal and petrol as well as police corruption show the interconnectedness of organised crime in SA, it’s the spike in kidnappings that has most parents living in fear.
And it seems the culprits are targeting both the poor and rich.
Kidnappings leave a profound impact on victims and their families. The most severe being emotional trauma, however, physical trauma is also common.
Inexperienced kidnappers are more likely to inflict violence as they do not have the know-how to adequately deal with, and stay calm, in high-pressure situations.
“One only has to look as far as the cases of Lesego Tau or Yasin Bhiku to see how damaging these crimes are to our society. Kidnapping syndicates are extremely sophisticated,” explains Peter.
“It’s up to all of us to stay informed so we can best protect ourselves and our families,” says the CEO adding that South Africans should consider getting kidnapping insurance.
“Indwe is able to provide risk and insurance solutions for kidnappings to both individuals and their families whether in South Africa or when travelling abroad.”
