Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

Maverick News

Maverick News

Joshlin Smiths are everywhere, needing urgent intervention as adults fall apart

Joshlin Smiths are everywhere, needing urgent intervention as adults fall apart
Marianne Thamm
By Marianne Thamm
17 Mar 2025
Facebook
4
Many listening to the chilling testimony in the Joshlin Smith kidnapping and human trafficking trial will not be surprised at its portrait of grinding poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, and violence.

It is a story that plays itself out all over South Africa in places where there is high unemployment, off-the-charts drug and alcohol abuse with its concomitant violence and habitual woman and child battering.

It is a story with a few saints — those who provided shelter, food and other necessities for the children of these dysfunctional adults. Those who mobilised to search and find her, but never did. “It could be my child, your child”. 

Mothers understand.

Joshlin Smith was six when she vanished from the streets of the Middelpos informal settlement in Diazville where a population of about 16,000 live in a 2.81km² patch of a settlement.

Justice being seen 


Joshlin’s mother, Kelly, her partner Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis, and the third accused, Steveno van Rhyn (the man who introduced the “sangoma” narrative into the story) are facing evidence in the Western Cape High Court, sitting at a multipurpose centre in Saldanha.

The court is sitting in Saldanha to allow the community, which became intimately involved in the search for the missing child, to attend the legal proceedings. The accused have all pleaded not guilty.

Dickens (if Dickens is your measure of bleakness) could never have imagined the textures and traumas of the lives of those cursed to live in Middelpos day by day, month by month, year by year — a constant battle to survive by any means.

Read more:

That Joshlin Smith might not survive the omnipresent threat of violence, the habitual use by the adults around her of tik, and episodes of neglect and hunger followed by occasions of care and affection from her mother, may be a tragic outcome for a child born beneath an angry star.

This is even though her mother had had previous dealings with Social Services, once when she was pregnant with Joshlin while smoking tik. In that moment, Smith had revealed concern for the baby growing inside her and had tried to wean herself off drugs. It failed. And it was all left there…

On another occasion, her son was placed in his grandmother’s care after a tik-fuelled assault in 2016.

Flares and red flags


Smith’s grandmother saw the flares and red flags. She too contacted social services.

The relationship Smith had with Jose Emke, Joslin’s biological father, was abusive, said a social worker. Smith had often been visibly bruised.

Now Smith is accused of conspiring to sell her daughter for R20,000 to a woman driving a white Polo.

Former accused turned State witness Laurentia Lombaard, who has been testifying in the past week, sketched the bleak landscape of her life.

The legal unpicking of the minutiae of the days leading up to Joshlin’s disappearance while Lombaard gave her evidence revealed a cauldron of misery.

Originally from Wolseley, Lombaard has drifted from shack to shack with her four children — two now live with their father in the Eastern Cape and two have remained with her. 

From Marikana informal settlement in Saldanha where she met the father of her children to his home in Tsitsiratsitsi informal settlement in Middelpos, she knows the temporary nature of home.

The carwash connection


Lombaard’s partner operated a car wash in the township and this was a central point of contact for those who are now accused of the most brutal and coldly premeditated crime of selling Joshlin for R20,000 and using some of the money to buy tik.

The car wash was also a conduit for the sale of drugs, naturally. The cops must have known, but you know how it goes…

The hustle for a hit of tik began at sunrise and did not stop until the next cycle of the sun, Lombaard seemed to say. So addicted were Kelly, Lombaard and those who stand accused, they seldom thought of anything but tik.

This is a milieu where men hover on street corners while others trudge around with a rusted microwave, a hair tong and an extension cord looking to hock it to buy drugs or maybe a loaf of bread for someone.

And then there are the children, always in the background, always surrounded by high and traumatised adults who are inclined to violence.

The hunger, the battle to find food for the children while spending money on an addiction is so overwhelming you just don’t care.

On 18 February, the day before the child went missing, Lombaard testified about how she had woken early, cleaned the “house” and made food for the father of her children over at the car wash.

There was nothing for her children to eat that day and she headed to Kelly’s house where all roads led to a conspiracy to sell Joshlin.

Edna Maart, Joshlin’s Grade 1 teacher, testified that the child was “quiet”, but that she had the habit of constantly calling out her name.

This shouldn’t have happened, but it did. The country does not need more law enforcement officers – it needs more social workers. Surely this is clear. DM

Categories:

Tags: