The mother of a six-year-old girl who has been missing in South Africa for nearly three weeks was charged on Thursday with kidnapping and trafficking her daughter, along with three other suspects, including her boyfriend. Joslin Smith disappeared from her home some 120 kilometres north of Cape Town on 19 February while allegedly under the care of her mother Kelly’s partner. Despite a massive search operation involving police, firefighters, city authorities, and specialised sniffer dog units, she has still not been located. A child goes missing every five hours in South Africa, but most are found. As they left the courthouse in Vredenburg, a town near Saldanha Bay, in an armoured police vehicle, a large crowd gathered shouting “Justice for Joslin”.
