Human trafficking is not illegal in South Africa… and with the World Cup 2010 getting ever closer, local parents are widely warned by the police 'to look after their kids as if they are gold'…
Facebook sites and crime-prevention email networks inside the country are issuing dire warnings to parents and also frequently report 'suspicious cars' trawling the streets around schools. Number plates are frequently posted on the sites with makes of the cars and descriptions of the occupants who approach children or try to pull them into the vehicles - in broad daylight. Schools have also taken measures: barring strangers from schoolgrounds and posting security guards at their barred gates.
On Wednesday March 10 2010 an 14-year-old Afrikaans girl went missing in Benoni near Johannesburg in the most populated province of Gauteng - reportedly disappearing with a female who was driving a red Toyota. A massive manhunt is on the way to try and find her.
Recently in Scotland a South African-Irish couple were also convicted of running a massive network of brothels where smuggled African girls were terrorised with fears of voodoo-practices into 'working' 12-hour days. Convicted brothel-owners Shamiela Clark, and her husband Irish mob kingpin Thomas Carroll - according to Scottish detectives -- that the two convicted brothel owners were also planning 'to set up a similar network in South Africa in preparation for the World Cup 2010."
read my report on:
http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.co...They own three lavish homes in Cape Town: two in the Strand and one in Gauteng. They were jailed for running a sophisticated multi-million international sex-slavery ring with some 36 brothels. Some of the girls in the brothels were smuggled Nigerian children who were kept naked in the brothels and forced to 'work' for up to 15 hours – too terrified because of fear of voodoo practices to even try to flee.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/04...http://www.thestar.co.za/?fSectionId=326...South Africa's Salvation Army has stepped up its anti-human trafficking campaign, launching a 24-hour toll free hotline number, 08000-RESCUE (08000-737283), where victims and the public can report all cases of human trafficking. Human trafficking is not illegal in South Africa, and Venter urged the government to pass the still pending draft-legislation to bring those criminals to book.
The toll free number was launched at the South African Human Rights Commission in Johannesburg. "This toll free number allows people to call for help on all matters relating to human trafficking and serve as a platform for people to offer tip-off information on suspicious circumstances," said Major Marieke Venter.
Their trained consultants will report all human trafficking cases to the Salvation Army while all emergency cases will be referred directly to the South African Police Services. This is the only dedicated anti-human trafficking helpline in South Africa that will offer 24-hour assistance.
Brian Adams, the founder of "BE HEARD", said they are also partnering with The Salvation Army in this venture. His organisation provides an anonymous tip-off service and will run The Salvation Army's toll free helpline.
According to The Salvation Army, of the 2-million people trafficked each year, 450,000 are in Africa and are either used for exploitation as prostitutes, forced labour or for harvesting of their body organs.
Especially with the FIFA football tournaments in June, South Africa is the African continent's main destination, transit, and point of origin for the trafficking of persons, including children, from other countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe - for prostitution and for forced labour.
And inside the country, children also are trafficked from poor rural areas to urban centers like Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and Bloemfontein – both boys and girls are trafficked as sex-slaves and for domestic servitude; forced street vending, food service, begging, crime and "muti" (the removal of their organs for making traditional medicine).
The children usually are either kidnapped outright - or approached by people they know and trust, talked into leaving their homes.
En route, they are usually raped, and their documents confiscated. Some are sold to illegal mine workers and put to work underground to hack gold and platinum ore from existing mines in SA, others are destined for brothels.
One undercover investigation team making a video of this child-trafficking in South Africa, posing as prospective "clients," asked one trafficker: "How many women can you get us?" "Depends how many you need," was the response.
When asked what a woman cost, he replied "$100, and maybe $15 for the border official." "How do you make sure the women don't run away when they find they aren't going to be waitressing, but doing sex work?" the interviewer asked. "Sometimes we rape them. We call it 'washing the hands'," the trafficker said. source report:
www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&cli...Recently a young mom in Roodepoort near Johannesburg had to put up a fierce fight to save her toddler from a kidnapper. She had been tied to a tree by her neck but frantically clutched her baby's feet, grappling with a man who was stabbing her at the same time, reported Afrikaans-language Beeld newspaper photographer Lauren Mulligan and journalist Virginia Keppler. The mom was not identified to protect the family from the kidnapping gang. The family told Beeld that the young Afrikaans mom was walking with the baby in a stroller towards a kindergarten and was about 500 metres from her home when she was attacked by a man who held a knife to her back.
He ordered her to walk with him to a remote part of a park. "I hoped that if I cooperated and he found out I had nothing of value, he'd let us go. However when we reached the park he tied me to a tree with a rope around my neck, searched me, touched me up and fondled my breasts. Then he took my baby from the stroller next to me and the baby immediately started screaming. I managed to grab my baby by the feet. The man demanded that I let the baby go and threatened to kill me, but I held him tightly by the feet. Then the man stabbed me in the arm. I started screaming very loudly then,' she said.
A man in the vicinity heard her and rushed to help her, and the two men grappled with each other while the young mom still desperately tried to cling to her baby's feet. Just as her child's feet slipped from her grip the kidnapper also let go of her baby – so the toddler fell to the ground really hard, hitting his head.
The man grappling with the kidnapper meanwhile was yelling at her to 'grab your baby and run', but she took a while, struggling to untie the knot around her neck. She eventually managed to flee while the two men were still fighting with each other.
"I then grabbed my child with his shirt from the ground with one hand, and pushed the stroller with the other hand while running to the kindergarten,' she said.
Upon her arrival two of the dads who were at the school jumped in their cars to chase the kidnapper to try and arrest him – but both men were missing. They only found the rope which had tied her to the tree and the baby bottle.
The young mom required twelve stitches to repair the knife-wound to the senews and tissue of her arm, said police inspector Karen Jacobs of the Honeydew police station, who confirmed the incident and said the police had opened an investigation. Beeld also was told that the traumatised, injured woman had to sit around for twenty minutes at the police station while a 'couldn't care less' policeman at the charge office finally decided to take her statement. source of report:
http://www.beeld.com/Content/Suid-Afrika...The South African Police have also been posting messages on Facebook sites warning parents against taking their children along with them to shopping centres without having a male to escort them. Wrote one official: "we must remember that loads of foreign Africans will be coming to SA and that the sex and drugs trade is a reality, please take it seriously. Best would be to stock up on necessities so you don't need to go to town often, things like fuel, water, food, ect..."