Mohamed Ameen Dabhelia – 2018/02/23

A group of Zimbabwean nationals now living in Cape Town have been left distraught after a truck transporting their kids in to South Africa, found itself falsely mirrored as a ‘case of human trafficking’.

As a result, the children have been taken into custody and are still being held by the South African Department of Social Development without parental contact since November last year.

Radio Islam spoke to the journalist covering this story, Katherine Child, who told us that it is illegal for the department of social development to keep these kids for longer than three months.

“Without a court order and in terms of immigration act and the constitution, even an illegal child is not allowed to be kept from their family.”

Child says the explanation from the department was that the kids were not documented and they believe were being trafficked.

“They haven’t made any attempt to actually find out if these people who came forward were the actual parents, they’ve refused to deal with them, and they’ve lied to them.”

According to Child, a few parents travelled to the safe house in Rustenburg, only to discover their children not there.

“The parents were then taken to court, the families have an advocate working pro bono, and he went to court with the affidavits, asking for the kids back.”

Child says the department of social development did not appear in court and refused to say why.

Child adds that the next step would be to go back to court to interdict the social development department from unlawfully repatriating the kids to Zimbabwe.

Radio Islam has attempted to contact Lumka Oliphant, the spokesperson for the Department of Social Development, however to no avail.