In court: Missing Joslin Smith’s mother Kelly Smith at the trial
The second week of testimony in the trial around the alleged kidnapping and trafficking of Joslin Smith has painted a conflicting portrait of the child’s mother — one of contradictions veering between concern and neglect, love and violence, desperation and deception.
The now seven-year-old has been missing from her home in Saldanha since 19 February last year.
Smith was using tik while pregnant with Joslin, the court has heard, and although she approached the department of social development for help with an intervention programme, she eventually relapsed.
But Smith was also on the receiving end of brutal physical violence, if her attorney is to be believed, something she had reported to social workers. This was the reason she sent her eldest son to live with her grandmother, believing it would be safer for him.
In 2016, Smith threatened to stab that son, and to assault her grandmother, who would not allow Smith to stay in her home because of her drug habit.
Social media influencer Shakiera Ganief, who goes by the name Shakes Warrior on TikTok, told the court that she wanted to use her platform to help Smith find her child but her interaction with the woman revealed someone who became “aggressive” when questioned about Joslin or Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis.
Appollis is Smith’s partner and accused number one in the kidnapping and human trafficking case the state has brought against him, Smith, and accused number two, Steveno van Rhyn.
All three pleaded not guilty when the trial started last week.
Last year, charges were withdrawn against the fourth accused, Lourentia Lombard — referred to as Rens or Rensie throughout proceedings, and also a known and frequent drug user, who has turned state witness.
The state alleges in its indictment that Smith “communicated during August 2023 her plan to have her children be taken away or sold”.
“The plan was for this to happen in January or February 2024.”
The matter is being heard by the Western Cape high court, sitting in the multi-purpose centre in Saldanha Bay, providing an opportunity for the local community, which was intensely involved in the search for Joslin, to sit in on proceedings.
Ganief told the court that she had asked Smith if she was certain Appollis was not involved in the disappearance of Joslin, given that men known to victims were often perpetrators of crimes against them.
In response, Smith became “aggressive”, she said, and replied that she was the “evil” one in the relationship, not Appollis.
She said that “whenever [Smith] hits the children, [Appollis] stops her”, testified Ganief.
The court played a video on Wednesday of Smith dancing and laughing during a prayer event for Joslin, held on 3 March last year, at which a popular group called the Temple Boys sang.
Ganief said Smith had remarked that she always wanted to be famous, but she did not know it would be because of Joslin.
The alleged desire for fame — or at least recognition — aligns with testimony from one of the police officers who testified last week. The officer said, upon entering the Saldanha Bay police station shortly after the child disappeared, and seeing officers she knew, Smith said: “My daughter Joslin has made me famous.”
In Ganief’s most dramatic testimony, she alleged Smith told her she should stop looking for Joslin, because “the police must do their job”.
It is statements like this, allegedly made by Smith, that have turned the community against her, in particular, and her co-accused.
Before they were arrested on 5 March last year, Smith and Appollis were told to leave their shack and stay with family members. According to police testimony, this was because the community suspected their possible involvement in Joslin’s disappearance and, as Smith herself allegedly told one of the witnesses, “[the community] wants to hurt me”.
The testimony of Carlyn and Kelly Zeegers, a mother and daughter in the area who occasionally employed Smith for domestic work, and who would lend her money and provide food for her children, painted a picture of a woman who, despite many faults, loved her children.
Carlyn Zeegers told the court this week Smith tried her best and was “a good mother”.
“She has very lovable children and she raised them well.”
She said when Smith’s son was being bullied at school, she stood up for her child, alerting teachers and the parents of the children doing it.
Kelly Zeegers said she had grown increasingly frustrated with what appeared to be indifference on the part of Smith to Joslin being missing.
But she also painted a picture of a mother desperately searching for her child, despite the community getting increasingly angry with her, thinking she was not doing enough.
Said Kelly Zeegers: “She was very calm, although I know we deal with emotions differently. I took her on about her being a mother and asked her if she felt anything. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. She kept on eating and she slept.”
Detective Constable Refilwe Sekhope, a member of the local family violence and child protection unit, told the court that the theory that Joslin had been taken by sangomas, presumably for muti purposes — a “theory” put forth by Van Rhyn — was unsubstantiated by evidence.
Joslin’s grade one teacher at Diazville Primary School, Tahirih Edna Maart, testified while she was filling up at a petrol station on the way to a community search for Joslin, Smith had climbed into her car and told her the child had been kidnapped by Nigerians.
Being led by state prosecutor advocate Zelda Swanepoel, Maart said, while the car was being filled, Smith suddenly opened the back passenger door and climbed in.
“I was quite shocked,” said Maart, speaking in Afrikaans. “What she told me was: ‘Teacher, I want to tell you something confidential.’ I said I was listening. She was talking very softly. She said she had received a call from a Nigerian man, who said that she had to ‘play quickly’.
“I asked her how she knew it was a Nigerian man. She didn’t answer.
“She continued by saying that, according to the information she received from the Nigerian man, Joslin was on a boat in a container, and that they were on their way to West Africa. I asked if she had told the police and she said: ‘Teacher, I am scared because [the community] wants to hurt me.’ Just before she got out, she said in a very soft voice: ‘Remember, Boeta is not guilty.’ That is where it ended. She got out of the car and vanished.”
Another witness this week was Siliziwe Mbambo, who at first testified from the case file on the Smith family compiled by other social workers. Notes were made about Smith swearing at and threatening to stab her young son while pregnant with Joslin and high on tik, and threatening to assault her grandmother.
Rinesh Sivnarain, Smith’s attorney, said during cross examination about the casefile notes: “Most of the information in your file that you testified about yesterday is incorrect.”
Sivnarain said Smith denied that her son was “being abused” and said he was staying with her grandmother because she was homeless at the time.
Smith was living at a shelter in 2018, on the advice of two social workers, because “Joslin’s [biological] father constantly assaulted [Smith] and this continued for a period of six years”, said Sivnarain.
The trial is scheduled to run until 28 March.