In court: Missing Joslin Smith’s mother Kelly Smith at the trial
Kelly Smith sat hunched, her expression almost unreadable as her biological mother, Amanda Daniels, delivered a searing victim impact statement before the Cape Town high court on Wednesday.
When Smith raised her eyes, the shimmer of tears from a prior impact statement betrayed her attempts at a stoic composure.
The courtroom was silent as Daniels spoke of the pain and permanence of the loss she felt since Kelly’s middle child, her granddaughter, Joslin Smith, went missing in February 2024.
Smith, her partner Jacquen ‘Boeta’ Appollis and their friend Steveno van Rhyn were found guilty by Judge Nathan Erasmus on 2 May of the kidnapping and trafficking of Joslin. The state is seeking life sentences for the trio.
The court is this week hearing testimony in mitigation or aggravation of sentence, with sentencing expected to take place on Thursday.
Daniels has been caring for Smith’s other two children since her daughter was arrested last year.
When Daniels recounted in her statement wanting to adopt Kelly’s eldest child — the big brother of still missing Joslin — Smith gave the slightest shake of her head, a faint, fleeting smirk brushing across her lips.
It was a moment that was both intimate and devastating.
Captured forever on a live television feed, that reaction confirmed what witness after witness had said during the eight-week-long trial of Smith, Appollis, and Van Rhyn: that Kelly Smith did not react the way a caring mother would when Joslin was missing, or thereafter.
“Kelly, you have made our lives hell on earth,” began Daniels’ statement to her daughter, read out by court preparation officer Deonett Boltney.
“I feel like my heart has been ripped from my body.”
“You have broken [this family] apart.”
Her fear for her grandchildren was palpable, Daniels continued in the statement.
She is caring for Smith’s remaining two children, and does not rest until they are home and safe, Daniels said. She added that the youngest child was scared of being left alone, and constantly asked where her sister and mother had gone.
“How did you feel on mother’s day?” Daniels asked. “I cried my eyes out”
“Did you not wish you had your three children with you?”
The lives of Smith’s brothers and sisters, and her parents, had been “aired like dirty laundry”, said Daniels.
“I gave you up to my parents to look after [when you were born] because I was naive and needed to find work, and I knew they would give you the best in life,” Daniels said.
When the wounds of that adoption had seemingly healed, Daniels said she wanted to take Smith, her eldest son and Joslin to come and live with her, “but you threw it in my face [presumably Daniels’ giving up Smith to her parents for adoption]”.
“When I wanted to adopt [your oldest son, knowing I could offer him a stable home], you told me: ‘Then I’ll show you, I will make another child’.
“You don’t want to take responsibility for your actions. You said you would ‘talk’ at your next appearance, but now you won’t talk. Again, lies. How do you sleep, how do you live with yourself? I can’t sleep at night when your brothers and sisters are not home. That is what a mother is.”
Smith’s eldest child was being teased at school, said Daniels, “about his mother being on tik and selling his sister”.
“I have had to fetch your kids out of school because of your wicked deeds,” she added.
The preceding eight-week trial was an intense matter that included the dramatic and often contradictory testimony of accused-turned-state-witness Lourentia Lombaard, and allegations of police torture from Appollis and Van Rhyn.
Those allegations were denied by police and refuted by both medical doctors who examined the men before and after their confessions were made.
The admissibility of the confessions — extracted as a result of coercion and assault, according to Appollis and Van Rhyn — led to a weeks-long trial-within-a-trial, where it was eventually decided they could be admitted as evidence.
Police are no closer to knowing Joslin’s whereabouts. The child’s family, and the Middelpos community in Saldanha Bay from where she went missing, have stated publicly that they are hoping Smith will still “come clean” about Joslin’s fate.