I thought I had explored the depths of human depravity when reading about serial killers. I was wrong.
Racquel “Kelly” Smith is a drug-addicted mother of three, living in a shack near the ocean, 120 miles from Cape Town, South Africa, with her boyfriend, Jacquen Appollis. In February 2024, her six-year-old daughter, Joshlin, disappeared without a trace.
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Smith became a nationwide object of sympathy as an intense manhunt for Joshlin was undertaken. Volunteers scoured the sand dunes near her shack, and Joshlin’s face was plastered from one end of the country to the other.
Breaking News: Joshlin Smith three convicted kidnappers Kelly Smith, Jacquen Appollis, and Steveno van Rhyn have been sentenced to life imprisonment for human trafficking and 10 years for kidnapping.
Joshlin please come home 💔#womenforchange pic.twitter.com/7T7c58AMYQ
— Women For Change (@womenforchange5) May 29, 2025
But that sympathy turned to rage a few weeks later when Smith was arrested along with her boyfriend and second man, Steveno van Rhyn. All three were charged with kidnapping and human trafficking.
During the trial, a neighbor testified that Smith confided in her about plans to sell her daughter to a traditional healer — a “sangoma” — who “wanted her for her eyes and skin” before the child vanished.
Joshlin is still missing, and the “healer,” who wanted the child’s shockingly green eyes and white skin, has never been found. Smith, Appollis, and van Rhyn were all sentenced to ten years for kidnapping and life sentences for human trafficking.
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Since the start of the trial in March, witnesses, including the girl’s former teacher and a pastor, said that Smith had told them of the planned sale of her child as far back as 2023.
The ongoing search for Joshlin has now been extended beyond South Africa’s borders, police said on Thursday.
South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world, with soaring rates of child kidnapping.
In the last year, the Rainbow Nation saw more than 17,000 kidnappings, an 11% increase on the previous year, according to police statistics.
Judge Nathan Erasmus said during the sentencing: “There is nothing I can find that is redeeming and deserving of a lesser sentence than the harshest I can impose.”
Lourentia Lombaard, a friend and neighbor of Smith, testified that Smith had confessed: “I did something silly … I sold my child to a sangoma,” claiming that she had been driven by a “desperate need for money,” according to The Telegraph.
It’s hard to fathom how bad the human trafficking problem is in South Africa. The 17,000 kidnappings are apparently the tip of the iceberg. Most human trafficking crimes go unreported. Some observers believe that Smith’s case is not unusual and that desperately poor mothers sell their children to traffickers on a routine basis.
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The trafficking is mostly of domestic servants (girls), agricultural workers (boys), and sex exploitation (girls). The estimated numbers range from 50,000 to millions.
It’s good that the South African people are up in arms over Kelly’s horrific crimes. Perhaps it’s time for the people to demand that the government do more about the problem than offer expressions of sorrow for the parents’ loss.
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