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Friday 19 April marked two months since the tragic disappearance of the six-year-old girl Joshlin Smith from the poverty-stricken informal settlement of Middelpos in Saldanha Bay.

Racquel “Kelly” Smith, the mother of the green-eyed Grade 1 Diazville Primary School pupil, is awaiting trial in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor Prison, where she is allegedly pregnant again.

Kelly, her boyfriend Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis, as well as their close friends Steven van Rhyn and Lourentia ” Renze” Lombaard, have been charged with human trafficking and kidnapping in connection with Joshlin’s disappearance.

Last week, a woman who claimed to have been in Pollsmoor Prison with Kelly said she was told where the child was.

During their first appearance at the Vredenburg Magistrate’s Court in March, the State alleged that Kelly instructed Appollis and Van Rhyn to sell Joslin to another Middelpos man for R20,000 for muti. This grim confession came after the two men spent 36 hours in a gruelling interrogation at Saldanha Police Station.

33-year-old Kelly, who is a self-confessed tik user, claimed she left her daughter in the care of her boyfriend as she was too sick to go to school that day.

However, new information about where Joshlin might be was doing the rounds. Middelpos councillor Vernon Vraagom told IOL about the WhatsApp voice note with the claims from Kelly’s fellow inmate about where the missing girl is:

“We gathered people around and told them that the woman – who was a witness to a crime but missed a court date and was arrested thereafter – said she was told by Kelly that the child was at the shack where a sangoma lives in Middelpos,” Vraagom said.

“She described the shack and said there is a Kombi that parks there. According to her, we should check under it because there’s a drain and that Joshlin wasn’t the only child who was there.”

Vraagom said that they had to follow that lead because they were desperate to find the girl, but unfortunately, Diazville residents did not find anything when they went to the sangoma’s shack. Then, Vraagom mentioned they received another lead shortly afterwards to search the stormwater drain behind the school.

“A person came forward and said they saw Jacquen and his friend Steveno put a bag in a drain near Diazville High School the night Joshlin disappeared,” he explained. “Shortly after that, the drain overflowed and that is where bloody clothes were found the second time.

The police have not been able to publicly confirm that these blood-stained materials are a critical part of the case, and the truth of the matter will only be revealed in court once the investigation has been completed.

“On Wednesday, we asked the police and the municipality to help with the machines to dig, [but] nothing positive came out of that,” Vraagom said. “We are waiting for the blueprints of the area so they can take a look inside the stormwater pipes.”

According to the Western Cape police spokesperson, Lieutenant-Colonel Malcolm Pojie, investigating teams followed up on leads that led them to search the stormwater drain again. But again, no positive result was achieved.

There is reason to believe that Kelly sold her daughter to pay off her drug debt, or potentially feed the habit.

In a 27 February Facebook Live post, Kelly opens up to Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader Gayton McKenzie about her and Appollis’s use of methamphetamine.

“At this moment, I’m clean. I did use tik. I’ve been clean for a week… I’m honest,” she told Gayton.

Meanwhile, the couple’s friend Van Rhyn told McKenzie in a TikTok interview that he smoked some Mandrax with Appollis and Renze before Kelly arrived back at her Middelpos shack, per another Citizen article. Van Rhyn also claimed that as soon as Kelly came home, she went to go and buy a ‘sakkie’ tik with the money she earned from an odd job as a domestic worker.

After smoking the tik, Van Rhyn said Joshlin was not in their “gedagtes” [thoughts] until later that evening.

A 75-year-old Diazville resident “Oom” Dawid Louw told Rapport that Kelly did some domestic work for him and noticed the huge toll that tik had taken on her, even claiming that she’d become friends with the wrong sangomas who had “bewitched” her and turned her into a “zombie”. He may also be referring to methamphetamine psychosis, a serious potential side-effect of heavy tik use.

Most concerningly, Louw also claimed that Kelly told him that she had received offers to sell her little girl for muti.

The use of methamphetamine, otherwise known as crystal meth, was particularly prevalent among the Nazis in WWII, with the developers of the drug, known then as pervitin, saying that it could get rid of a soldier’s remorse and emotional capacity while also keeping them alert for as long as possible so that they could win the war.

A yellow notice for the missing little girl has been issued and posted on Interpol’s website. The four accused are due to appear in the Vredenburg Magistrate’s Court on 13 May.

[source:citizen]