Friday, May 30, 2025 - A South African mother has been jailed for life, along with her two accomplices, after she sold her daughter to a traditional "healer" so her light eyes and skin could be cut out and used for medicine.
Racquel ‘Kelly’ Smith sold six-year-old Joshlin for 20,000 rand (£800) in
February because the healer wanted her fair complexion and turquoise
eyes.
The case shocked South Africa even further when it emerged that she would
have accepted £200 for the child.
Smith, 35, has now been sentenced for kidnapping and trafficking along
with boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and friend, Steveno van Rhyn.
Judge Nathan Erasmus told them: "There is nothing that I can find
that is redeeming and deserving of a lesser sentence than the harshest I can
impose"
Joshlin’s grandmother, Amanda Smith-Daniels, is now begging her daughter
to reveal where Joshlin is.
She told Newzroom Afrika: "I don’t feel that any sentence they get
will bring my grandchild back."
Speaking directly to Smith, she added: "How do you sleep [and] live
with yourself?"
Her teacher also said that Joshlin’s schoolfriends still ask where she
is.
A court heard that Joshlin vanished from outside her home in Saldanha Bay,
near Cape Town, in February 2024.
She had been living with family friends after her mother – with a drug
dependency since her teens – became abusive while high.
They wanted to adopt her to give her a better life, but the family blocked
these bids.
Neighbour Lorential Lombaard said Smith confessed to them that she had
sold Joshlin to a sangoma – traditional healer known as soul doctors.
She later saw Smith packing a bag of clothes for Joshlin before getting
into a car with the woman she believes to be the healer.
The young girl’s teacher also claimed that Smith told her that Joshlin was
already "on a ship inside a container, and they were on the way to western
Africa."
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