Mother sentenced to life imprisonment after selling her daughter for £800 to traditional healer to cut out her eyes and skin for medicine.




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." 

The sentencing follows an eight-week trial that captivated South 

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