Johannesburg - A Newcastle child’s innocent eavesdropping turned out to be the unexpected lucky break that led to police catching two suspects in a bizarre abduction of a 14-month old Soweto baby this week.
Police did not name the child hero from northern KwaZulu-Natal, but said in a press briefing on Friday that he had overheard his parents talking about the kidnapping and passed on information for them to call the police.
The child gave an accurate description of baby Siyabonga Mlambo as well as of the men who turned out to be his kidnappers.
The police have not yet released any more detailed information about how the child identified the kidnappers.
As police pieced together the clues, an intriguing plot emerged.
It started with Siyabonga being snatched in what appeared to be a robbery in Protea Glen, west of Soweto, Johannesburg.
Two men armed with a gun and a knife overpowered Siyabonga’s mother, Mandisa Mlambo, and his nanny, who is a relative. They forced her into the house, then later forced her to drive to the Protea Glen shopping mall to withdraw money from an ATM.
The suspects then went back to the house, tied up Mlambo and the nanny and made off with Siyabonga, cellphones, clothes and other items. Mlambo and the nanny managed to free themselves the following morning.
Two nights of agony followed for the baby’s parents.
“All I did was pray for the best, but there were times when I cried thinking of all the negative things that could happen to him,” an exhausted Mlambo said.
But as police started interrogating the nanny, who has not been named, they realised there was “something fishy” about her, and “something clicked for the police”, SAPS spokesman John Kunene said.
“After hearing one of the suspects was a sangoma, my breath stopped. I started thinking the worst could have happened. I thought my son was dead,” said the child’s father Tshepo Madubung, alluding to muti killings.
Kunene said the investigation showed that the nanny, who is now in custody, was the mastermind behind the kidnapping.
“The nanny and Mlambo, their grandmothers are sisters. While the two suspects are the nanny’s cousins from her father’s side,” he said.
“The main objective of the kidnapping was to extort money from Mlambo,” explained Kunene.
“I don’t know why they would think I have money; I don’t,” Mlambo said on Friday.
“I didn’t see this coming,” she said about her own cousin plotting to kidnap her son.
“I just want to confront her and ask her why she did this. She was there with me when I was crying. I treated her like my own sister. When police told me she was a suspect, I was shattered.”
Kunene said by the time they had recovered Siyabonga, he had already been given a new name.
Dr Shaheda Omar, clinical director at The Teddy Bear Clinic for Abused Children, said child kidnapping was more prevalent in South Africa than imagined.
Body parts
“In rural areas it is more frequent, it is committed for extortion and sometimes for muti and selling of body parts,” said Omar.
“It is not common for children to be found, especially so quickly when they have been kidnapped.
“With Siyabonga it was swift, police exercised immediate investigations and that saved his life.”
However, Omar said in such a case the parents would need professional psychological support.
“A baby who has been away from his parents will have separation anxiety. He will be insecure and overly clingy.
“The child is angry at the parents because he can’t process what has happened.”
Omar said the parents must not make the mistake of spoiling the child after such an ordeal.
“Parents would feel guilty and want to over compensate. But they need to be consistent with the rules that applied before the kidnapping. Since the baby is feeling neglected, they need to comfort him physically but not spoil him.”
Omar said the actions of the young child who alerted his parents about what he had seen in Madadeni, Newcastle, that resulted in the arrests were a rare occurrence.
“Your average child would not think about telling their parents this, they wouldn’t comprehend that it was relevant.”
Kunene said the three suspects would appear in court soon. Police are on the lookout for a fourth suspect.
They will face charges of house robbery and kidnapping.
Independent Media