Johannesburg - They are starved, beaten, barred from sleeping and made to walk around naked in the bitter cold singing initiation songs.
When they forgot the lyrics, they were whipped and slapped by the dagga-smoking teens who had kidnapped them and taken them to the illegal initiation school.
This is what the 23 boys kidnapped from Orange Farm allegedly went though during their two-week ordeal at an illegal initiation school.
Yet, the kidnappers are still roaming the streets. Although one was arrested, his case was withdrawn by the courts.
The abducted boys were rescued after a resident alerted the police.
What they went through has taken its toll on them, say their parents.
“They looked like hobos and had lost a lot of weight,” said *Sesi, a mother whose 12-year- old son was abducted.
One of the kidnapped boys said he and his friends were playing soccer when some teenagers from the neighbourhood kidnapped them, threatening them with pangas and whips.
“They said that if we cried for help they would hit us. They took us to a ditch and hid us there. That evening, they took us to a train station and put us on a train to Soweto,” he said.
The boys landed up in Meadowlands, where the illegal school was situated.
“They took our clothes and gave us blankets. We were made to draw water and fetch wood. The only thing they gave us to eat was the burnt remnants of porridge. That’s all we ate for two weeks. We never had a bath during the time we were there.
“They also hit us every day, without provocation, and if we cried they hit us more.
“They forced us to learn initiation songs and made us sing them naked. If we didn’t sing them properly, they would hit us.
“One day, one of the boys was overcome by sleep and he fell into the fire. His back was badly burnt,” a 14-year-old said.
The boy’s grandmother, *Thandi, said that after their children went missing, they opened a case with the police.
A week later, people arrived at her house to tell the family that they had been sent by the owner of the initiation school, who wanted them to know that he had the children.
It turns out that owner was a 20-year-old man living just a street away from her house.
The men demanded money, porridge and blankets.
“I begged them to return the children because my grandchild is too young, and in our culture, children of his age do not attend initiation schools,” she said.
The 66-year-old woman said she couldn’t understand why the children were taken.
When they were finally rescued; she couldn’t stop crying when she looked at her grandson.
“I was pained at the thought of him in the veld and at what he must have gone through,” she said.
Sesi said that when the kidnappers demanded money, blankets and porridge, she asked to speak to her son. The abductors refused initially but later relented.
“Whenever I asked how he was, he would say he was fine. When he was finally home, he told me that he wasn’t really fine all that time.
“It’s just that he was told to tell me that because one of the kidnappers stood next to him during the phone call with a panga at his neck.”
She said her son was “scary” to look at after being rescued. He was dirty and traumatised.
The parents of the captured boys and teenagers said they weren’t happy that the kidnappers hadn’t been arrested and charged.
Sesi said that although the owner of the school had been arrested, he was released.
“I met him in town a day after his release. He stared at me and I stared back at him,” she said.
But police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said there had been only one incident of a kidnapped child reported in Orange Farm. This boy was rescued in Meadowlands.
“The suspect was arrested, but the case was withdrawn by the court,” he said.
*Not their real names
The Star