Sheree Bega
Annari du Plessis greets the drug dealer kindly as he struts on a notorious Vanderbijlpark street. He glares at her but she shrugs, unaffected. “You must be worried,” she tells him. He spits on the ground and saunters off.
Du Plessis, 43, is unperturbed. “The drug dealers here all know me by name. When I walk in Porratown, they mock me and say I must come pray for them. I tell them, ‘God loves you. You can turn from your wicked ways.’ But they don’t want to hear that.”
Like her car, which declares she is a “warrior for Christ”, the founder of the Cross Roads community centre spends her days trying to win back a community overrun by prostitution and drugs. “Addiction, porn, hurt, hatred… Jesus is waiting,” invites the message on her car. “God loves you, yes you, reading this.”
Du Plessis stands on the infamous Bequerrel street, which runs through the derelict suburb like a line of cocaine.
“This is the street where everything happens. They deal drugs in front of me at Cross Roads. It’s hard to work in an area where everybody wants to keep the darkness in. But broken people can be healed.”
She points to a crumbling house across the street where last week she rescued 13-year-old Thabang*, who had been kept as a sex slave for two months. In January, Thabang’s uncle’s girlfriend allegedly sold her to a group of Nigerians who raped her and traded her to men in the Vaal and Free State. In Vanderbijlpark, she was prostituted by a pimp for drugs.
“I’ll lay down my life for this girl. She was locked in a house, brutally raped, humiliated and hurt for a long time. She is very strong. That house is terrible. I would break down every stone in that house. I removed children from there four previous times. But the police are doing nothing.”
Bizarrely, Du Plessis was arrested last weekend for defeating the ends of justice after she refused to hand Thabang to the police, claiming they did not want to open a case. Her arrest shocked colleagues like Hope McPherson, a missionary and former drug dealer and addict.
“She’s a good Samaritan who fights for the rights of children and saw the plight of a child prostituted for R150. But she – not the people who did this – is the one who ends up in a jail cell,” says McPherson, shaking his head in frustration.
For the tearful Du Plessis, who worked as a police officer for 12 years, her weekend in jail was one of the lowest points of her life. “About 10 police officers, including several from Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences Unit (FCS), barged through the gate at Cross Roads as if I was the biggest crook in Vanderbijlpark, and arrested me.”
She shared the jail cell with two women from Mozambique, arrested for shoplifting, and a sickly one-year-old baby boy.
“The baby had a high fever, was vomiting and had diarrhoea all the time. But there were no clean nappies for him. The mother used a baby blanket as a nappy. To put me in a cell with a baby and I can’t do anything to help him was killing me.”
When she told the police of the baby’s worsening condition, they told her to keep quiet. “They said they would call an ambulance, but when it arrived they would not let the woman and her baby leave because they said she would escape.
“They wouldn’t give the baby clean nappies or medicine my husband had brought. Those police – and there were officers there from the child protection unit – didn’t care one bit about the baby. The whole weekend the police screamed and shouted at us and treated us like rubbish. It was if we were the worst criminals on earth. I was told repeatedly to shut up, that I was nothing. Never in my life have I felt so defeated in my soul.”
Du Plessis was released on R500 bail while the two women were later freed on a warning. This infuriates her. “Women who stole food are kept in jail for five days but the real perpetrators of Thabang’s rape are out on the street.”
Inside Cross Roads, Thabang and her older sister warm their hands near a heater, and reach out to hold Du Plessis’s hand. Thabang smiles – often. It lights up her face.
Calmly, she remembers how 10 men would line up to rape her on a single day in Parys. “I’m okay,” she says. “I’m not scared.” Her sister, however, cannot stop her tears. “I’m worried about her. I hope the police will act now.”
Then, Gauteng MEC for Community Safety Faith Mazibuko arrives, embracing Du Plessis. She says police have arrested the pimp, with more arrests to follow. But Thabang and her family and even Du Plessis are in danger and must be moved to a place of safety immediately. Du Plessis is reluctant to leave, but the MEC insists.
“While we’re glad you have brought this to the attention of the police, we’re sorry about the outcome and that you were not treated properly, all because of the bureaucracy that exists within certain procedures,” she tells Du Plessis.
Mazibuko is shocked as she hears of a police officer from the FCS unit who has been distributing photos of Thabang to known drug dealers in the area. Mazibuko promises he will be suspended.
Du Plessis worries, too, about Thabang’s safety. “If she points out the 17 men who raped her at the house, they will get 10 years in jail for statutory rape. The drug dealers will never allow that. It’s not good for business. They will kill her.”
Du Plessis’s arrest will create mistrust of her among those she works with.
“The people in Porratown will think I’m a crook, that I lied to the police and got arrested, that I’m not who I say I am. But I believe Thabang’s story will change this community.”
She and her husband have adopted a 15-month-old baby boy from a local prostitute. “My husband hates me,” she says, jokingly. “But I’m the kind of person that when children are involved, I can’t look away.”
* Not her real name