Cape Town - Many first-time Muslim Umrah pilgrims, young and old, were left stranded at Cape Town International Airport on Wednesday.
Some had spent years saving for the holy “minor” pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Thirty-six would-be pilgrims turned up at the airport with no official confirmation of their flight details on an Air Ethiopia plane via Addis Ababa to Medina in Saudi Arabia.
All of the would-be pilgrims paid over R40 000 for flights and accommodation to New Age SA Travel, implicating its head Shahied Davids.
Davids said: “I can confirm that no flights were cancelled by me. (The) number of passengers affected is 34. This I’m discussing with our flight agent and will revert to you soonest.”
Six of the victims have reportedly lodged criminal complaints against the agency.
Bonteheuwel resident Abubakr Baker said his father-in-law and his wife were supposed to depart on Wednesday morning. Only his wife got on the plane to Saudi Arabia.
“Over the weekend, Shahied basically started lying to them, saying that their flight might be delayed, cancelled, all those kinds of things. And the night before as well when the visas were not ready, he said “it’s going to be ready, don’t worry about it.”
The group were scheduled to depart at about 2.35pm.
Baker’s in-laws were about to leave their home when they were told about a flight cancellation. There was another flight but they had to pay R2 500 extra per person for visiting visas, which was done.
“When that flight was so-called cancelled by him, the next flight that he said we had to be at the airport at 11pm. They got nothing (no flight confirmation), there wasn’t even a representative from the agency that was there,” Baker said.
When checking in, none but two names were on the system, Baker said.
“People were crying. It was very emotional. We greeted our families, standing here with wrapped suitcases. What do we do? My father-in-law started crying and then we all started crying. It was basically his first time and he sat the whole year studying what to do in Madinah, what to do in Makkah,” Baker said.
One elderly woman said she had spent four years selling koeksisters to raise money to go on Umrah. Umrah is the non-compulsory pilgrimage that can be undertaken at any time outside of the obligatory Hajj for Muslims.
“I feel that it’s wrong because it’s our elderly. It doesn’t make it right if it’s a youngster as well. There was also a newly-wed couple. I’m sure they’re in their early twenties and they were even in tears, they were like why us, our first time. So emotions were all over the place in that group and families that came to see their loved ones off.”
Talk show host and activist Faizal Sayed said he had been working on Hajj and Umrah “crookery” for the last eight years.
“When I started doing that … we saw lots of irregularities and complaints going back.
“The initial note that we got from people was that things started already in 2006. Then we’ve got claims which are here in front of us from 2010, 2011.”
Wednesday’s cancellations were reportedly over money owed by the travel agent.
In August 2022, a number of people had reached out, appealing for help in dealing with Davids, Sayed said.
On Wednesday, Davids could be seen in a live video – a fellow pilgrim confronted him over the stranded individuals – in Medina.