This comes after the Western Cape High Court delivered its verdict in the case relating to the disappearance of six-year-old Joshlin Smith.

Judge Nathan Erasmus on Friday ruled that Joshlin’s mother, Kelly Smith, and her co-accused, her boyfriend, Jacquen Appollis and their friend, Steveno van Rhyn, were guilty of kidnapping and trafficking the little girl in February last year.

 

The organisation’s Chief Executive Officer, Gugu Xaba, says this case has highlighted the urgent need to address social ills such as drug and alcohol abuse within communities to better protect children.

“What we would like to urge is that the tolerance or insensitivity to human life must be out of our system as a community. And then let’s, on a daily basis, work towards protecting children and work towards reducing the social ills that we’ve seen, alcohol, abuse of children and all others. Because if we don’t, they grow into something that we wouldn’t like to face. Or they actually completely destroy the fibre of our society or the moral fibre.”

--SABC--