Human trafficking in SA: Hawks raise alarm in Gauteng

Provincial head of the Hawks in Gauteng, Major-General Ebrahim Kadwa, has raised an alarm over the rising cases of human trafficking in the province.

Kadwa said this is due to the province being an economic hub, among other factors.

He said the Hawks had intensified its response to information relating to human trafficking and smuggling of immigrants in the last three years, and has managed to crack some big cases.

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The Hawks have also been raiding private premises and finding a number of trafficked people.

“In the recent cases, we found over 100 people initially reported, victims of trafficking. But there is a process we have to follow to be able to differentiate if it is human trafficking or we’re dealing with organised illegal immigration or smuggling of migrants. This is a meticulous procedure that needs to be followed by the Hawks,” he told Newzroom Afrika.

Human trafficking cases

Some of the big cases include the more than 15 undocumented immigrants who were found up at a gated Centurion estate last week:

• October 2023 – Mother and son Dumazile Nkosi, 51, and Thandoluhle Nkosi, 25, were arrested after 47 foreign nationals were found in the premises they were leasing in Gauteng
• November 2023 – A 28-year-old suspect for human trafficking was arrested after 23 Somalians were found in minibus taxis in Limpopo
• December 2023 – A woman was arrested after three young girls had been trafficked from West Africa into South Africa inside a shipping container. They were advertised on an escort website and kept in a residential complex in George
• December 2023 – 33 suspected human trafficking victims were rescued after they were found stashed in one room at a house in Benoni
• December 2023 – Two suspects, a man, 46, and woman, 41, were seen boarding a bus in Midrand with 14 undocumented kids aged between 6 and 14 years
• December 2023 – More than 130 undocumented men, women, and children travelling in 11 vehicles were intercepted by the Limpopo Provincial Tracking Team outside Polokwane
• December 2023 – The Border Management Authority (BMA) said it intercepted 443 unaccompanied Zimbabwean children below the age of 8 years.

‘Lucrative business’

According to Kadwa, human trafficking and the smuggling of people constitute a global criminal enterprise that is lucrative both internationally and in South Africa.

“We’re not dealing with a single group. We are dealing with different groups from different regions that are operating in South Africa and targetting areas like Gauteng for issues such as sex trafficking, labour trafficking and other forms of trafficking that we are dealing with,” he said.

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“Human trafficking happens in-country and extra-territorially. In South Africa, especially in Gauteng being the economic engine and also G7 countries, they become a major market to attract human trafficking and smuggling of migrants because there are various push and pull factors.

“With sex and labour trafficking, we’re getting both in-country, where people are trafficked from other provinces into Gauteng and other bigger cities around the country. With sex trafficking, we’ll be having both in-country, but we’re also having people coming from African countries, but also Thailand, China, Eastern Europe. We’re seeing different facets of trafficking as a global criminal enterprise.”

He said that trafficking kingpins also invest money into their operations, targetting the poor and those in unstable countries.

“Organised illegal migration networks are global. The masterminds are able to exploit people from poor backgrounds to go to these communities and recruit a whole army of these people, take them to Home Affairs so they can substitute these people through a whole scheme with the idea that they’re going to be sent overseas.”

“This is a vast network. We’re dealing with kingpins and major players in this area with global connections.”

While the Hawks have managed to crack some of these cases, having arrested kingpins and middle-men, Kadwa admitted more still needed to be done to curb human trafficking in the country.

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