Motorist tortured as hijackings increase
ripple effect. It’s saving lives versus saving livelihoods.”
The lockdown has disrupted social services and child care and protection services, said Patrick Solomons, the director of Molo Songololo, a child rights organisation. “It has also contained children in their homes. The communication has been difficult and children accessing services has been difficult. We normally get our referrals from health workers, clinics, the police, other community organisations, and also from the schools.
“With the lockdown level 5 and level 4, we’ve basically seen child protection services interrupted and children’s access to services curtailed, which is fundamentally a big problem for children and for families.
“The cases we’ve received appear to be an increase in children attempting suicide because of domestic violence situations, increased levels of stress, lack of food security.”
There is a need to combat Covid-19 but “it must not compromise child care and protection. Many of the conditions that children experience have been there before Covid-19 and Covid-19 is highlighting them and in some cases, has increased vulnerability for children”, he said.
Isolation, said Luke Lamprecht, the advocacy manager for Women and Men Against Child Abuse, is a “cornerstone” of all abuse.
“That is just increased under the Covid-19 lockdown… It has kept children in their homes where what was occurring is likely to be amplified. And it’s made children’s access to services to protect children… impossible.”
Children could no longer report abuse to their teachers or sports coaches, for example.
“There is no one to disclose to.” That children are not being adequately fed, educated, and their health-care needs not being met, is in itself a challenge.
“What you don’t do for a child is also abusive,” he said. “People can’t feed their children. Children are getting abandoned because their parents can’t care for them.”
Lamprecht added: “We acknowledge that children need to be kept safe from Covid-19 but they also need other things and it should not be mutually exclusive.”
The national Department of Social Development did not respond yesterday.
It’s having a ripple effect It’s saving lives versus saving livelihoods
Shaheda Omar
TEDDY BEAR CLINIC SA
TANYA WATERWORTH AND SHANICE NAIDOO
HIJACKERS are back and it’s business as usual – that’s the finding from Tracker, whose statistics revealed this week that as the lockdown eased to level 4, criminals were back on the streets.
On Wednesday, a 49-year-old man was hijacked in Durban by suspects and allegedly abducted and tortured. He was taken to an unknown location where he was assaulted and boiling water was poured over him as the hijackers demanded his home address and cash.
Marshall Security and Crisis Medical spokesperson Kyle van Reenan said they were called to the victim’s home in Durban North after receiving reports of an armed robbery.
On arrival at the scene, Van Reenan said further information from the victim was that the suspects had taken him to his home after the abduction and stolen an undisclosed amount of cash.
“The victim sustained second-degree burn wounds to 20% of his body surface area. He was attended to by our emergency-care practitioners before being taken to hospital.”
Yesterday, SAPS spokesperson Colonel Thembeka Mbele confirmed that a case of kidnapping had been opened.
During the first week of lockdown, Tracker’s data indicated there was a 90% reduction in hijackings, with police also reporting that car and truck hijackings, and business and house robberies had significantly declined in the first week.
But the latest statistics have shown that during the two-week extension of the level 5 hard lockdown, criminals were back in action, with the number of vehicle recoveries increasing threefold compared with the first week of lockdown. In the first week of level 4, with more vehicles on the road, there was a sixfold increase in vehicle recovery activities compared with the first week of lockdown.
“Vehicle crime activities are set to rise even further, back to the same levels or even higher” as South Africans return to work and criminals resume their operations, said Ron Knott-craig, executive operational services at Tracker South Africa.
“We are already seeing an escalation in crime activity as vehicle movement increases, and we expect to get back to pre-covid-19 vehicle crime levels possibly as early as this (coming) week.
“Like the rest of the country, criminals are resuming their activities under eased restrictions,” said Knott-craig.
Cyclists and joggers, too, have become easy targets for criminals looking to pounce on them during the lockdown exercise window. Yesterday morning in Hout Bay, Cape Town, a mother and daughter were involved in an attempted mugging. Hout Bay SAPS could not confirm the arrest as the police station was being sanitised.
The Pedal Power Association (PPA) said a cyclist was bike-jacked by two men at around 7am in Hout Bay.
In Port Elizabeth, mountain-biker Ed Bennet was attacked at 7am when his assailant hauled him off his bike and dragged him towards the bushes. He allegedly ran away after Bennet managed to fight him off.
Steve Hayward, vice-chairperson of the PPA, said “someone close to him” had her bike and cellphone stolen as she was coming out of her Milnerton complex. She was flung off her bicycle and hit the ground, fracturing her vertebrae and had to be hospitalised as a result.
“These criminals know when the window is and know when to come out too,” said Hayward.
Elan Lohmann, founder of Sleekgeek, said: “In Cape Town, it is dark for half of the exercise window until 7.30am, which in a country riddled with crime makes no sense for the safety of citizens.”
Most people are too scared to go out at least until it is light.
Western Cape police spokesperson Colonel Andre Traut refuted these claims. “This office has no record of a specific crime tendency during the 6am to 9am exercising window and can therefore not label a specific area as a hotspot in this regard.