I have been avoiding writing about Joshlin Smith’s disappearance.
I didn’t want to be yet another voice with careless commentary, potentially prejudicing the investigation.
Besides, I have been noticing certain people using the story for political mileage.
Never forget that we are in an election year, people.
Until the elections are over, be suspicious of everything politicians say and do, especially if it’s clear that they are inserting themselves into stories that have nothing to do with them.
Or stories that would previously not have piqued their interest.
After all, most of them have been quiet as children have disappeared, been murdered and abused over the years.
How can I say these things with such confidence? It’s simple.
I have seen several moments of “interested parties” going live on Facebook with their views.
But they will wait for their followers to join and will only start talking once they are happy that their audience is large enough.
Even just the mention of “followers” in any context, is tellingly tacky.
To scream and shout on your Facebook live about something those followers said, is even worse and makes it abundantly clear that they are hijacking the story for self-gain.
Some even ignored police requests and shared information that they should not have.
The dignified people to admire and praise are those who volunteered their time and energy quietly and diligently searching for Joshlin, without broadcasting it to the world.
Okay, now that I got that out of my system, let me throw my two cents worth into the conversation.
We all now know that the little girl’s mother Kelly, along with her three co-accused, is appearing in court again on Wednesday.
The accusation is that she was party to selling her daughter for R20 000, apparently to one of the other suspects, whom some in the community believe is a sangoma, who used Joshlin for muti.
If this is true, then I fear the very worst of unthinkable fates for that poor child.
In fact, from the actions of some of the searchers who posted videos, they all believe pretty much the same that the search for Joshlin has gone from a search and rescue operation, to a recovery of her remains.
Why else would they be digging up soft soil inside hokkies and searching behind dunes and bushes?
It’s almost a better outcome than my initial suspicion that she had been sold into a human trafficking network and is already halfway around the world en route to some form of enslavement somewhere.
That’s the kind of thought-process that would drive me as a parent into certain insanity.
Which brings me to Joshlin’s mother Kelly.
The kind of vile ugliness that has been directed at her, has been nothing short of heartless.
She was condemned by some keyboard sleuths long before an arrest was even imminent. They too are only interested in attracting views and likes for their supposedly insightful comments, devoid of any compassion or respect for the law that they claim to uphold.
It’s actually rather sickening to see how they have torn apart such a vulnerable woman.
A picture of her laughing and of her looking at her partner in court, were all used as self-aggrandising fodder to serve their own addiction to online validation.
I cannot speculate about Kelly as a person, or her involvement in Joshlin’s disappearance.
But I do understand that she is a victim of socio-economic circumstances beyond her control.
As educated people not tempted by narcotics and in relative control of our lives, it’s easy to stand in judgment of her, while also extolling the virtues of those who oppose women abuse.
But very few of us will volunteer our skills to help uplift people in communities like hers, when there’s no news cameras and no story to attach it to.
But when the inevitable unthinkable consequences rear its ugly head, we are quick to judge.
There are other Kellys in thousands of Saldanha Bays all around us.
They are hopeless and see no way out of a life of impossible hardships.
What they need is compassion, a bit of our time and a hand-up in life.
And I don’t mean those fleeting moments once in a blue moon when we give a homeless person our left-over lunch.
I mean consistent interest and support that doesn’t falter when they do.
Because we are also quick to judge when they give in to temptation while we are helping them to dig themselves out, as if the same doesn’t ever happen to us.
We give up on our dreams and ambitions all the time. Imagine how much harder it is for someone with compromised faculties.
Kelly is a sign of the times; the product of our own neglect and complete focus only on our own wellbeing.
Forgetting that our individual wellbeing is inextricably tied to the wellbeing of our broader communities and everyone in it.
Guilty or not, Kelly is a mirror that has exposed us all for the heartless and cruel beings we truly are. And maybe that’s why people are so angry at her.
dailyvoice@inl.co.za