Wednesday evening, May 19 2021. Many of us were glued to our cellphones, following and trying to assist a person who we thought was victim to a hijacking and kidnapping.
According to a statement released by the SA Police Service, the 28-year-old woman “victim” (now suspect), in her statement described how on Wednesday her vehicle was taken by unknown men in Mohlakeng, Randfontein, who put her inside the boot and drove around with her for the better part of the evening.
On social media, she claimed that she was able to get into the boot with her cellphone, and that is how she was able to tell us where she was and narrate the events of that evening as the supposed hijackers drove around with her.
A team of SAPS personnel who worked throughout that evening to locate the "hijacked woman" established discrepancies in the supposed victim's statement. It emerged that the hijacking and kidnapping report was false and this was later corroborated by the woman's confession. She confessed that she was never kidnapped or hijacked.
After a string of social media posts about the "kidnapping and hijacking" were brought to the attention of police officers, an urgent search party was activated, and maximum resources mobilised to track the vehicle and find the "victim".
In peculiar situations such as this, where a woman is the perpetrator of such a dreadful act, one that actually speaks to the dangerous experience of being a woman, especially in SA, the temptation is to try understanding or rationalising why they did this or what the motive was.
If anything, they understand better than anyone the dangers women face in our country and we therefore do not expect that one would play on these vulnerabilities.
But, we should by all means not rationalise this sort of behaviour but treat it with the disdain it deserves and ensure that the criminal does not get away without a firm lesson that sets an important precedent.
Not only did she have a lot of South Africans up all night trying to do what they can to locate her, she also diverted the use of critical, already stretched resources and limited facilities towards a false claim.
At some stage, she wrote on social media that the perpetrators were arguing about who will have sex with her. This was all very traumatic for many of us, firstly because of the sheer gruesomeness of rape but in addition to this, many women in SA can relate to having being raped at some point in their life – triggering many into panic mode.
This to me is even more appalling because this person preyed on issues that hugely affect women in this country, and I would like to assume she very well knew that this approach would have us all on high alert.
The calculated, sustained and premeditated nature of the individual's actions who at no point saw it necessary to stop is shocking.
In a country with high levels of femicide and crime, we must ensure cases such as this do not go unpunished. The suspect has been arrested for perjury, defeating the ends of justice and fraud after she reported the false hijacking and kidnapping. A strong message should be sent and precedent set for such cases. They should not be treated with kid gloves.
We spend a lot of time criticising and rightfully calling on the police to do better and act swiftly. So, in the same breath, we need to call out citizens who become stumbling blocks to the work of the SAPS. Time and resources that could have been spent chasing real criminals and assisting genuine victims was instead spent on a wild goose chase.
Lt-Gen Elias Mawela had this to say: “Members of the public are cautioned to refrain from reporting false cases, pushing police to deploy resources that should rather be channelled at combating genuine serious and violence crimes”.
While I understand the frustration, especially because I too am frustrated, and I’m sure many South Africans are – I maintain that although we were played, the manner in which we responded fits the context of this country.
We could not have known that this was fake, and with the missing cases where women are found murdered, we could have not looked the other way. In fact, this is the response all crimes should receive – especially crimes against women, which often go unreported, under-reported and are met with a lack of urgency.
As a nation, we met the case, and actioned the police, with panic that is proportional to this country’s context. One that is rife with abuse, rape and femicide. This context calls for all of us to raise alarm when a vulnerable sector of population is said to be in danger.
The banding of the SAPS and society in the manner that we saw in this case should be a norm.
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