Star witness in Joslin Smith case says silence was driven by fear, drugs and hush money:
The state’s star witness in the trial for the kidnapping and human trafficking of six-year-old Joslin Smith returned to the stand on Wednesday, admitting to repeatedly lying to police and the media about her knowledge about the child’s disappearance.
Lourentia Lombaard attributed her silence and omissions to fear, anger and drug use — as well as a promised payment of R1 000 for her silence. The matter is being heard in the Western Cape high court, sitting in Saldanha Bay.
Lombaard is testifying in the hopes of being granted indemnity from prosecution, a decision that will only be made by the judge when all the witnesses have been heard, which could include the accused.
Lombaard has testified that she failed to inform authorities on multiple occasions that Joslin’s mother, Kelly Smith, had allegedly sold the child to a sangoma.
The state says Smith, the third accused in the case, received R20 000 for the child on Sunday, 18 February 2024, with the child being given to the sangoma the next day. Joslin has not been seen since.
Lombaard, who again fell ill and was assisted from the courtroom on Tuesday, resumed cross-examination on Wednesday by Rinesh Sivnarain, the attorney for Smith.
Under questioning — with frequent interjections and clarifications from Judge Nathan Erasmus — Lombaard acknowledged that she had had several opportunities to disclose what she knew to police but chose not to.
She portrayed herself as a bystander in media interviews, despite knowing about the events surrounding the child’s disappearance.
According to her testimony, Smith allegedly offered her R1 000 to remain silent — a payment that was never made.
Joslin was allegedly sold “for her eyes and skin”, Lombaard previously told the court.
Lombaard’s history of withholding information from authorities dates back to the night of Joslin’s disappearance.
She admitted to lying to police during their first visit, to remaining silent the following day and to making a false confession during her initial arrest.
She claims that her first truthful account was in her section 204 statement, made in October 2024, when she formally became a state witness.
Prompted by Erasmus during testimony, Lombaard confirmed that the R1 000 she had been promised played a role in her decision not to come forward. “That’s correct,” she said, when asked if the money had influenced her silence.
Sivnarain pressed Lombaard on why she had not informed police immediately when, by her own account, she overheard Smith telling her partner, Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis (accused number one), about the plan to sell Joslin.
This conversation, she testified, occurred at the couple’s shack on February 18, while one of Smith’s sons was in another room and Joslin played outside.
Lombaard further claimed that accused number two, Stefano van Rhyn — a friend of the couple — would also have heard the plan because Smith “was speaking very loudly.” According to Lombaard, Van Rhyn was offered R1200 to remain silent, a claim he has denied.
All four adults involved in the case were under the influence of either tik or mandrax during the days surrounding the child’s disappearance. They have admitted to regular drug use.
According to court testimony, Joslin went missing during the afternoon of February 19. Smith only reported the child missing around 9 pm that evening, saying she had spent the hours before that searching for her.
Lombaard testified that police visited the shack she shares with her husband, Ayanda, and their children late on the night of February 19 or early the next morning.
Although she had already overheard Smith discussing the plan to sell her daughter, Lombaard said she did not volunteer this information to the officers.
Instead, she told Smith — within earshot of police — to “tell the police what you did with your child.”
The officers, she claimed, “just walked away.”
Pressed by Sivnarain as to why she did not speak directly to the police, Lombaard responded: “I was scared. I didn’t know how to tell the police after we decided we weren’t going to tell anyone.”
“You were scared to tell them but you told [Smith] to tell them?” Sivnarain asked.
“That’s correct,” she replied.
When asked what she had feared, Lombaard answered, “That they would lock me up.”
Erasmus interjected to clarify whether the R1 000 Smith had allegedly promised her for remaining silent had played a role in her inaction. Lombaard confirmed that it had.
“What role?” Erasmus asked.
“We weren’t supposed to tell anyone,” she responded.
The judge pressed further: “You told [Smith] she must tell the police what she did with her child. You weren’t scared to say that to [Smith] in front of the police?”
“I wasn’t scared, I was angry,” Lombaard said.
“You just told me you were scared. What is it now — scared or angry?” Erasmus asked.
“Angry,” Lombaard replied, saying it was anger that made her raise her voice when confronting Smith in front of the police.
All three accused have pleaded not guilty.
The trial continues.
In South Sudan, the same two old men beat the same old war drums:
Fifteen years into its independence from the north, South Sudan is at a precipice — will it slip back into war or pull back and fully implement the 2018 agreement that ended its first civil war? President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar agreed to share power — but not much sharing has happened.
And now, in the country’s Upper Nile State, bullets are flying again and bombs are dropping. Kiir and Machar are once again on opposite sides.
At the beginning of last week, more than 20 civilians were killed in aerial bombardments of Nasir, a town near the Ethiopian border in Upper Nile. Local residents accused the armies of South Sudan and Uganda of doing the bombing, alleging that residential areas were deliberately targeted. Even though Kiir and Machar are in theory both leaders of the government, state forces and their allies, like Uganda, are seen as serving Kiir.
Earlier this month, government forces had left Nasir amid attacks from the White Army, a militia predominantly composed of Nuer people loyal to Machar. In the most publicised incident, a UN helicopter evacuating people from Nasir was shot at, killing a crew member and critically injuring others. The hostilities escalated days later when the White Army executed General Majur Dak, an officer of the South Sudanese army who had been captured.
President Kiir has since joined arms with the Ugandan army to fight the insurgents. Blaming Machar, Kiir has arrested or sacked many of his vice president’s government allies and reinforced hostile security around his home.
In theory, Kiir and Machar are in the same government and are in the same political organisation, the South Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM). Machar’s faction is called SPLM in opposition (SPLM-IO).
The violence in Upper Nile first flared up when the government announced plans to replace long-serving soldiers with new recruits. Local militia fighters who have long demanded to be fully integrated in the national army now face forced disarmament and reject the government’s plan.
Creating a unified national force was agreed in the 2018 power-sharing agreement between Kiir and Machar but it has not happened. That delay means that there is some public sympathy for Machar’s camp — even as its fight is waged by a militia that has a notorious history of ethnic violence.
Above all, nobody but the belligerents wants a return to full-scale war. The SPLM-IO’s recent announcement that it is pulling out of the 2018 peace arrangement has heightened anxiety.
“The opposition should protest the arrest of their leaders but not pull out. Now there’s a clear sign that the government may not yield to the IO’s demands, increasing the likelihood of war,” says Dr Abraham Kuol Nyuon of the University of Juba.
A coalition of the embassies of Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and the US in Juba recently offered to mediate direct talks between Kiir and Machar.
Earlier attempts — including efforts led by the regional bloc Intergovernmental Authority on Development, peace talks in Rome and negotiations in Kenya and Ethiopia — did not advance the power sharing enough to prevent the current escalation.
Yet, the alternative is horrific. In 2015, when disagreement between Kiir and Machar escalated into a civil war, an estimated 383 000 died in the three-year conflict and the country was thrust into the 2017 famine which affected 6 million people.
Even with that recent memory, the two sides are not ruling out a return to war. Defence Minister General Chol Thon Balok said: “If IO doesn’t dissolve the White Army, we shall fight.”
General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the head of Uganda’s armed forces, the UPDF, said: “I want to offer the White Army an opportunity to surrender to the UPDF force before it’s too late. We seek brotherhood and unity. But if [they] dare to fight us, you will all die.”
But people directly affected by the violence strike a different note.
“Both parties must stop. Let the cycle of brutality end. My heart is broken,” Abul Majur, daughter of the slain South Sudanese army general Majur Dak, said in a statement.
This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here.
Narcissist – the fallen angel:
Narcissism is an age-old tale. In scripture, the devil is a fallen angel attempting to corrupt Adam and Eve into eating the apple. Notwithstanding, the genesis of human life is the problematic of sin; ensuring the banishment of Adam and Eve from heaven (the garden). What we should be questioning is why is eating the apple the original sin when apples are made for eating? This line of questioning exposes the illogicality in the punishment. The punishment does not match the crime.
In the same way, power is an aphrodisiac for narcissists because it means that as fallen angels, narcissists devalue and punish to maintain dominance over the other. We see this devaluation in the ways in which Making America Great Again is the personification of narcissistic censure to maintain dominance. This explains the need from a small group of mainly white men, trying to protect their hold on power at the expense of a rapidly approaching doomsday scenario. The devil or narcissist is prepared to sacrifice the Garden of Eden (Earth) for transient dominance over the other.
According to Frantz Fanon, colonialism is pathologised as narcissism. For Fanon, colonials have stunted ego development, meaning that the narcissist is incapable of ubuntu (mutual recognition between the self and other) because recognition was skewed for the narcissist. (Examples of this can be found in Black Skins, White Masks with the formation of the identity of the pied noir). Hence, the narcissist remains traumatised by the initial wound of skewed recognition.
This recognition failure embedded in the logic of colonialism perpetuates a public mental health crisis of social narcissism. In this scenario, the narcissist uses skewed recognition to maintain power through violence. But this also hinders the pleasure of seeing the other. Thus, colonialism is determined by a lack of ubuntu. Think back to the Zelenskyy/Trump conversation in the oval office where Zelensky fails to acknowledge Trump’s authority. Trump infantilises and devalues Zelensky, highlighting the ways in which narcissistic injury displays its power through shame and humiliation.
If narcissistic logic is applied in the context of slavery, colonialism and apartheid, what we see is how the coloniality of gender becomes a vehicle for enslaved female bodies bearing the double burden of sexual and reproductive labour to ensure narcissistic supply (more bodies for the narcissist to maintain power over). This form of control over the enslaved (female) body has come to define global politics.
From the geno/ecocides of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Palestine, we see the deliberate devaluation of bodies in the Global South to maintain Western Imperialism. Furthermore, the displays of brutality on our screens (an indictment of our extractive consumerism leading to the conflict in the DRC), has emblazoned us in pushing back against our own fungibility by taking to the streets worldwide to oppose our subjugation. But this also means more blunt force with the rise of fascism. What we will see is more images of brutality while the narcissist’s power wanes because history has taught us that empires fall leaving a bloody mess.
But, for us to understand the narcissist as the fallen angel, we need to understand the vicious cycle of harm that is perpetuated when a necessary hiatus for reflection is lost. With careful analysis, we see that discard is the secondary wound of the fallen angel. Therefore, narcissistic injury remains unhealed. Thus, the Garden of Eden becomes purgatory for the devil with the fungible human becoming a victim of narcissistic injury. A healing praxis is offered as a remedy that transmutes the wound into a meaning-making moment through recognition, reflection and repair. Necessary processes that can lead to love and forgiveness.
How does this connect to the narcissists of current geopolitics? There are two things that are happening simultaneously: 1. Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu is absconding court and ethnically cleansing Palestine and, 2. “Money. Money. Money. Is so funny in a rich man’s world”; these ABBA lyrics allude to the games that the rich play with the lives of the vulnerable.
They make the rules by moving capital around and maintaining power over others. It is the master/slave dialectic of a capitalist business model as demonstrated by the Caribbean scholar Anton de Kom. In times like these, the only people power we have is to opt out of giving our money to these rich men who serve the war economy, thereby making us fungible while adding to their power and abuse.
What we should be doing is focusing our resources on building solidarity, safety and connection to each other by bringing more love into this world. Especially, when we are faced with hate crimes, geno/ecocides and more state repression. Now is the time to set aside our petty political squabbles and find joy in community while resisting the narcissists.
If the war economy is driving bloated defence budgets, then trumping the last socialists out of politics with Bernie Sander and Jeremy Corbyn should make us all feel very restless and ready to push back and resist this new unfolding world order that will lead to more death and destruction. Imam Muhsin Hendricks’ life should be our guiding light in this moment with the importance of remembering the value of freedom.
Nadira Omarjee is a decolonial feminist scholar affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and to the University of the Witwatersrand. She has published two books: We Belong to the Earth: Towards a Decolonial Feminist Pedagogy Rooted in Uhuru and Ubuntu and Reimagining the Dream: Decolonising Academia by Putting the Last First.
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