Three gunmen kidnapped a man in broad daylight Wednesday in Fordsburg, a Johannesburg suburb home to a large Indian and Pakistani community, bringing the number of known abductions in the country to seven in the past two weeks.
According to video footage of the incident released today in the South African press, the victim was forcibly pulled out of the car in which he was traveling, under threat of using several sharpened weapons at approximately 1:36 p.m. Wednesday.
The video, which went viral on social media, shows a man being forced out of a car and into another passenger car parked in front, which blocks him on a public road.
South African police in Gauteng, the province of Johannesburg and the country’s capital, Tswane (formerly Pretoria), declined to comment on the Johannesburg kidnapping case.
“The police do not comment on the kidnapping cases, as it could endanger the life of the victim,” police spokesman for Gauteng Mawela Masondo told News24 in South Africa.
Over the past two weeks, at least five armed abductions have occurred in Greater Johannesburg, a businessman has been kidnapped in the coastal port city of Durban, and four children from the same family have been kidnapped in Polokwane, Limpopo province, neighboring Mozambique. according to South African crime activist Yusuf Abramji Lusa and the leading weekly of the Indian community in Pretoria.
The kidnapping of a businessman in Durban also took place on Wednesday, according to the public newspaper Laudium.
Limpopo provincial police spokesman Motlafela Mohapelo explained to Luza that a private car with four children was ambushed on its way to an educational institution in Polokwane on Wednesday last week by a group of seven armed men, their whereabouts are unknown, so far away.
Yusuf Abramji stressed in statements to Lusa that South African businessmen of Indian descent “are being persecuted, as is happening in Mozambique.”
Official figures from the South African Police (SAPS) point to a significant 133% increase in the number of cases reported to the police since 2010/11, from 2,839 cases to 6,623 in 2019/2020, according to the Pretoria Institute for Security Research.
