After a sudden rise in the number of kidnappings in recent years, South Africa has one of the highest rates of kidnappings globally, as Mpho Lakaje reports from Johannesburg.
Lesego Tau did not panic initially when one stranger opened the back door of his car Mercedes C-Class and climbed in.
She parked her car outside a shopping mall in Johannesburg, and she was lost in her world and texting a friend before going in to grab a few items for a get-together that evening.
“In my rearview mirror, I was looking and still thinking: ‘This person is going to be so sorry when they realise they are in the wrong car’,” she stated, recounting the events of last June.
But that was not at all an innocent mistake.
“Our eyes locked, and I realised what was happening.”
This was a kidnapping.
Six months earlier, one businessman ‘Yasin Bhiku’ was grabbed in the driveway of his home, near Johannesburg, just after coming back from the mosque.
CCTV footage was widely seen on social media in which it clearly shows Mr Bhiku dressed in a blue T-shirt and black trousers calmly chatting to a friend.
And two men were seen coming out of the car park opposite. At first, they walk towards him, but they start rushing towards him after Mr Bhiku realises what is going on and tries to flee.
He was defeated and forced into the vehicle at gunpoint.
However, the police later rescued him safely.
Another businessman, Mr Tau, who runs her own cleaning company in Pretoria, also tried to flee once she had figured out that she was about to be abducted.
She stated that she was trying to open the door of her car, but another man, dressed as a parking guide in a hi-vis jacket, blocked the door of her car.
And the man who was sitting in the back seat showed that he had a gun and ordered Ms Tau to drive out of the shopping complex.
She was told to stop along the way, and someone else jumped into her car.
