The Govt Fails Joshlin

The Joshlin Smith story keeps sparking new conversations.

- KEKELETSO NAKELI

In the family's makeshift two rooms, societal problems are amplified and peeled away, layer by layer.

At the centre of it all, a missing child, the chokehold that poverty has on families, the slow deaths that drug dependence brings to families, the demonising narrative that behind every missing child is a traditional healer's muti concoction.

If Kelly Smith did indeed say her missing child has made her famous, she knew that the missing person's case had a message to deliver and, as a result, conversations are being had.

One of those conversations is about the adoption processes in South Africa, legal and illegal.