Superintendent Randall Arendse is the controller of the Site C Police Station, Khayelitsha, Cape Town. He spoke to me in April 2012.

Fourth horseman, my arse. Every bloody day we’d get a new ‘Kenneth Oduah’ being brought into the station. Usually it was just some street kid who’d been bribed with a couple of bucks to say he was Kenneth. And it wasn’t just us. They were rocking up at every station in the Cape. Those US arseholes didn’t know what they’d started. Two hundred K USD? That’s nearly two million rand, which is more than what most South Africans will see in a lifetime. We had a photograph of the boy, but we couldn’t see the point of comparing it with the chancers that came in. Most of my guys, they’d been there that day, seen the wreckage. No ways anyone on that plane made it out alive, even if they were a bliksem rider of the apocalypse.

At first it was just the locals who were trying their luck but then the foreigners started arriving. There weren’t that many at first, but the next thing you know, they were rolling in. It didn’t take long for our local crooks to get in on the action. Some of the sharper ones even offered their services online. Soon there were syndicates organising these tours in just about all of the townships. None of them had accreditation permits. But that didn’t stop the punters falling for the scams. Jis, man, some of them even paid up front. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and I can tell you off the record, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the cops were in on the action.

I can’t tell you how many punters got stranded at the airport waiting for their ‘all inclusive package’ to come and pick them up. We got professional bounty hunters coming out here, ex-cops, even a few of those blerrie big game hunters! Some of them were after the cash and didn’t give a shit if it was true or not, but quite a few who came really believed the kak that preacher was saying. But Cape Town is a complex place. You don’t just waltz into Gugs or the Cape Flats or Khayelitsha in your fancy hire car and start asking questions, no matter how many lions or cheetahs you’ve shot in the bush. Quite a few of them found that out the hard way when they were relieved of their valuables one way or another.

I’ll never forget these two big American guys who came into the station one evening. Shaven heads, muscles on their muscles. Both of them were ex US Marshals, used to be marines. Thought they were tough, told us afterwards they’d been instrumental in bringing some of America’s Most Wanted to justice. But when I first met them they were shaking like little girls. They’d hooked up with their so-called ‘guide’ at the airport and he’d taken them where they wanted to go–into the middle of Khayelitsha. When they arrived at their destination, their guide relieved them of their Glocks, cash, credit cards, passports, shoes and clothes, leaving them with nothing but their boxers. Toyed with them as well. Made them walk barefoot into an old outhouse that stank to high heaven, tied them up and told them that if they shouted for help, he’d shoot them. When they finally got free it was dark, they reeked of shit and the skelm was long gone. Couple of locals took pity on them and brought them to the station. My guys laughed for days about those two. Had to drop them off at the US embassy in just their undies. None of the spare clothes we had at the station fitted them.

Fact is, people here are tough, most of them fight just to get by every day, and they’ll take a chance if they can. Not everyone, of course–but it’s hard here. You got to be streetwise. You got to respect the people or they’ll naai you big time. What, you think I’m going to breeze into downtown LA or wherever, act like I own the place? I swear, these moegoes who came here might just as well have handed over their valuables to the guys at immigration, cut out the middle man. Eventually we had to put up signs at the airport to warn people. Reminded me of that movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The hunt for that golden ticket with everyone going befok.

I mean, it was a major headache for us guys, the police and that, but it was lekker for the tourism industry. Hotels were full, tour buses were packed, everyone from the street kids to the hoteliers were coining it. Especially the street kids. See, at one stage, the rumour spread that Kenneth was living on the streets somewhere. People will believe anything given half a chance.

It was Kenneth’s aunt I felt sorry for. She seemed like a nice lady. My cousin Jamie was on the security detail for her when they unveiled the Dalu Air memorial statue and she flew down from Lagos. He said she was bewildered, kept saying that as those other kids had survived miraculously, why shouldn’t Kenneth be alive?

Those fundamentalist fuckers gave her unrealistic expectations. Ja, that’s what it was. False hope.

Didn’t even stop to think that what they was doing was cruel.