Seven Chinese nationals have been sentenced to 20 years in prison each after a South African court found them guilty of human trafficking and kidnapping for smuggling Malawian nationals into the country and subjecting them to forced labour.
The four men and three women were convicted earlier this year on 158 of the 160 counts against them, including charges of keeping illegal immigrants in the country and breaching labour laws by failing to register operations and maintain proper wage records. The case stems from a raid in 2019 at a Johannesburg factory, known locally as Beautiful City, where authorities found 91 Malawian nationals, 37 of them children, working in deplorable conditions.
Prosecutors said the victims had been smuggled into South Africa in shipping containers and then forced to work 11-hour shifts, seven days a week, without adequate training or safety equipment. Testimony at trial described heavily guarded premises where workers were not allowed to leave, even to buy food, and were paid far below South Africa’s statutory minimum wage of about $1.64 per hour. Workers who sought time off reportedly had pay docked.
The seven convicted are named as Kevin Tsao, Chen Hui, Qin Li, Jiaqing Zhou, Ma Biao, Dai Junying and Zhang Zhilian. Local reporting identified Tsao as a manager at the factory and the others as supervisors. Beautiful City produced inner cottons for blankets using recycled material, according to court documents cited by local media.
Authorities said the raid followed a tip from a worker who escaped. The Department of Labour, which was part of the 2019 enforcement action, and the National Prosecuting Authority both welcomed the sentences and urged closer interdepartmental cooperation to tackle trafficking and labour exploitation.
"This will go a long way in bolstering our fight against human trafficking," said Phindi Mjonondwane, a spokesperson for the prosecuting authority, adding that South Africa has become a destination for trafficking because of porous borders and other factors.
Human trafficking is a persistent concern in South Africa, which the government characterises as a source, transit and destination country for forced labour and sexual exploitation. South African labour law generally limits working hours to nine per day and provides a weekly rest period of at least 36 consecutive hours, protections that prosecutors said were routinely flouted at the Johannesburg site.
The convictions and sentences come nearly six years after the initial arrests in 2019. The prosecutions underscore heightened enforcement efforts against trafficking networks and exploitative labour practices, and they highlight ongoing calls from officials for better coordination among border control, labour inspectors and criminal investigators to prevent and dismantle such operations.