Nearly six years after a dramatic raid on a Johannesburg factory, seven Chinese nationals have been handed 20-year prison terms each for trafficking and exploiting 91 Malawian nationals, including 37 children, under inhumane conditions.
The sentencing was delivered on Wednesday by the Gauteng South Division Court, following their conviction on multiple counts of human trafficking, kidnapping, and immigration violations.
Court documents identified the convicts as Shu-Uei Tsao, 42; Biao Ma, 50; Hui Chen, 50; Quin Li, 56; Zhou Jiaqing, 46; Junying Dai, 58; and Zhilian Zhang, 51. They were found guilty on 158 of the 160 charges filed against them.
The group’s arrests date back to November 2019, when authorities raided a factory named Beautiful City in Village Deep, south of Johannesburg, after a worker managed to escape and tipped off officials. Inside, investigators discovered Malawians confined behind high walls and razor fences, with armed guards restricting their movements.
According to prosecutors, the victims were trafficked between 2017 and 2019, many of them smuggled into South Africa inside shipping containers after being recruited from Chinese-owned factories in Malawi.
The court heard harrowing accounts from workers who described being forced into 11-hour shifts, seven days a week, with no rest days. They were paid far below South Africa’s minimum wage of $1.64 (£1.22) per hour and had deductions from their meagre wages if they requested time off.
“They were not allowed to leave the heavily guarded premises, even to buy food, which was dirty and unsuitable for human beings,” one worker testified.
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Others told the court they were transported in windowless trucks, denied personal communication, and compelled to operate defective machines without protective gear, leading to workplace accidents.
The National Prosecuting Authority welcomed the judgment, stressing that it would serve as a deterrent in a country increasingly vulnerable to trafficking networks.
“Human trafficking has become a scourge in our country, we have become a destination as South Africa for human trafficking [due to] various reasons, including our porous borders,” said spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane.
The Department of Labour, which was part of the 2019 raid, also hailed the ruling. “We need greater collaboration between government departments to root out all these issues,” the department stated.
Prosecutors had sought life imprisonment for the seven, citing the gravity of the offences, but the court imposed 20-year terms for each.
