Joshlin Smith has been missing since 19 February 2024.
Image: SAPS
I recently travelled to the United States and Canada as part of a trinational research project with UNISA, focused on building research capacity among second-year female students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Upon landing in Canada and activating my eSIM, the first message that appeared on my phone wasn’t a welcome text. It was an Amber Alert for a missing one-year-old child. Here I was, a South African academic far from home, greeted not by an advert or algorithm but by a plea to help find a child. From that moment, I became an engaged part of a collective solution.
The Amber Alert system was created in 1996 after the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Amber Hagerman in Texas. It stands for America’s Missing Broadcast Emergency Response. It remains one of the most effective public safety systems in the world. When a child goes missing under suspicious circumstances, geographically localised alerts are broadcast across phones, radio, television, and social media within roughly a 160 km radius of the incident. Amber is meant to function as a digital neighbourhood watch, harnessing the collective power of the public to assist law enforcement.
Sceptics sometimes question whether such alerts still work in our hyper-notified, distracted world. The answer is an emphatic yes. Even when people don’t consciously react, their minds would register the Amber Alert, which would trigger a subconscious vigilance. It turns passive citizens into active responders.
In 2020, I wrote a series of syndicated columns urging the South African Police Service (SAPS) to adopt the Amber Alert system in partnership with Meta (then Facebook). It was an obvious and overdue step for a country with limited policing capacity and plagued by rising child abductions and gender-based violence.
The call was initially met with silence. Then, too much celebration, SAPS and Meta launched Amber Alert South Africa, the first of its kind on the continent. I applauded both organisations, but once the cameras were off and the press releases archived, the alerts themselves went silent. It may be that COVID-19 distracted us, but inaction cannot be excused by circumstance.
What began with fanfare quickly succumbed to what I call “Launch Fatigue” our national habit of unveiling bold innovations only to abandon them before they mature.
Globally, Amber Alerts are standard public safety tools already deployed in:
South Africa’s version was through Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms. When SAPS verifies that a child under 18 has likely been abducted and faces imminent danger, Meta pushes an alert to users within the relevant area.
But here’s the problem: since the pandemic, I haven’t seen a single alert. Neither, it seems, have most South Africans. SAPS does have a Standard Operating Procedure for Missing Persons, and nine Provincial Bureaus for Missing Persons handle investigations. In theory, Amber Alerts should appear on Facebook and Instagram within minutes of a verified case.
Yet a 2025 parliamentary reply revealed that KwaZulu-Natal accounted for four of the top five police stations with the highest number of missing women and children between 2019 and 2024:
Of these 375 cases, 309 or 82% from KwaZulu-Natal alone. Despite this, I have never received a single Amber Alert, as a heavy social media user and nano-influencer based in this very province. Not once. So we must ask: how can the province with the highest number of missing children have the quietest alert system?
Amber Alert South Africa is not being used or is not being used effectively, and in that silence, families suffer. The system exists. The partnership exists. The technology exists. What’s missing is consistent activation, public awareness, and accountability. And while systems sleep, our children and our sisters vanish into silence.
We cannot passively revel and cheer from the sidelines in the General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi era; we must also contribute to policing. Becoming the operational eyes and ears of #AmberAlert empowers citizens to help the police help us.
As an academic working in digital transformation, I extend an offer that allows me and my research partners to help operate, evangelise and evaluate the Amber Project under SAPS’s legal direction. With robust data analytics, a revitalised social media strategy, and active citizen engagement, we can breathe life into and operationalise this critical public safety tool.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Professor Colin Thakur is the UNISA Chair in 4IR and Digitalisation and Distinguished Professor at UNISA. The views expressed are his own opinion.
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