The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) managing director Anton Du Plessis says despite public concerns around ISIS extending its reach to South Africa, he hopes recent reports of a Kenwyn teenage girl being recruited was merely an isolated incident, and not a part of an ongoing trend of radicalization within the country.

“Its still worrying that a teenage girl could be persuaded, and lured into taking up ranks within ISIS,” he told VOC Drivetime.

A 15-year old Capetonian girl from Kenwyn was reportedly taken off a flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg, purportedly with the intention of boarding an international flight to Turkey. There she would likely have been smuggled across the border into civil-war stricken Syria.

The teenager was reported missing by her family a few days prior, and it is believed that her actions stem from interactions with radicals via social media. Whilst ISIS is known to have active recruiting cells within many Australia, Malaysia and countries across Europe and Northern Africa, the incident is the first official case within Southern Africa. There have however been anecdotal reports of local’s being recruited by the group.

“The incident with the 15-year old girl yesterday is concerning, and is something that as South Africans we do need to ask ourselves some tough questions about what our children are doing on social media,” he said.

On the part of the girl herself, he suspected this was not as much a case of political or ideological views being entrenched within a person, but rather an immature young child, potentially feeling alienated and reaching out for help.

What has made ISIS a cut-above other similar groups has been its intensive social media and online propaganda campaign. This has been spread out over thousands upon thousands of social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram and the like. Du Plessis said this was something needed to be monitored closely within South Africa.

“ISIS is sophisticated, and we’ve seen examples in other parts of the world. The only thing we can do is not necessarily try and fight social media, but we need to be smarter with how we prevent the counter narratives,” he said.

But he was adamant that the reality of what ISIS was propagating would soon start collapsing around it, with the true intentions, as well as life within its ‘caliphate’ coming to the surface. This included what the group’s execution of those seeking to leave the state.

“I think it is going to become increasingly difficult for them to tap into the kinds of people that it has been recruiting. Obviously it is going to continue recruiting the very extreme people, but I think will become increasingly difficult for its message to sell as it exposes itself,” he suggested.

It is reported that well over 20 000 foreign fighters from countries across the globe have already taken up arms with IS. Du Plessis said it would be difficult to link these massive numbers simply to simply radical religious views, as many of the youth joining the group were not particularly radical in their devout in their religious views.

Investigations are currently underway into her the teen may have acquired the funding for a business class ticket abroad. The girl is believed to have told her parents that her actions were motivated by humanitarian reasons. VOC (Mubeen Banderker)