SIM cloned

am a Vodacom Prepaid customer and am extremely unhappy with the service (or lack thereof) you are providing. On Saturday 20 September, I crossed the border into Namibia and continued to use my cellphone until approximately 8:30am the next morning, when I turned my phone off. My cellphone was off until Wednesday 24 September. When I tried to re-connect to the Vodacom network, I was unable to and subsequently found out that my number had been ******/cloned (I am not sure). Someone had been *******ly using my number, and with it, accessed my WhatsApp and was able to contact the majority of my contacts, including my clients, impersonating me and asking them for money. When I phoned Vodacom yesterday (24 Sept), I was told that I would need to buy a new SIM, RICA it, and then request a SIM swap. Today, after some struggles to find shops stocking Vodacom SIMs, I bought a new SIM, RICAed it, and then phoned 082 135 again to do the SIM swap. I was told that this was not possible and that I would have to go to a Vodacom store. I drove to a Vodacom store, where I had to pay AGAIN for a new SIM and the SIM swap. Furthermore, I was told that the SIM would become active after 1 to 4 hours and maybe only after 24 hours. In this time, I am still not able to access my WhatsApp, which is vital for communication and managing the small business I have in addition to my main job. I am not the only person who I know this has happened to this week. One friend who was travelling with me experienced the same thing, as well as two friends I chatted to on Facebook. One friend had been out of cellphone reception for just a day, and the other had simply taken a flight and turned off his phone. The fact that *****sters are able to determine that a SIM is inactive is very dangerous, and Vodacom needs to take responsibility for this breach of security. Furthermore, while this does not apply to me, the majority of prepaid customers in this country are likely to be people who cannot afford contracts, or WIFI which would also allow for communication, and are therefore some of the more vulnerable members of our community. These people will lose jobs if they cannot access their cell numbers! Vodacom needs to make their customers aware of the risks associated with prepaid SIMs and make the knowledge that a SIM lock is a possibility publicly available. When this happened to a friend a year ago, they didn’t even tell him to do a SIM lock and now it happened to him again! During my numerous phone calls with Vodacom customer service and at the Vodacom store, none of your employees were at all concerned or surprised to learn that my number had been compromised, indicating that this may be a common occurrence.