South Africa’s copper cable thieves have their own “schools” — and spy on court cases

Criminal syndicates run their own sophisticated “schools” to train thieves to steal copper cables and metal in South Africa.
That is according to Rens Bindeman, a technical advisor from the South African Revenue Protection Association (Sarpa), who recently spoke to SAfm about potential ways to clamp down on these crimes.
Copper and metal theft have been rife in South Africa in recent years, costing Eskom, municipalities, and transport agencies Transnet and Prasa billions of rand.
Transnet’s Freight Rail Agency’s regularly-published cable theft statistics paint a bleak picture of the situation on the ground.
Around 39km of copper cable was stolen from its railway network in 86 incidents last week, most of which was stripped from its container corridor.
Bindeman explained that members of the cable theft syndicates behind incidents such as these have previously been caught taking notes in court cases where suspects were being prosecuted.
These notes are typically taken back to sophisticated “training schools” where the modus operandi of the theft is adjusted to avoid new thieves from being caught and trialled like previous suspects.

Rens Bindeman, Sarpa technical advisor
Bindeman said intelligence-driven police investigations into the syndicates masterminding the attacks would be vital in solving the problem.
He was opposed to an outright ban on the sale of scrap metal to clamp down on cable theft but called for the existing legislation on the sale of secondhand goods to be better applied and gaps in current systems to be ironed out.
One of these gaps is at the point of export, where illegal copper gets shipped overseas.
Bindeman said it was difficult for port authorities to open containers to inspect if they contained their labelled contents.
“You have to take two days to try and get that stuff out. Most of these containers are just going straight through [customs] because they can’t see what it is,” he explained.
He added that only one port in the country had a working scanner that could detect what was in a closed container.
Transnet Engineering’s executive manager for security and forensics, Neil Naidoo, also told SAfm about how far metal and cable thieves would go to claim their loot.
“The guys are even so brave that while the train is in motion to sabotage it,” Naidoo said. “They go under the train, and they cut the engine cables of the locomotive to prevent it from moving.”
Naido explained that direct losses due to cable theft amounted to between R250 to R350 million per year, while the repair costs of locomotives were around ten times more.
In addition, consequential losses of shipments not being able to reach their destinations on time due to the cable vandalism and train breakdowns have cost Transnet around R7 billion.