Telkom cable thieves get 15 years behind bars
Two men — Joel Kabene and July Sithole — have been sentenced to 15 years in prison for tampering with and damaging copper cables belonging to Telkom in December 2020.
The Sunday Times reports that the court also sentenced the Mozambican pair to two years imprisonment for being in South Africa illegally, which will run concurrently with their other sentence.
They were arrested after being caught cutting copper cables belonging to Telkom valued at R10,000 by Combined Private Investigations (CPI) personnel in Pretoria.
The damage caused to the cabling impacted Internet lines, resulting in a loss of income for businesses in the area.
“Prosecutor Rabia Ebrahim asked the court to impose the minimum prescribed sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment regardless of them being first-time offenders,” the Sunday Times quoted NPA spokesperson Lumka Mahanjana as saying.
Copper and aluminium cables hold significant scrap value, making them a promising target for thieves in South Africa, and theft of these materials has been a prominent issue in the country.
Earlier this month, three cable thieves were sentenced to a combined 39 years’ imprisonment as they were found guilty of stealing at least 564kg of aluminium cabling belonging to Eskom.
“The three were arrested… in a sting operation at a scrap yard in Boksburg, after the scrap dealer tipped off an Eskom security contractor,” Eskom said.
“A sting operation, which led to the arrest of the three cable thieves, was set up between the scrap dealer, security contractor and the police at the scrap yard.”
However, the thieves — Bafana Masilela, Antonio Munyathi and Gutu Gumba — were only handed the sentences after 47 court appearances.
Gumba was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, with Masilela and Munyathi each receiving 12-year sentences.
“The convicts remained in custody since their arrest and appeared 47 times in court before they were sentenced,” Eskom said.
According to Eskom’s Gauteng safety, health, environment, risk and quality manager Kith Maitisa, the theft of cables, overhead lines, transformers, and conductors costs the utility around R4 billion per year.
In May 2022, Metal Recyclers Association trade adviser Donald Mackay proposed banning trading scrap metal for cash to combat the theft of cable infrastructure in South Africa.
“There are a couple of low hanging fruit that we should immediately go after that could make a big difference quite quickly,” Mackay said.
“One of them is to prohibit the trade in scrap for cash. The moment you trade anything for cash, traceability becomes a challenge.”
“That’s something that’s relatively easy to do quite quickly,” he added.
Mackay explained that the South African Police Service had a specialised copper cable theft team in the past, which no longer exists.
“There used to be specialised people within the police. For example, in Cape Town, the metro police had “copper heads”, which were a specialised team looking at copper theft particularly,” he said.
“The South African police, in fact, had an arrangement to have people specially trained to identify stolen scrap and taught how to inspect a yard to identify problematic dealers.”
Mackay added that the Metal Recyclers Association is reinitiating conversations with the police to get the programme back on track.
Now read: Twitter helped South African police track down July riots instigators
Loading ...