“We need the army” — Fidelity boss after 22 security officers killed
Thirteen cash-in-transit (CIT) robberies over the past few days have resulted in 22 security officers being killed and another 121 injured.
Several of the robberies were captured in photos and videos widely shared on social media like Twitter/X.
Fidelity Group CEO Wahl Bartmann has told eNCA that the number of incidents was at its highest in three years.
“The violence that goes with these attacks and the precision [with which they are] executed makes it very difficult for us to defend [against],” said Bartmann.
Fidelity has lost 16 officers in CIT robberies in the year to date, while 50 have suffered injuries.
“It is at a point where there is no respect for life anymore. Vehicles get bombed with staff still inside,” Bartmann said.
Wahl Bartmann, Fidelity CEO
Bartmann explained that CIT robbers were now carrying out military-style attacks, with dedicated roles for each gang member.
“There are guys that specialise in ramming the vehicle and guys that specialise in bombing the vehicle,” Bartmann said.
“They’ve got very accurate gunners that will take out people travelling in moving vehicles… one our choppers got shot the other day.”
He questioned why the government could not deploy the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to assist with the problem.
“When the trucks were burnt going from Van Reenen to Durban, the military was deployed. Why can’t they deploy the military to support us?” he asked. “If you look at the state of this industry, it is crucial.”
Destroyed Fidelity CIT van robbed on N12 in Johannesburg
Bartmann said the incidents occurred despite Fidelity upgrading all its vehicles to better protect staff.
The robbers have to resort to explosives because Fidelity’s transporting staff cannot open the back doors on their vehicles to access the cash themselves.
Instead, these doors are operated remotely from a control room.
Bartmann said it appeared that the explosives required to blow up the CIT vans were easy to come by, as they were used almost daily in nearly all the attacks.
In one attack on a Fidelity van on the N12 in Johannesburg over the weekend, the robbers had enough explosives to bomb the vehicle four times.
Among the videos posted on Twitter was one showing an explosion of the Fidelity van over the past weekend.
This video has just emerged of the weekend #CITRobbery on the N12 in JHB. WATCH: how the gang bombs the cash van. #CrimeWatch pic.twitter.com/ggSfu6VNrB
— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) October 9, 2023
In the incident above, only around half the cash was stolen because of the van’s multi-vault system.
Bartmann said the robbery took almost 30 minutes, but no law enforcement officers responded before the robbers had fled.
He highlighted that the public mainly saw successful robberies, not those that security companies defended against.
He added that Fidelity had deployed substantial and expensive resources to assist in the fight against CIT robberies.
“In each province, we’ve put up a helicopter — sometimes two — flying every day to support them,” Bartmann said.
“We deployed more than a thousand vehicles every day, and to protect each and every one of them is quite difficult.”
In some instances where robberies are unsuccessful, the vehicles are burnt with their cash inside.
Bartmann said although there were cases of insider involvement in the incidents, there were also instances where vans appeared to have been robbed without much insider information.
Two of the CIT vans robbed over the past few days were practically empty, Bartmaan said.
That suggested the attackers either did not know when money was in the vans or were acting on inaccurate intel.
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