Mbalula vows to ‘crack down’ on syndicates responsible for Prasa infrastructure

On Monday, Mbalula and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) visited three scrapyards in Gauteng.

It formed part of a search-and-seizure operation meant to locate stolen state property such as copper cable wires.

One person was arrested for possession of copper wires in the early hours of the morning.

Mbalula said the department will crack down on syndicates responsible for vandalism. 

“The vandalism is not a random thing, it’s done by syndicates. You cannot crack syndicates without intelligence, you’ve got to infiltrate them. This is not an innocent act of people stealing property.

“We have a multi-pronged approach and we are dealing with that. (It) involves law enforcement, so Prasa is not acting alone. It’s a multidisciplinary force. We will get down to this and shut down this anarchy.

“We will bring these criminals to book and we’ll teach them a lesson. This country is not a banana republic.”

According to South Africa’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, cable theft cost the country between R5 billion and R7 billion a year. 

Mbalula said the majority of the losses occurred during level of 5 of the lockdown back in 2020.

He added that Prasa employees are responsible for some of the theft.

“This damage also you will realise that it happens when there is no security. There is no security here during the lockdown, it was done away with because of the security contracts were irregular. We have this kind of thing that even when we have security, the security in the past even the vandalism happened.

“So the vandalism is not carried out by ordinary people, it is the work of the syndicates. There are people who are targeting Prasa in terms of syndicates that found thus to be of used.

“They are not working alone they work with Prasa internal people who are doing this work. As you would’ve seen in Heidelberg, some Prasa people were basically arrested.”

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