WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-05-29 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[Criminals steal everything! Jan]
By Noah Barron
Copper cable with an estimated value of R100 000 was stolen in Cape Town last week.
Two separate incidents in Blue Downs – the theft of 50 metres of cable on Thursday and that of 200m on Saturday – have taken 60 streetlights out of action.
Each metre of the 16mm-diameter cable costs R400.
No arrests have been made.
Another 170 streetlights have already been out of service for three months along the Stellenbosch Arterial.
In total, more than 5km of cable has been stolen this year, costing the municipality R22-million.
“It will cost quite a lot to repair. One wonders if we have enough for it in the budget,” said Pieter van Dalen, Cape Town councillor with the Cable Investigative Unit.
Last week’s incidents follow arrests on May 20 in connection with cable thefts in Manenberg. The two suspects are believed to have stolen copper from the Ruimte Road substation, causing power outages in 1 800 homes and businesses.
In other metal-theft news, a man in his mid-40s was arrested on Saturday morning for stealing steel reinforcement metal from roadway concrete adjacent to the N2 near Cape Town International Airport.
Local residents claimed that the accused thief, a resident of Crossroads, had been operating systematically to extract metal from under the street for more than three months.
He is appearing in court in Nyanga on Monday.
One of the arresting officers said the suspect had been filling the holes he made with sand so as to make detection difficult.
He had been arrested previously for copper wire theft.
According to Van Dalen, the man repeatedly said that the steel was on his land and, as such, his harvesting of it was lawful.
This fresh round of thefts comes on the heels of the announcement by Business Against Crime (BAC) last week that it planned to host a strategy session with representatives from Eskom, Telkom, Metrorail, Agri-Western Cape and the South African Police Service to discuss ways to curb non-ferrous metal theft.
BAC’s organiser, Dr Annelie Rabie, has called for increased business involvement in the crime-fighting effort, since cable theft has an adverse effect on the local economy.
“It cannot be regarded as normal theft,” she said.
Rabie said power outages, business delays and the risk of electrocution deaths among “the poorest of the poor” make cable theft a significant concern nationwide.
She added that though most stolen cable is lifted in the Western Cape, most is not resold there.
Rather, she said, BAC investigators have uncovered links between Cape Town crime syndicates and scrap wholesalers in Gauteng who pass the stolen copper on to international buyers from nations such as China.
Rabie will host the talks on June 11 at Eskom’s Brackenfell branch office.