Even though you arrive on the scene hours after the highway robbery, your heart still quickens at the sight. It’s dawn, it’s cold and the air is thick with steam rising from car exhausts.
The flashing lights on the police cars greet your eyes, the yellow-and-white tape stretched across the road, a traffic officer waving cars through the single remaining lane.
Then there’s the cash vehicle itself, standing skew across two lanes, doors open.
A short way off, a red BMW — brand new, the front fender smashed. Another car, another BMW, black this time, the whole passenger side dented and buckled.
As you get closer, you see the small white chalk circles on the tarmac where cartridge cases were found. And, finally, a shock: the body next to the cash vehicle, a shape under a brown blanket, a small stream of black blood on the road.
Superintendent Cobus Hamman, head of the serious and violent crimes unit in Richard?s Bay, is with a few plain-clothes detectives on the grass verge, talking into his cellphone. The men, wearing their crime-scene jackets, are combing through the cars for clues.
Our conversation is punctuated by the ringing of Hamman’s phone. This is the third cash-in-transit robbery in his bailiwick in 24 hours.
He is exhausted and dispirited.
”There’s definitely an increase in these robberies,” he says. ”Last year there were 10 in the whole year. This year we have already had 16 and the year is not even halfway through.”
Zululand has seen a dramatic increase in cash-in-transit robberies.
”A lot of money is coming into Zulu-land,” says Hamman, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
”The government is pumping money in for development. They are building roads and putting up offices. People are getting jobs, salaries. The banks are opening up branches all over the place. This means that a lot more money is being transferred up here. This is a big area, there are lots of escape routes.
”As the roads are being improved, so it becomes easier for criminals to make a getaway.”
For the modern-day highwayman, robbing the stagecoach has become big business. A single heist can net R1-million or more.
As security has tightened the crimi-nals have become more ruthless. Most cash-in-transit robberies are carried out by well-organised syndicates with no respect for life.
”Most of these crimes are inside jobs all the way,” says Greenforce security company owner Louis Fourie.
”The syndicate either infiltrates someone into the security company or buys information from an employee. They find out what the routes are, what the routine is, who is doing what. In the larger security companies there has to be some kind of routine, and it is more difficult to keep tabs on your employees. In smaller companies, like mine, the owner can be more flexible and can change things immediately and all the time.”
Once the crime is decided upon, the network swings into action. Word goes out that the syndicate needs vehicles — usually luxury cars and heavy-duty 4x4s. These are hijacked to order, a few days — sometimes a few hours — before the planned heist and used to follow the cash van, box it in, force it off the road, even bring it to a halt by smashing into it. In one instance a 12-ton delivery van was hijacked and minutes later used to ram a cash vehicle in a head-on collision that killed the driver. In another instance the cash van was stopped and then set on fire to smoke the security guards out.
Another technique is to pull a heavy chain with sharp links across the path of the cash vehicle. The gangs are large — more than 20 at a time — and heavily armed.
”The syndicates are usually based in Durban and Johannesburg,” says Director Johan Booysen, provincial commander for serious and violent crimes.
”They employ a huge network of local people that they can call on at short notice. This is what makes it so difficult to get these guys — they form groups and then disperse.”
Syndicates get help from police, security guards and traffic police.
”That is our biggest problem,” says Booysen, ”police corruption. Sometimes these guys actively connive with the robbers. Or they turn a blind eye. Or they tip them off about raids. Sometimes they are in collusion, other times they are intimidated into cooperation. The criminals don’t threaten or cajole — they just kill.
”Some policemen sacrifice their lives for law and order, and then there are others who are in business with the criminals. We as police do everything in our power to stamp out corruption, but policemen are very good at covering their tracks.”
The cash-in-transit syndicates have a Mafia-like code of honour and a vow of silence. Not to mention highly paid lawyers. ”I get calls from these lawyers whenever we arrest a suspect,” says a senior policeman with a humourless smile.
”The first thing they want to know is how much money was stolen. Then they know how much they”re going to make from defending the suspect. There”s a guy in Durban who is retained by these syndicates. Minutes after we make an arrest he is on the phone to me, confirming that he will be representing the suspect.”
Cash-in-transit robbers never turn state’s evidence because they know that if they do, they and their families will be killed. The syndicates look after those who are loyal and the local network is so pervasive that there is no escape.
”Part of the problem is that the public is too scared to come forward, or they don’t want to get involved,” says Hamman.
”The criminals are so brave, they don’t bother with balaclavas or with hiding — they go around boasting about what they have done.”
Coin Security has been hardest hit in the past few months, but its KwaZulu-Natal provincial manager, Marius Odendaal, refused to be interviewed. Jake Roode of Fidelity Guards — another cash-in-transit company — also refused to comment. But Fourie of Greenforce said that gun laws need to be changed to give equal firepower to security guards.
”Security guards must be allowed to carry heavy-calibre weapons,” he says.
”There’s no point in giving your guards side-arms. Here you’ve got three men with pistols, and they’re attacked by 24 men with AK-47s and R-5 rifles. There’s no contest.”
It was impossible to establish how much money has been taken in cash-in-transit robberies this year as no banks were prepared to comment.
And in truth the money stolen is a small part of the costs. For each robbery, at least four or five top-of-the-range cars are stolen from members of the public and smashed during the raid. In the middle of one robbery in April on the N2 outside Mtunzini, the thieves realised belatedly that they had damaged their getaway car. So they hijacked the next passer-by — a woman taking her children to school who didn’t realise the significance of the stalled vehicles on the side of the road until it was too late.
Another reason for the sharp increase in cash-in-transit crime in Zululand points to a more sinister malaise than corrupt police: the reported vendetta being waged by the police Area Commissioner, Oupa Maseko, against his own men.
Policemen in the special units allege that Maseko is trying to undermine their work by denying them resources. The reason, given by a policeman who resigned — allegedly after being forced out — is that Maseko is building an empire for himself and his cronies and is squeezing out those members of the force that he cannot bring in line with his own ambitions.
”He said that he doesn’t care about us or what we do and he won’t give us vehicles,” says the policeman.
This has been the subject of an inquiry launched by KwaZulu-Natal High Court Judge Jan Combrink, after court cases were delayed and suspects escaped because police did not have transport to court. As a result of Judge Combrink’s inquiry an evaluation team has been dispatched from Pretoria to investigate the state of police transport in the Umfolozi region of Zululand.
”The area commissioner is ultimately responsible for all effective policing, crime prevention and police logistics in his area,” says a deadpan Booysen, refusing to be drawn further.
Area Commissioner Maseko responded that the complaints against him had been blown out of proportion by the media: ”The SAPS, like any other public service, has limited resources. It is rather strange for the media to attempt to convert hills into mountains. The reporting of the problems with vehicles has been biased by the press.
”We need the support and understanding of our communities. I will do everything in my power to deliver quality policing in spite of the constraints.”
But the wider implication is that without resources, the special units in Zululand cannot operate effectively.
”You can come and sit with me any day of the week,” says Hamman, ”and I will tell you exactly how many vehicles I have got and how I have to use them. Because we don?t have enough, I have to decide which have to get used where. And so I suppose that letting criminals escape is ultimately my responsibility because I was not able to assign back-up vehicles to accompany them. Also, sometimes my men have to sit idle in the office because there is no transport for them to follow up leads or to get to the scene of the crime.”
The same holds true for cash-in-transit crimes. There are not enough resources to ride shotgun on money vans — and with the police complicity in crime it has not taken criminals long to discover this. Which is why there is a still life of destruction on this early winter morning on the N2 highway outside Richard’s Bay.
The robbery was botched. Three of the criminals were arrested a few hours later, after a high-speed chase through sugar-cane fields in which they crashed their hijacked getaway car. Two cash boxes were recovered –there is still a small amount of money missing with the other suspects. And that will probably be the end of it. The rest of the gang will have disappeared like smoke.
In cash terms, the losses have not been large. A few thousand rand has gone. But on the highway stands a smashed cash vehicle; four expensive cars damaged beyond repair; and an unknown number of traumatised, possibly killed or wounded hijack victims.
And a body under a blanket, in a small black pool of blood.