The Democratic Alliance (DA) has called for a dedicated police unit to investigate the recent spate of automatic teller machine (ATM) bombings around the country.
There have been 294 ATM bombings — seven in Gauteng alone during the past two days — since January this year.
”The dramatic increase in the number of ATM bombings this year … underscores the need for these crimes to be treated as a national emergency and to be investigated by a dedicated unit within the South African Police Service [SAPS],” DA spokesperson Dianne Kohler Barnard said on Thursday.
It is clear that these attacks are being carried out by highly sophisticated and heavily armed syndicates, which if not adequately dealt with, threaten to add to South Africa’s already horrific levels of aggravated robbery, she said.
The modus operandi of ATM bombings indicates that they are generally carried out by highly organised groups of individuals armed with assault rifles and explosives.
This raises the concern that members of the SAPS or the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) are possibly involved.
Already at least two SAPS members have been implicated in recent ATM attacks.
Access to explosives and assault weapons might also have been facilitated by the numerous thefts of such weapons from the SAPS and SANDF.
The SAPS’s organised crime unit is reportedly working on investigating some of these cases, but it is unclear whether there is sharing of information throughout the country and whether investigators are able to properly collate information on similarities in the techniques used to carry out the bombings.
Further complicating the situation is the fact that ATM bombings are inconsistently recorded as armed robberies, malicious damage to property or contraventions of the Explosives Act.
The lack of consistent criminal intelligence-gathering means the police are often unable to identify trends and spot patterns, Kohler Barnard said.
”All too often it seems that the SAPS is unable to respond quickly to changes in criminal activity.
”While the SAPS may argue with some justification that the increase in ATM bombings is a direct result of its success in combating cash-in-transit heists, this does not absolve it from dealing with this new, arguably even more dangerous, trend.”
The DA intends to pose parliamentary questions to Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula in this regard, she said. — Sapa