For four months now Sihle Mavimbela has had to spend R14 on taxi fare each time he needs to draw cash from an automated teller machine (ATM).
He is one of many South Africans being forced to spend more money to get at the little that they might have in their bank accounts, thanks to the sharp upsurge in ATM bombings.
Mavimbela, a petrol attendant at Excel in Dobsonville, used to draw his weekly wages at a First National Bank ATM at the station where he works — a five-minute walk from his home. Since the machine was blown up in April he has had to take a taxi to Jabulani, 25km away.
”Getting access to an ATM has been a drag because the only place where a person can go to use a reliable ATM is at Jabulani Mall and we can’t walk there. These bombings are a real inconvenience, a person shouldn’t have to travel that far just for an ATM,” he said.
In the past six years banks have stepped up their rollout of stand-alone ATMs in townships and rural areas, precisely in response to the needs of their less mobile customers. Ironically, these are the ATMs now being targeted by organised crime syndicates, which presumably find the remote or free-standing booth-style machines easier to hit than the more secure cash carriers built into the walls of banks in affluent areas.
So far this year there have been a record 333 ATM bombings, many in the townships. In the past three months there have been at least three ATM blasts a week, the highest number in Gauteng. Nationally affected areas in July included Galeshewe township in the Northern Cape, Elspark in the East Rand and KaNyamazane in Mpumalanga, where a machine was blown up for the second time in less than 12 months.
In 2002 under the Financial Sector Charter the country’s major banks agreed to provide their less flush clients access to ATMs within a 20km radius. This led to an aggressive rollout of ATMs — the very ones which are being blown out of existence almost as quickly as they are set up.
”We are trying our best to live up to the charter but these criminal activities are making it extremely hard for us to reach our target,” said George Chirwa, the head of ATM banking services at Nedbank.
Nedbank is now unlikely to meet its target of rolling out 60% of all new ATMs in peri-urban and rural areas and townships by the end of the year.
”These are areas that we were previously not present in and where most of our new ATMs were going to be. Unfortunately these are the same areas where bombings are prevalent,” said Chirwa.
The very people who needed to benefit from access to ATMs have become the victims of this latest crime phenomenon — and they’re fed up.
A butchery owner in Dlamini, Soweto — who asked to be called ”Lucio” — arrived at his shop on Sunday morning to find two sticks of dynamite at the Standard Bank ATM outside. Would-be robbers had tied up a security guard the previous night and packed the machine with explosives — which failed to detonate.
”If we could do something as a community we would, but we are not dealing with petty criminals here. I think these are the same people who do cash-in-transit heists and now they bomb ATMs.
”What can you do to a gang of 13 guys?”