The village of Tshiozwi has become a crime zone over the past few weeks, with a tavern assistant shot dead by robbers, and four suspected criminals who ended up in hospital last week after they were severely beaten by residents with sjamboks. This week, thieves took advantage of load shedding (and the dark that goes with it), when they stole the cables from every single electricity pole in one street.
Provincial police spokesperson Motlafela Mojapelo said that the police had opened a case of theft. He said that many cases of cable theft around the Tshilwavhusiku policing area had been reported and that they were busy investigating the matter.
The police are appealing to Tshiozwi residents to come forward and furnish them with information that can bring the culprits to book, before they take matters into their own hands again. "We will work hand in hand with community stakeholders until we defeat crime. We are going to work with the information we receive and hope something positive will come from it," Mojapelo said.
One of the victims of the cable theft, Ms Tendani Mukosi, said that she had woken up very early on Tuesday morning (5 July). This was after the scheduled load shedding for the night, so the electricity was supposed to be back on, but it was not. She went outside to see what was going on, when she noticed that not a single cable on any of the electricity poles along the whole of her street could be seen. "I could hardly believe my eyes. I kept looking around, thinking I would see the cables, but there weren't any."
Mukosi said that criminals saw the darkness as an opportunity to commit crimes. "These people are making our lives difficult. The residents are sick of the rampant crime in the area, where thugs are robbing and killing people with knives, stealing cables and breaking into homes and businesses. They have been terrorising the community for a long time, yet the police drag their feet in addressing these problems. All we want is a crime-free village," she said.
The municipal spokesperson, Mr Louis Bobodi, said that the criminals clearly did not care in the slightest about the monetary losses to the municipality. "Theft is not only measured in terms of replacement, but in consideration of service disruptions resulting from this vandalism. The cost of replacement is therefore very high. Copper thieves annually cost the municipality hundreds of thousands of rands, which could have been better spent on service delivery."
Bobodi said that reporting anything that might help the police with arresting these criminals and preventing further thefts like these from taking place was of the utmost importance.