SOEs team up against cable theft Mafia as costs to the economy ratchet higher

ESKOM in collaboration with other state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and state agencies is bearing down on crime syndicates, also called the cable theft Mafia, that have stolen more than R7 billion worth of copper cables a year as outages and load shedding leave networks vulnerable to attacks.

At a briefing yesterday, Eskom acting group head of security advocate Karen Pillay said a multi-disciplinary effort involving Telkom, Transnet, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) as well as the South African Revenue Service had set its sights on the organised elements of the scourge, including tracing the scrap export market transactions.

Pillay said: “This is a national crises that has a big impact on the economy. Through the joint efforts, we have integrated strategies to address the phenomenon and are exploring different approaches.

“At this point the law enforcement agencies are helping us and we are grateful for their involvement, even though there is little happening for now. It takes a lot of investigations to uncover the organised elements of this crime,” she said.

Transnet alone has lost in the region of R2bn to cable theft thus far, while all the SOEs combined estimate a R7bn loss. However, the knock-on loss to the economy is estimated at a whopping R187bn.

In March, Eskom had a breakthrough in Mpumalanga when a group of 14, including a scrap metal dealer, were arrested for copper and aluminium cables.

Logistics entity Transnet, also in March, reported that about 1 000km of copper cable used to power electric locomotives had been stolen to date, a significant increase on the 700km of cable stolen in the 2020/21 financial year and the 395km of cable stolen in the 2019/20 financial year.

To help secure its infrastructure, Transnet is spending R1.6bn on security in the current financial year. It is spending a further R400 million on replacing stolen cables.

“We have seen with the latest incidents that the recipients of the stolen copper are the scrap metal dealers. We have noted that the incidents are becoming more serious, organised to be more brazen, more equipped and they make off with large quantities of copper cables,” Pillay said.

Transnet reports that over the past three years, 1 200 copper cable thieves had been arrested, resulting in 580 court cases, but convictions for the crimes only totalled 40 as a result of court roll backlogs.

Meanwhile, Eskom was adamant that delays to the signing off on Independent Power Producers (IPP) procurement were not deliberate, but it too needed clarity from both the IPP Office and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy regarding the financial close on 25 wind and solar projects, which had been delayed from the end of April to accommodate the issuing of budget quotations by Eskom.

Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said Eskom could not readily issue budget quotations and commit itself to payments at a particular rate without considering facets such as designs.

“We can’t willy-nilly give budget quotes based on inadequate information because eventually we as an organisation have to pick up the tab.”