Hundreds of shopping malls robbed in South Africa

More than 400 shopping malls in South Africa have been hit by armed robberies since June 2008, the vast majority of them in Gauteng.

This week, two more robberies took place in Gauteng.

One was in the early hours of Thursday morning, at the Woodmead Value Centre in Sandton, when an armed gang of 21 stormed in, firing a hail of bullets, critically wounded two guards and cleaning out the Audio-Visual shop. The other was just six hours later at a store in the Balfour Park shopping centre in Highlands North.

In a step to deal with crime at malls, a Shopping Mall Security Initiative was formed between the police, shopping centres and Business Against Crime.

But this week BAC's Jenny Irish said they were still struggling to break the backs of the syndicates, who are usually highly organised.

While some of the larger managing companies have installed sophisticated security measures, Business Against Crime this week said it was the smaller malls that were not being proactive about security.

In 2008 the Saturday Star reported that malls that have been hit included Westgate, Fourways Mall, The Greenstone in Edenvale, Bryanston Centre, The Glen, Sandton City, Clearwater Mall in Roodepoort, East Rand Mall, Eastgate and Balfour Park.

There have also been robberies in Witbank, Springs, Alberton, and Brooklyn and Garsfontein in Tshwane.

Although there has been a perception that the mall robberies have decreased, BAC has reported around 400 incidents since June - that's about 40 incidents a month.

"The problem is that these men are very organised," said Irish.

"There are some opportunistic incidents but most of these incidents are quite clearly planned and organised."

In the majority of the cases, the people involved pose as ordinary customers, and whip out their guns once they are inside the shop.

It's only in the after-hours incidents that large numbers of men are involved.

About 20 to 30 percent of incidents happened after hours, with the targets usually being electronic goods or high value clothing.

Other targets include jewellery stores, restaurants and stores where there is a large amount of cash.