25 mall robberies a month in South Africa
AK47-wielding gangs, terrified shopkeepers, worried landlords - the scary truth.
South Africans love shopping malls, not just for buying stuff but as places to relax and hang out with friends. Until now, they have been seen as relatively safe compared to the other options. There are seldom beggars and thieves loitering in parking areas and pick-pockets are relatively few and far between, unlike many public areas in our crime-infested country where it has become normal to anticipate a confrontation with a dangerous criminal armed with a knife, gun or other weapon.
But shopping centres have had their reputations as safe havens smashed in recent weeks, thanks to the ruthless armed gangs who have moved into their shiny, air-conditioned hallways, shooting those who get in the way of their spoils.
Gauteng malls have been hardest hit, but shopping centres elsewhere haven't escaped this growing trend of robberies. At Canal Walk, Century City, in Cape Town, a mall employee was shot and wounded by robbers in April and a restaurant employee was shot and injured in May in a robbery.
Earlier this month two security guards were shot and wounded at the Trade Route Mall in Lenasia.
In the first week of August there were at least five incidents involving armed gunmen at Gauteng shopping malls including at the Bracken City Mall, Alberton, where a gang of about 20 robbed a Pick 'n Pay supermarket, a bottle store and a pharmacy within a few minutes. The robbers, apparently armed with handguns, worked through tills and ordered customers and shop attendants onto the ground, before getting into a shoot-out with Ekurhuleni Metro police officers as they were making a get-away. One officer was injured.
Tragically Jaco Pretorius, managing director of Protea Coin Security's guarding division, died in hospital after allegedly being shot while trying to stop three robbers who had just hit a Sterns jewellery store at the Irene Mall Village, Centurion.
And, so the list goes on, of one shopping mall "hit" after the next.
How worried should shoppers and shop personnel be about the likelihood of getting caught up in a robbery? In Gauteng in particular visible law-enforcing has been stepped up by the South African Police Service and mall security officials with a view to deterring robbers from trying their luck. "Police will be given more firepower and more visibility after a spate of robberies at shopping malls, the Gauteng Department of Community Safety has said.
"The SA Police Service has resolved to increase police visibility at the crime hotspots, including shopping malls. The SAPS has also promised to arm policemen and policewomen tasked with curbing business robberies with heavy calibre automatic weapons. This will help to match and outmatch the firepower of criminals," it said.
Michael Broughton, director of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa and SA Council of Shopping Centres, told Moneyweb's editor-in-chief Alec Hogg on the SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb this week that similar steps were being taken elsewhere. He reckons that, from a shoppers' perspective, " statistically your chance(s) of being involved in one of these (incidents) are very, very small - 4 800 malls throughout South Africa open 365 hours a year, 12 hours a day".
A different picture, however, was painted by Des de Beer, managing director of listed property fund Resilient (JSE:RES) - which owns shopping centres - to a group of investment analysts in Cape Town this week. Responding at question time, De Beer admitted robberies have become a big headache for the country's large retail property landlords and that many of the incidents have not even been reported in the media.
De Beer said he was having a cup of coffee in a mall when a gang of about eight people "came through" the centre wielding AK-47s. In another incident, recounted to him by another listed company boss, a gang drove into an upmarket Johannesburg mall in an unsuccessful bid to rob a jeweller.
He said shopping centre owners have been talking to each other about the problems and it seems jewellery stores have become a major magnet for violent criminals.
"The big problem is jewellery stories. It's the high-end jewellery stores. It is just not worth having jewellery stores," he commented to analysts. De Beer said shopping centre owners are working with police on ways to curb violent crime at malls and understand that when it comes to security "we'll have to keep upping our game".
SAPS spokesperson Superintendent Eugene Opperman confirmed to Realestateweb - Moneyweb's property news site - that not all shopping mall robberies have been reported to the media.
In part, this is because there is a theory in some quarters that successful robbers given other criminals ideas to follow suit. And, police don't want to give too much of the game away when it comes to apprehending culprits and preventing other robberies. Criminals, says Opperman, "read newspapers and plan accordingly".
It is likely too, though, that landlords discourage police officers from disclosing robberies to the media as it does not reflect well on them in the eyes of their tenants in terms of their crime prevention measures. And, retail landlords often receive a percentage of shops' turnover. Violent incidents must surely be a deterrent to consumers.
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