24 cases linked to mall ‘dating scam’ syndicate

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JEREMY MAGGS: All right, let’s move now from agribusiness to crime. It seems a disturbing pattern is starting to emerge in South African shopping malls. Organised criminal syndicates are targeting women with increasing precision and violence. Victims apparently followed, ambushed and robbed in broad daylight.

Obviously, this is raising urgent questions about personal safety, surveillance, blind spots and police preparedness. My question, are malls now becoming a new hunting ground for syndicates, and are law enforcement agencies one step behind or one step ahead?

I’m in conversation now with Brigadier Athlenda Mathe, who speaks for the South African Police Service [SAPS]. Brigadier, a very warm welcome to you and maybe just a few more details on the nature and method of these new syndicate operations. What’s happening?

ATHLENDA MATHE: So, I don’t think we need to panic because I’m confident that we have broken the back of a syndicate that was targeting women, especially young females, in various malls across the country. It looks like we were dealing with a two-member syndicate.

But as you would have known from last week, one of them was shot and killed during a police takedown operation Amanzimtoti, in Durban, and one is still on the run. But police are searching for this particular suspect, Bongani Mthimkhulu, and we have urged him to hand himself over.

So the identification of this particular syndicate was made last week following the death of Olorato Mongale, who was brutally killed after going out on a date with this particular syndicate. So what they do, they go around malls and propositioning women and requesting to take them out on dates, whereas they know the real motive there is actually to kidnap and rob them.

So far we’ve actually picked up more than, I think now we’re standing at 24 cases in KZN, Durban, in Potchefstroom, in Midrand, in Bloemfontein, in Limpopo, as well as Mpumalanga, where these two criminals had been operating in. So a lot of women coming forward with information where they’ve positively identified the one deceased Philangenkosi Makhanya and the other, Bongani Mthimkhulu, who has been on the run from police.

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JEREMY MAGGS: Brigadier, as a result of this, have you been forced to increase visible police patrols in high-risk zones?

ATHLENDA MATHE: We conduct regular patrols on a weekly basis. You would know that in malls, the primary focus there is to ensure that security officials secure malls and so on. So we come in as secondary, and we work together with them to ensure the safety and security of shoppers at malls. But the primary function of the safety and security of people at malls and shoppers is private security. But we work alongside, closely with them. If they detect anything suspicious, they must bring it to our attention.

So in terms of visibility, we are working at increasing visibility everywhere, not only at malls, because at malls there’s already private security that we are working closely with …

In terms of hotspot areas, we are working with your CPF [Community Policing Forum], your community patrollers, in terms of the sharing of information. That is why we always say community participation is quite important in the fight against crime, because we depend on community members to be eyewitnesses when crimes are committed.

JEREMY MAGGS: I understand the importance of collaboration between yourselves and private mall security companies, but the danger always is, given your resource capacity, you could abrogate responsibility to these companies.

ATHLENDA MATHE: Fighting crime is not the sole responsibility of the police. That is why when we talk resources, we don’t work alone, we work with private security, we work with community members, we work with other government departments. We’re also working with law enforcement agencies.

One thing we always stress is that yes, we’ve got the expertise, we can find these people, but we rely on the community. We also rely on private security that plays a major role as our eyes and ears…

It’s not that we abdicate responsibility. We work together as a team.

Because when you see in court, when we’ve arrested a suspect, the people that come in as witnesses are community members. That is why we say everyone has a role to play when it comes to fighting crime.

When you look at the stats, when the Minister of Correctional Services [Pieter Groenewald] says prisons are over 40% full, those people did not walk in there. We are the ones who put them in there because of the work of the men and women in blue, in terms of arrests and so on.

When you look at the stats, since 8 May 2023, more than 1.2 million suspects arrested for various crimes, and we’ve also been able to secure lengthy convictions for perpetrators of various crimes, including GBV [gender-based violence] and so on.

Read: New laws strengthen the fight against gender-based violence

JEREMY MAGGS: As far as this particular issue is concerned, are you still issuing a broader public safety alert, or do you believe that you’ve nailed the problem now?

ATHLENDA MATHE: Look, we are still obviously urging people out there, whether women, children or male, to be extra vigilant of their surroundings. Crime, it can happen anywhere. So we must be extra vigilant. We say criminals are in the minority, but law-abiding citizens are in the majority.

So if we stand together collectively, together with the police, we can do so much more, because these criminals are in the minority and we must ensure that they get tracked down and they get arrested for crimes committed. So it really takes a collective responsibility to prevent and combat all forms of criminality.

JEREMY MAGGS: Just very quickly, can you assure women that it is safe to enter hotspot malls right now, given what has been happening there in the past?

ATHLENDA MATHE: So there’s not necessarily a hotspot mall. They would actually randomly choose any other mall and start targeting victims. So we can call it a romance scam. They were busy pretending to love and like these women, whereas they knew they would just kidnap and rob them.

So we want to urge you also, if you’ve been a victim of this particular syndicate, do come forward or if you know of criminals who are busy with this type of criminality, do come forward. Let us work together, let us put a stop to it, because we cannot continue to see innocent women, children, males being robbed from shopping malls, being followed, being hijacked and so on.

JEREMY MAGGS: Thank you very much indeed. That’s Brigadier Athlenda Mathe, who speaks for the South African Police Service.

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