By Kotie Geldenhuys
Photo courtesy of Freepik
In the early hours of 3 June 2020, a cash-in-transit (CIT) vehicle was ambushed and blown apart in a brazen heist, scattering money and debris across a street in Krugersdorp. As bystanders scrambled for cash, police warned that taking money from such crime scenes is illegal. Simultaneously, the CIT incident highlighted a deeper issue: the growing use of illegally trafficked explosives, often sourced from mining and construction or smuggled across our borders, by organised criminals in South Africa to target cash vehicles and ATMs (Chelin and Els, 2020).
The smuggling of commercial explosives across the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region is emerging as a major security concern, according to Willem Els, a Senior Training Coordinator on terrorism and explosives-related incidents at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). Speaking at the Intelligence Forensic and Prosecution Workshop hosted by Pinpoint Stewards in Johannesburg in late October 2024, Mr Els said that the illicit movement of explosives across borders is exacerbated by the region’s heavy reliance on mining and infrastructure development. The SADC region comprises 16 member states, many of which have extensive mining operations, making them vulnerable to both legal and illegal explosive trade.
[This is only an extract of an article published in Servamus: July 2025. This article is available for purchase.]