‘SA the cargo theft capital of Africa’

The risk of cargo theft in South Africa has been rated among the highest in the world – along with Mexico, Brazil, Russia and India. That’s according to Captain Andrew Walker, a marine loss control engineering manager for Africa and the Middle East with AIG. He says the risk in Africa varies from region to region and country to country, but in South Africa it’s considered higher than many of the other countries on the continent. “Having said this there has been a significant improvement in the past few years as the number of hijacking incidents of trucks has decreased,” he said recently. But, said Walker, it was important for cargo owners and truck operators to remain vigilant as crime syndicates were always evolving. “These are highly organised crime syndicates who have slick operations in place. Very recently we had an incident in Johannesburg where a truck was stopped near the OR Tambo Airport in a roadblock. The driver only realised it had been a setup after he had brought the vehicle to a halt,” said Walker. “Not only were the criminals dressed like police officers and able to recreate a very real roadblock scenario, they had also managed to jam the GPS signal. This meant that no alarm bells went off so anyone tracing the vehicle would not see it had stopped and also the driver could not alert the owners to the problems via GPS.” He said investigations showed that the gang knew exactly what was in the truck, where it was heading and on what schedule it was. “We have also seen a major increase in the fraudulent collection of cargo at warehouses in the past two years,” said Walker. “In most of these cases a truck arrives with a driver who is in possession of all the paperwork – and because all looks in order the cargo is released. It is only when the real driver arrives with the original paperwork that it becomes apparent that the cargo has been fraudulently collected – but the goods are usually long gone by then. The fraudulent paperwork that they have is of an extremely high quality and it is very difficult to see that the paperwork has been forged.” Walker said incidents of this nature continued to push up insurance costs.