Cape Town’s train arsonists have seemingly ‘gotten away with it’ as a lack of crime intelligence and poor monitoring by the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) lead to no major breakthroughs in the crimes. Pictured is a burnt out carriage in Eerste River. Picture: Phando Jikelo/African News Agency (ANA)
Cape Town - A failure of crime intelligence and poor monitoring by the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) to find the suspects responsible for the decade-long arson attacks that brought Cape Town’s railway system to its knees has been blamed for the prolonged “sabotage” of the train system.
A Cape Times investigation this week showed that no major arrests, prosecutions, or links have been made relating to the arson attacks that have cost the economy billions of rand.
Three years prior to Covid-19, more than 200 trains were torched across the country, of which at least 170 were in the Western Cape.
Only two minors were handed a five-year suspended sentence each, after they were found guilty of torching two trains causing damage of R61 million four years ago, and an Eerste River man who worked at the taxi rank was nabbed.
The two minors aged 14 and 15 from Elsies River and Delft were arrested in December 2019 after two trains were set alight in November the same year, destroying 18 coaches.
Police spokesperson FC Van Wyk said a case of malicious damage to property and arson was registered for investigation at the Cape Town Central police station.
“The case docket was handed over to the Western Cape provincial detectives for further police investigation. The two minors were both found guilty on June 1, 2021 and the court gave them five years suspended sentence and release in custody of their parents,” he said.
In another case a suspect was allegedly deemed to be mentally unfit and released.
Last year, Ricardo Khan, who worked at the Eerste River taxi rank, was sentenced by the Blue Downs Magistrate’s Court to 20 years.
This is after a March 2020 fire where the Eerste River train station sustained R3.5m in damages.
Since 2019, thousands of commuters have been forced to make use of alternative transport modes at much higher prices.
The rail service, especially the once buzzing Central Line, has since struggled to rebuild and get back up and running.
GOOD secretary-general and MP Brett Herron said it was surprising that there had been no successful prosecution and there seemed to be a failure of crime intelligence.
“The attack on the system is not isolated to the one event which resulted in these two young people being arrested and charged.
“There appears to be a failure of crime intelligence to find the links between the sabotage of our rail system which has continued without any major breakthroughs for the past decade to the point of total collapse,” Herron said.
He said the sustained attacks on the commuter rail system for the past 10 years must be regarded as sabotage and crime-fighting agencies should be co-ordinating their efforts to establish the links between the relentless attacks.
“At one stage Cape Town had the most well-used and best-operating commuter rail systems in South Africa providing millions of passenger trips.
“Today it is still inoperable in the most densely populated parts of our city (Central Line to Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain), where the service was most relied upon for an affordable daily commute.
“The destruction and neglect of the rail system, no matter how old the trains, has created a transport ‘day zero’ crisis with massive socio-economic impacts,” said Herron.
Zukie Vuka from #UNITEBehind, an activist coalition, said that they were not shocked by the verdict in the case of the minors.
“It was such a random act of violence and crime that was done by minors.
“This act of violence from children should have been probed in depth so it was overlooked.
“I believe not enough was done by Prasa to avert these incidents because it was not the first and in some cases people were arrested but we didn’t hear about prosecution.
“Even in this case we would have expected it to be Prasa who updates the public about the outcome of the case of the minors to indicate they take the cases seriously and want people to be punished.
“We are disappointed.
“We believe these incidents of vandalism, cable theft and other issues are deliberate both internal and external sabotage.
“There needs to be more arrests and accountability. This is an attack on the poor who need this mode of transport most,” said Vuka.
She said it was taxpayers who had to fix damaged infrastructure and while vandalism had played a part in bringing the rail system to its current state, corruption, including tender corruption, was the main contributor to the parastatal’s crippled state.
Prasa did not respond to questions despite being given repeated deadlines.
Mobility MEC Ricardo Mackenzie said every effort should be made to investigate and prosecute those who have damaged or destroyed vital rail assets, to the full extent of the law.
“I have no doubt that there have also been failings on the part of SAPS, which has a dedicated rail policing unit, and the NPA in preventing, investigating, and prosecuting these crimes.
Stronger efforts are also required to ensure that the network and rail assets are well-protected and to prevent crime from happening in the first place, through improved crime intelligence,” he said.
The Western Cape government has continued its call on the national government to fast-track the devolution of rail as a priority.
“As per the cabinet-approved White Paper on National Rail Policy.
This will allow for substantially improved governance and management of rail, including stronger security,” said Mackenzie.
Cape Times