Six held in Free State after 560kg of Transnet copper cable found in two cars

Six men were arrested in Allanridge in the Free State on Monday night after police stopped two vehicles carrying more than half a tonne of suspected stolen copper cable.

As IOL reported on 14 October, the arrests followed a tip-off. Police say they received information at about 9pm that two vehicles travelling from Bothaville to Welkom were carrying stolen copper cables. The vehicles were stopped and officers found 560.85kg of electrical wire, valued at an estimated R100,000.

The men, aged between 26 and 48, face charges related to the possession of suspected stolen property. Preliminary investigations indicate the cable belongs to Transnet in the North West province. The men were expected to appear in the Odendaalrus Magistrate’s Court.

The operation involved the police working with Eyes & Ears, a public-private crime-fighting initiative known as E2, and formed part of Operation Shanela, the SAPS crime prevention programme. Shanela was launched in 2023 under a directive from then police minister Bheki Cele and was relaunched at the start of the 2025/2026 financial year as Operation Shanela II, with officers deployed to identified crime hotspots.

Copper cable theft is one of the more expensive crimes for South African households and businesses because the loss is not only the metal itself. Stolen cable knocks out power and rail signalling, and repairs cost the state and municipalities far more than the scrap value of the copper. Transnet has been a repeated target, with theft from its network disrupting freight and passenger rail services. For residents, the visible result is often an unplanned outage or a delayed train rather than a police docket.

The arrests are the second stage of a case that now moves to court. What the men are alleged to have been carrying, where it came from and who else may be involved are matters for the investigation and for the magistrate’s court, and no link to a wider syndicate has been established in the source material beyond the police’s own description of the case.