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A member of the Save Act, an informal savings club known as stokvels, counts bank notes before making her contribution
Crime stakeholders, including community policing forums and security companies have warned communities to be more vigilant and to avoid being victims of crime this festive season.
Security stakeholders say the common trend is where criminals pose as hitmen and manipulate victims into paying them in return for sparing their lives.
Inanda CPF spokesperson, Mbongeni Phewa advises people, who have been saving through stokvels to use banks when they distribute their money.
“The people have been playing these stokvels from the beginning of the year only to find that they have tried to make R10 000 or R5 000 but it will just go in one second, that is why we are saying if you are playing stokvel, you must not share that money in somebody’s house. It is imperative to just go to the bank and just put the money in the bank so that money will go straight into accounts, that is very safe. Even people who are playing food stokvel, they should go to the police station to share their groceries because criminals can come and take all the groceries.”
A security company says they have attended to a number of incidents of extortion and kidnapping for ransom.
The company’s spokesperson, Prem Balram says, “The most serious crimes that Reaction Unit South Africa has dealt with is kidnappings. It has become too frequent, too violent, and far too often. So, we get people being kidnapped who have come into money, such as Road Accident Fund or casino pay-outs or pension funds and they have been kidnapped, forced at gunpoint to transfer money. Some of them are harmed, some of them are let loose by the criminals after the funds have been extracted and they go on failing to report these cases. People fear for their lives. They fear, in some of the cases that we have dealt with recently, the suspects themselves have threatened to come back. They know the property, they know their workplaces, they know their families and they threaten to kill the victims should they report the matter to the police or to private law enforcement.”
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