If there is a case to be made for disrupting market forces, it would be in the scrap-metal industry. These forces, however, are formidable and the struggle against criminal elements in the otherwise legitimate metal recycling business has gone on for much longer than anyone cares to remember.People have died and hundreds have been injured in a spate of railway safety incidents that can be directly related to metal theft, and the damage to the economy is enormous. The theft of electrical equipment from Eskom, for instance, costs the utility more than R100m a year, not counting the loss of electricity sales to the utility or the cost of interrupting production of industry. In a 2017 outage in Johannesburg the central business district was without power for 10 days after thieves took underground power cables, which cost City Power more than R45m to replace.The Metal Recyclers’ Association, the South African Police Service and various authorities have responded accordingly. The Criminal...
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