Gauteng MEC for Roads and Transport, Kedibone Diale-Tlabela, has revealed that the provincial government has seen a rapid uptick in street light vandalism since December 2024, particularly in the City of Johannesburg (CoJ).
This comes amid the metro struggling with the rampant theft and destruction of traffic signal infrastructure within its jurisdiction.
It has reached the point where the City is spending some R12 billion a year on servicing and repairing vandalised and stolen traffic signals. As we speak, there are 396 cases of theft and vandalism of traffic signals on record and a repair backlog of over R70 million.
“We are working hard to resolve the challenge [of theft and vandalism], it’s not only traffic lights, it’s also a challenge on street lights lately. Since December, we have experienced a lot of vandalism on street lights,” Diale-Tlabela told 702.
The Gauteng Department of Transport (GDoT) is working closely with municipal entities to ensure that these lights are fixed with urgency.
It’s also collaborating with law enforcement to track down the perpetrators as it believes there is a syndicate behind the continued destruction of government property.
“Our belief from where we’re sitting; it looks like there’s a syndicate that is taking everything from our roads,” said Diale-Tlabela.
The GDoT is convinced that these criminals are selling the traffic and street lights on the black market to turn a quick buck as the targeted infrastructure regularly contains valuable materials.
Diale-Tlabela said that the provincial government is actively seeking ways to make infrastructure less attractive to criminals.
It’s currently engaging with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and institutes of higher learning to look into alternative technologies that can be used instead of things like copper and aluminium.
Additionally, it has formed a relationship with private security firms such as Vumacam which has systems in place to detect suspicious individuals as well as track down wanted perpetrators.
“We have an agreement with Vumacam as a provincial government… as and when we seek, they are able to put up cameras and other systems that can help us deal with this challenge,” said Diale-Tlabela.
However, the MEC maintains that theft and vandalism of road infrastructure will only come to an end if the scrap metal industry is properly regulated. At present, there are few records of who sells scrap metal and who buys it, allowing thieves to stay anonymous.
“The first thing that I believe is to regulate the scrap metal sector, because this is where all this infrastructure is taken to as and when it’s stolen,” said Diale-Tlabela.
“One of the things we are engaging with law enforcement agencies, including the state security, SAPS, and others, is the discussion around the scrap metal industry. Once we don’t deal with that first, we’ll never win the battle.”
The GDoT has instructed these entities to investigate the scrap metal sector and possible remedies to the situation while it continues to work on damage control.
Preventative measures
The CoJ’s Roads Agency (JRA) has done everything but sit idly by while its valuable infrastructure is being stolen.
In recent years, the agency installed around 1,400 Uninterrupted Power Supply batteries along major intersections and replaced critical infrastructure with material of lesser resale value.
For example, the aluminium and steel traffic signal heads and backboards have all been replaced with nylon-plastic equivalents. Other measures involve the use of cables with lower copper content by reducing the thickness of the diameter of the copper wire from 2.5mm² to 1.5mm².
Alternative cables such as Copper Cladded Aluminium cables, which have no resale value, were furthermore installed at high-theft sites, and where applicable, considering geometrical designs and the National Road Traffic Act, hotspot areas were converted from signalised intersections to stop streets.
The latest intervention will see the JRA recoup its losses from motorists who damaged the infrastructure in vehicle accidents.
In partnership with the city’s metro police and insurance companies, the JRA will henceforth obtain accident reports where traffic signal equipment or any other road infrastructure such as guard rails have been damaged at the accident scene.
They will then mark relevant infrastructure damaged and record the driver’s details, and the JRA’s insurers will subsequently lodge a third-party insurance claim from the complicit driver found at the scene.
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