South Africa rail, power revamp hinges on ending cable theft

The recovery of South Africa’s two biggest State-owned companies — beset by years of corruption and theft — relies on one common component: protecting thousands of miles of cables from theft and rolling out more. Both freight-rail operator Transnet and power utility Eskom battle to hang onto lines that typically contain copper and which criminals steal and sell as scrap. While copper theft is a problem that plagues operators worldwide, the economic impact of the theft on South Africa’s rail and electricity networks alone was more than R45-billion in the year to March 2022 because of replacement costs and lost revenue, Corruption Watch said in a report. Crime continues to cause delays and add to expenses for Transnet, the company said Monday, when it reported a full-year loss. While it’s almost a year into a turnaround strategy and is clamping down on cable theft across its network, vandals still managed to steal 1 013 kilometers of lines in the year to end-March, it said. At Eskom, theft of copper cables, overhead lines and copper used in conductors costs the company between R5-billion and R7-billion annually, and a further R2-billion to replace the stolen cables, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime said in a report.