The New York Times Tries Out “Enhanced Bylines”
Life inside the South African gangs risking everything for copper
The copper thieves were known as izinyoka, “snakes” in Zulu, and they barely made a sound as they prepared early one morning. On the porch of a rundown breezeblock home in Johannesburg’s largest township, the three men pulled on their disguise of municipal workers’ coveralls, then shared a smoke. The air filled with clouds of nyaope, a cocktail of black-tar heroin cut with marijuana, rat poison and antiretroviral drugs. Eventually, their leader spoke up over the sound of rain hammering the corrugated iron roof above them.
“Kea tsamaya,” he said curtly. It meant “I’m going” in Setswana, the southern African language they switched to whenever they were officially on the job. Then he handed out the guns.
Copper was the new gold, as far as their gang was concerned, and anywhere it could be found was fair plunder. Theoretically, the sale and export of scrap copper is carefully controlled by South African officials. But the properties that make it the world’s third most-used metal also make copper a smuggler’s dream. Malleable and recyclable, it is easily melted down, after which its origin becomes virtually untraceable. It was February 2021 and prices had hit a 10-year high, reaching $9,000 a tonne on international markets. Any number of unscrupulous dealers would buy the coveted metal, then resell it in South Africa or, more likely, help smuggle it to booming markets in China and India.
That made a ragtag group of izinyoka the first link in a lucrative supply chain ultimately controlled by international syndicates. They were connected and feared enough that they’d never yet had to shoot anyone with their 9mm semi-automatic pistols. A warning volley fired into the air when they arrived on a job was enough to clear the premises. This heist was so routine that their group had deemed only three of their dozens of members were necessary.
Sausages was in charge. The portly commander had informants in every location worth robbing, and he’d already paid off the security guards. He had then summoned Mafia, whose nyaopeaddiction meant he took on jobs with a zeal bordering on ruthlessness. “That guy was smoking every day. That’s why, every day, he had to steal cables, to buy more,” recalled the third gang member, a skinny, softly spoken man known as TwoSix.
It was Mafia who once scaled a 27-metre-high electric pylon to cut live wires. But, in their time working together, they had all hacked down telephone poles, dug up underground cables and broken into industrial plants. Train stations were a favourite target. By the end of that year, izinyoka had ripped out more than 1,000 kilometres of overhead cable from Transnet, the state-owned freight rail operator, prompting it to contemplate switching from hybrid electric locomotives to diesel-only models that don’t require cabling.
In January, the consequences of industrial-scale theft in South Africa included: three security guards killed during heists; three hospitals scaling back operations because stolen copper plumbing hampers their ability to pipe oxygen to intensive care units; trains cancelled due to stolen signalling cable or track sleepers; parts of the city going without electricity for days after thieves toppled pylons.
Mining, South Africa’s largest industry, has been severely disrupted. Pits across the country churn up gold, gemstones, rare earth metals and coal, and the country is home to about 90 per cent of known deposits of platinum, vital for electronics and electric vehicles. One morning in March, a platinum operator discovered 300 metres of copper cabling had been stolen from a production site. Workers at Royal Bafokeng Platinum laid new cables the following day, but the thieves were back by nightfall. “To be investable as a country, you should be able as a country to protect investments,” the company’s chief executive Steve Phiri said during a mining conference in Johannesburg that month. “Things are beginning to fall apart.”
This particular robbery wouldn’t make many headlines. The target was a small electricity substation deep in the urban sprawl of Soweto, in a neighbourhood of broken street lights and criss-crossing train tracks. The thieves planned to unscrew four football-sized bolts, each of which was packed with several kilogrammes of fine copper wiring. The vandalism would likely trigger a days-long power outage, but in a part of the city where schools are forced to sometimes go without electricity, they figured nobody would investigate. A 20-minute job would net them R3,000 ($163) each once they sold the copper, enough to provide for their families for a fortnight.
They drove through the empty streets in a battered white pick-up. Over the years, they had loaded it with thousands of kilogrammes of stolen copper. Their destination was perched on a grassy verge at the end of a red dirt street. Miniature pylons rose over a wrought-iron security fence, but the entrance gate was unlocked, the 24-hour guards nowhere to be seen.
Later, TwoSix’s recollections formed a tangled sequence he struggled to put in order. There was Mafia weaving around the hulking metal installations. Had Sausages called out and started running before — or after — it happened? Was he trying to warn Mafia? Or had he already realised it was too late?
The mains supply in a typical home provides 230 volts, but only after the electricity has been transformed to a usable voltage via a substation. Now, Mafia stood above a cable in the transmission facility that was drawing in 11,000 volts from the surrounding pylons. He swayed as heroin coursed through his veins. He lifted a hand to wipe away the rainwater streaming into his face. Then he leaned forward, pressed the handles of the wire cutter together and . . .
Boom.
The shockwave slammed TwoSix to the ground. The entire neighbourhood was plunged into darkness. Heart thudding, he scrambled to his feet. The spotlight of his headlamp illuminated a nightmare: red skin peeling off Mafia’s blackened body, tendrils of smoke, a flash of barbed wire. Someone was screaming. TwoSix lurched towards the entrance, then started running. A sharp pain bloomed beneath his rib cage, but he kept running, running, running.
Copper, found in rich seams through the Earth’s crust, changed the course of civilisation. About 10,000 years ago, it became the first metal worked by human beings. The discovery that mixing this soft, reddish-hued element with tin formed a much harder alloy ushered in the Bronze Age. Empires rose as metal began to replace stone tools and weapons. Ancient Egyptians used bronze much as we use iron today. The word copper comes from cuprum, the Latin name for Cyprus, where the Roman empire sourced the element.
By the 19th century, rapid industrialisation spurred the rise of copper in steam engines, electrification and telephone systems. Strong, ductile, and a better conductor than any metal except silver, the roughly 22mn tonnes of copper now mined each year is used in everything from construction to electronics to industrial machinery. Copper is critical to the green energy transition needed to avert climate catastrophe, a component in solar panels, wind turbines and electric motors. A construction boom in China, rapid electrification in developing countries and net zero commitments mean demand will almost double by 2035. Unless production is ramped up and new extraction technologies come into play, “the ensuing scramble may be compared to that for fossil fuels in the 20th century”, analysts at S&P Global warned last year.
Into this perfect storm have entered criminal syndicates. “The theft was always there, but there wasn’t enough money in it to draw in the multinational criminal gangs,” said Donald MacKay, CEO of Johannesburg-based XA Global Trade Advisors. “Recycled metals have so dramatically increased in value that it’s now worth a criminal enterprise getting involved at scale.”
In many ways, South Africa is a gangster’s paradise for a multinational cartel. Johannesburg, a city that was literally built on gold reefs, boasts glittering malls and world-class facilities. The country has industrial capacity and well-established links to global markets. But Africa’s most industrialised economy is also strangled by staggering poverty and corruption. Much of that is a legacy of apartheid. But, after 29 years with the African National Congress party at the helm, corruption continues to hollow out state institutions, while South Africa suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the world. …
For TwoSix, every day has taken on a predictable routine: he stays home, cleans the house, watches television. Recently he found himself repeatedly watching Apocalypse Now, a film about what can send a man down the road to madness. “I know it’s an old film, but I never saw it before,” he said, flashing an embarrassed gap-toothed smile. “Now I can see what I did was wrong. I never imagined my life this way. Never,” he said, looking out at an empty parking lot the last time we met. “Maybe I’d have stopped [stealing] even without a job, but I don’t think so. Because you still have to eat.”
Sometimes, he dreams of Mafia’s death. The sound of the explosion, the ground rushing to meet him. Except when his head torch penetrates the blackness, it’s not his friend lying dead. It’s him.
