While all the attention has been on the Waterkloof Air Force Base after the arrival there of the Gupta wedding guests, local military installation Silvermine is quietly being stripped bare by copper thieves.
The radio communications hub for the SA Navy has been hit by copper thieves in two separate incidents in recent weeks, Weekend Argus has established.
Combined with the recent discovery of a dead woman floating in the swimming pool at Makhado Air Force Base in Limpopo, questions are being raised about the level of security at South Africa’s military bases.
Both Silvermine and Makhado are believed to be national key points, due to the military work conducted there. The government does not identify key points.
In the first incident at Silvermine, hundreds of metres of copper wire installed on May 2 at the lower antenna farm to replace a previously stolen part, were stolen again just five days later.
And in the second incident, apparently some time last week, guards at the base’s top antenna farm caught five people red-handed trying to steal copper.
These are the latest of several incidents of copper theft at Silvermine that have over the past 18 months caused naval communications to “go deaf” from time to time.
Other incidents include:
l At least four cases reported last year, among them two incidents last February. In one, copper pipes from the base’s air-conditioning cooling towers were stolen. A few weeks later, thousands of metres of copper wire and other copper parts were stripped out of the lower antenna farm by thieves who apparently entered the base through holes in the fence.
l In January, copper thieves hit the upper antenna farm, effectively cutting the Navy’s communications systems to its fleet.
Commander Greyling van der Berg, of the SA Navy, would not confirm specific incidents of theft, but said there were “no disruptions affecting our ability to communicate with our ships and submarines”.
He admitted, however, that theft “remains an ongoing problem”, and that the Navy had deployed elements of its Maritime Reaction Squadron to better protect equipment in outlying areas.
Van der Berg said this had “stemmed” incidents of theft, but had not completely “curbed” the problem.
DA spokesman on defence David Maynier said the Naval Communication Centre at Silvermine was a strategic military facility, and so a national key point.
“It should be absolutely impenetrable to any unauthorised person, and yet it seems copper thieves breach the boundary fences regularly. The fact that the Naval Communication Centre at Silvermine is ‘deaf’ from time to time because of copper theft is actually a threat to national security.”
Maynier said Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, needed to fix the problems at Silvermine. “We cannot have a situation where the boundaries of strategic military facilities, which have been designated as national key points, are even more porous than South Africa’s borders.”