JANIS KINNEAR and MURRAY WILLIAMS
Staff Reporters
FOUR city pupils, one of them the son of a Western Cape High Court judge, were robbed at knifepoint in the Company’s Garden in the CBD.
Judge Nathan Erasmus said today he was relieved his 14-year-old son, Lucian, and his three classmates were safe after they were mugged by two assailants during a school outing yesterday.
Judge Erasmus said one of the assailants was carrying a knife and the other man told the boys he had a gun.
He said the boys, Grade 9 pupils at St George’s Grammar School in Mowbray, were searching for clues in the popular garden, metres away from Parliament, for a school project themed “The Amazing Race”.
Judge Erasmus said his son told him that they were inspecting a plant at the Cecil John Rhodes statue near the restaurant in the garden when two men approached them asking for money.
The boys first refused but then one of the men took out a knife and demanded they hand over their money, cellphones and watches.
“The guy holding the knife told them: ‘Don’t move and don’t make a noise’, and then the other one said: ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t give me the money’,” Judge Erasmus said.
Lucian handed over the R100 he had with him because he was “scared”.
The judge, who was in court at the time of the mugging, later saw a missed call from the school and one which he noted as “strange” from his son’s phone.
“I then called the school and they told me what had happened. They said the boys were with in-house councillors.
“I was shocked but once I spoke to him I was just glad he wasn’t injured.”
He said he had fetched his son from the school at around 9.30pm: Lucian took part in a fashion show at the school after his ordeal.
Judge Erasmus said two of the classmates with Lucian visited their home regularly but he was unsure of how they had been affected.
But he was confident that the support councillors, one of whom he spoke to yesterday, would monitor the situation closely.
“It hits you afterwards and just to think that it happened in a place like the Company’s Garden where you’d think it would be relatively safe.”
Lucian was back at school today.
School headmaster Julian Cameron said: “We have offered all the pupils counselling and are confident that they will have all the back-up they need to recover from this frightening ordeal.”
Police spokesman Captain FC van Wyk said police were unaware of the mugging. The Central City Improvement District (CCID) also said they did not know anything about the incident.
Judge Erasmus said as far as he knew no charges were laid with the police.
The office of Belinda Walker, ward councillor for the area, said they would be happy to ask the City of Cape Town to obtain digital images from CCTV footage of the mugging if the school could provide the exact location.
The CCID told the Cape Argus earlier this week that the biggest problems in the inner city were alcohol and drug abuse in public, illegal dumping, traffic violations and theft out of vehicles. Opportunistic crimes such as muggings were also common.