Johannesburg - Gauteng police confirmed that operations were back to normal at Southgate Mall after a bomb scare forced an evacuation earlier on Friday.
The mall was evacuated after police received a call of a suspicious device at one of the mall's stores.
"Police responded and called the bomb squad to verify... the mall was evacuated in the meantime," Gauteng police spokesperson Captain Kay Makhubele explained.
The device found turned out to not be a bomb and Makhubele confirmed that after verifying this, shoppers were able to return to the mall.
The latest scare comes a month after numerous malls in KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape were forced to evacuate after bomb scares were reported.
In KZN last month, there were several bomb threats around Durban, with incendiary devices found at Woolworths stores at the Gateway and Pavilion Malls, as well as a Woolworths store in the Durban CBD.
In Cape Town, a similar scare forced an evacuation at one of the busiest malls, the Kenilworth Centre, last month.