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Bogus cops active in two towns

Tourists are robbed near Sun City and motorists are accosted in Maritzburg

  • Two men posing as traffic officers and demanding money from motorists were arrested in Pietermaritzburg on Sunday, the KwaZulu-Natal traffic department said.

Police were tipped off about the two, wearing stolen Road Traffic Inspectorate uniforms, who were stopping motorists on Victoria Street, spokesman Kwanele Ncalane said in a statement.

An undisclosed sum of money was recovered from the two. They were expected to appear in the city’s magistrate’s court on Monday.

  • Four tourists were robbed in the North West, allegedly by a man impersonating a traffic officer, police said.

A man in a traffic officer’s uniform stopped the rented van the tourists, from Germany, Dubai, Finland and Portugal, were in, on the N4 on Friday morning, Captain Pelonomi Makau said in a statement.

At the time they were between Sun City and Tsetsing village on their way to the Pilanesberg game reserve.

The bogus cop had a silver Mercedes Benz parked on the side of the road. He asked the van’s driver for his licence and his permit to carry passengers. When he could not produce the latter, the “officer” called his accomplice from the Mercedes.

The two held the passengers at gunpoint and ordered the driver to turn back to Pretoria. The silver Mercedes followed them.

The driver was ordered to stop in bushes near Tlaseng village, Rustenburg, where the tourists were robbed of their valuables. The two men fled in the Mercedes and were still at large.

Nobody was injured.

The tourists had been attending a business conference which ended on Thursday.

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