Durban - Three security guards who allegedly colluded with a gang of robbers and a traditional healer to rob a pension payout point were due to appear in court on Friday with their co-accused.
Security guards Gelaphi Ndaba and Mbhasobhi Gumbi, both 41, and Patrick Ngema, 43, were arrested on Tuesday while they were at work in Mkhuze in northern KwaZulu-Natal.
On Friday they were expected to be joined in court by a traditional healer and another suspect, arrested last month.
A sixth suspect was killed in a shoot-out with police in Gauteng last month.
The five face charges of armed robbery and carjacking, and the arrested inyanga (traditional healer) faces additional charges of possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition.
The arrests follow a robbery last month in the Mbazwana area, east of Sodwana Bay.
At about 7.30am on July 18, a gang of about 10 men accosted four security guards at a pension payout point in the Mbazwana area.
At gunpoint, they disarmed the guards before taking an undisclosed amount of cash.
The men hijacked a Toyota Hilux in the vicinity and used that and their Ford Courier as getaway vehicles. The two vehicles were later found abandoned in the area.
A case of armed robbery and carjacking was opened at Mbazwana police station and the case was handed to the Richards Bay Organised Crime Unit (OCU).
The unit made a breakthrough when the first suspect, Philani Madondo, 37, was arrested in Gauteng on July 31.
On August 5, OCU members arrested inyanga Mahlalezweni Joseph Tembe, 43, near Jozini.
They had received information about a local traditional healer who had allegedly harboured robbers in his house the night before the pension point hold-up.
The inyanga was allegedly found in possession of the three rifles that were taken from the guards during the robbery.
Daily News