In a video shared by the mayor, a man can be heard apologising after being caught with one of these vehicles.
Picture: Screenshot of X video
In a move that has sparked both praise and condemnation, the City of Cape Town has finally acted on information regarding vehicles owned by foreign nationals in the city.
South Africans have been complaining about these vehicles, alleging they are proceeds of crime, especially in the Parklands areas. Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis finally took action against these vehicles, impounding several after they were found with fake registrations.
“In Cape Town you will often find ‘crypto’ and ‘forex’ traders driving fancy cars with fake registrations or none at all!’ said Hill-Lewis on Tuesday night.
“Tonight we impounded cars in Parklands without valid registrations. In one case, a brand new silver Merc GLE was registered as a white BMW. Impounded for further criminal investigation.
“South Africa needs stronger policing; that’s why we will build a Cape Town metro police detectives unit to investigate crimes ourselves.”
In a video shared by the mayor, a man can be heard apologising after being caught with one of these vehicles.
“I’m very sorry,” he pleads, to which Hill-Lewis responds: “What are you really trading? You’re trading in something; it’s just not crypto.”
The man insists that he is trading in crypto.
“And other things as well,” says Hill-Lewis.
Watch video of vehicles below
In March last year, Nigerian rapper Prince Daniel Obioma, known as 3GAR, crashed a R3 million McLaren 570S coupe into a wall in Sea Point, Cape Town, and triggered an investigation by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) into his residence in South Africa.
The investigation revealed that, according to the department of Home Affairs’ movement control system, there was no record of the rapper re-entering South Africa. His initial entry into South Africa was on 20 December 2022 on a three-month visitor’s visa.
Upon his entry, he applied for a Traffic Register Number using fake documents. In 2023, he applied for a study visa, but the application was rejected because he had submitted a fraudulent visa issued in Lagos. He left South Africa after his visitor’s visa expired in May 2023, two months later.
He returned to South Africa between May 2023 and October 2023, and on 23 October, he bought the vehicle in cash from an agent who submitted fraudulent documents to support his visa application.
Foreign national vehicle owners unaccounted for
Last month, the Department of Home Affairs revealed that hundreds of thousands of vehicle permits given to foreign nationals are irregular.
The data relates to the issuing of Traffic Register Numbers (TRNs) used by foreign nationals to process vehicle-related documentation.
TRN numbers are given to foreign nationals who do not have South African ID numbers, as well as foreign “businesses, organisations and non-legal entities” who need to register on the eNatis system.
The department commissioned an investigation after discovering that 973 TRNs were issued from a small office in the Northern Cape over four months in 2019.
The town in which the implicated office is located only has 12 000 residents, while only 130 TRNs were issued from the province’s largest office during the same time frame.
Home Affairs found that foreign nationals were applying for TRNs in the Northern Cape and, within an hour, had applied for duplicates in Cape Town.
Home Affairs’ investigations cross-referenced over a million TRNs issued by the Road Traffic Management Corporation between January 2000 and July 2023.
All 1 072 258 TRNs were checked against Home Affairs’ visa adjudications system (VAS), national immigration identification system (NIIS), electronic movement control system (eMCS) and movement control system (MCS).
Only 29 653 TRN recipients – 2.7% – matched against the NIIS, while 747 350 were unmatched when checked against the VAS.
Additional reporting by Jarryd Westerdale
