POLOKWANE – Two workers attached to the South African Post Office (Sapo) were robbed of their personal belongings while delivering and sorting mail at the mailboxes in Witklip Street on Monday.
Annah Mothudi and Maria Mogotlane did their rounds of delivering and sorting mail at the various points they service daily on Monday afternoon. They were at the mailboxes in Ladanna opposite the traffic offices in Witklip Street when they were robbed of their handbags with all their money, cards, IDs, drivers licences and personal belongings.
Mothudi said they offloaded the trays of mail to be sorted. They separated the mail after sorting and she went into one of the cubicles and Mogotlane into the other to insert the mail into the correct mailboxes.
“I finished first and went to help my colleague in her cubicle to finish the task. We heard four gunshots and rushed out to see what was going on. We saw a man who told us it was a man in a passing vehicle who fired the shots, he did not know why. Nobody was injured though, and the man was long gone,” Mothudi said.
“When we finished sorting the mail we took the empty trays and locked the cubicles. When we wanted to unlock our vehicle with the remote, it would not open. I eventually opened the lock at the back of the vehicle with a key and we climbed in from the back. When I opened the sliding panel inside the vehicle, I saw my handbag was not where I had left it. I asked my colleague if she knew where it was, but she said she had removed it. She then saw her own handbag was also gone,” Mothudi said.
The two women had their cellphones with them and they contacted their supervisor as well as a union member, who then phoned the police. Some colleagues soon came to assist them while waiting for the police.
“We were very shocked and cried when our colleagues arrived. All our money was gone and we did not even know how we were to get home as our bus tickets were also gone,” Mogotlane said.
The women said they had on previous occasions told their supervisor that the cubicles, standing on a large empty veld where trucks stop, were not safe.
Mothudi said she was once nearly raped there and in January five men came and pulled off their trousers, exposing their genitalia, asking if she wanted them. Another man who seemed to be intellectually impaired, also often threw stones at them.
A Communication Workers Union member who did not wish to be identified, said the mailboxes were in a dangerous spot. “Initially they were on the premises of a business in Witklip Street, but they were moved here around 2011,” he said.
A Sapo spokesperson, who did not wish to be identified as he had not been authorised to give comment on the matter, said the Sapo was cooperating with the police in investigating the incident and had assigned members of its internal security service to assist in the investigation.
The post office would also look into ways that security at the mailboxes could be improved, he said.
Westenburg police spokesperson, Capt Mohlaka Mashiane, confirmed that a case of theft from a motor vehicle was being investigated, but no arrests had been made as yet.
Anyone with information can contact the nearest police station.
