Pirates target wealthier Cape Town families in speed boats

Armed robbers in speed boats have started attacking and looting the middle-class families in Marina da Gama, a beautiful waterside community only 25 minutes away from Cape Town 's central business district in South Africa.

Residents of the waterside homes in Marina da Gama have seen the crime rate in their small, elite suburb soar by 120% over the past six months. All the criminals arrive at the luxury properties by boat, police said. Marina da Gama, designed as a classic waterside Greek village in the 1970s, is a gated, heavy-security enclosed residential area close to the popular beaches of False Bay, Cape Town. Its generally well-heeled residents always believed they were secure along the waterfront to the network of canals leading to False Bay. Ttheir lawns slope right down to the waterfront. Not a fence or security system in sight. For background on the current South African situation see here and here. However now, their tranquility is being shattered by increasingly bold and aggressive pirates who arrive in power boats and loot people's waterside homes. Police seem unable to track them down - these pirates can leave as quickly as they arrive in the dark. Neither the heavy private security contingent nor the local police seem able to capture or stop them. On Monday, one resident fired at the armed robbers as they were leaving with their loot in a boat. It seemed a futile attempt, local residents say. Police say at least six houses have been broken into in the past two weeks alone by thsee pirates who use the area's waterways to gain access to the houses of Cape Town's super-rich. Residents are up in arms: it's only a matter of time, they believe, before they will be attacked inside their homes and perhaps even kidnapped. Most of the houses have gardens that slope down to the water and very few even have fences, police superintendent Andrè Traut pointed out. The pirates also steal the speed boats and pedalos which are moored outside the houses, he warned. While the police apparently don't know how to find these pirates in their home base, at least one local resident says he's tracked them down to a picnic site in a nearby swampy area called Zandvlei. Police say they are searching the area but thus far no-one has been arrested. One resident, Jean van Witt, who lives in a waterfront townhouse, was burgled by pirates for the second time this year. On Monday she was awoken by her dogs at about 1.30am. "When I came downstairs I noticed the door to the patio was wide open." The pirates were gone, taking her digital camera, four antique cameras and her father's binoculars -- all items of great sentimental value."I feel traumatised and violated and I'm scared they'll be back," said v.Witt, who has lived in the area for seven years. In an e-mail sent out by Jan de Groote of the Marina da Gama Civic Association this week, residents were warned to secure their boats and pedalos to make it more difficult for criminals. "Crime is up by 120% in parts of the Marina, and homes are being entered from the waterside," De Groote quoted police as saying. Two years ago, electric fences were erected on the perimeter of nearby Bridge Island following a spate of burglaries targetting their homes from the land side -- so now the armed robbers have taken to the water. Homeowners are finding it increasingly difficult to protect their properties and electrified barriers are being planned at a rapid rate now. Fears are that these new barriers will take away all their enjoyment of their unique, once so tranquil waterside community. Joint chairwoman Jennifer Abrahams-Stroh of the Bridge Island Homeowners' Association, said this piracy has become a problem for 'quite some time'.