Eikestad

That is the sentiment of Mr Roy Jeffery of the Timberlea farm on the R44 after thieves burgled the farm over the week?end, looking for copper items and destroying farm property worth thousands of rands.

"It's really getting out of hand. Stellenbosch is being stripped of all its valuable metals and nothing can be done about it," sighs Jeffery.

The weekend's raid, when thieves took off with cables and valves, basically destroying an irrigation pump, has been the 20th time the farm has been hit.

This time alone, the damage is close to R7 000.

"Everytime we jack up our security and spend more money on replacing the damaged property, but the thieves keep coming back."

Jeffery is only one of the farmers around Stellenbosch who've been hit by the copper theft plague.

It is believed that thieves steal copper because they can sell it to scrap metal shops with ease.

To sell copper items, one merely needs to present an ID-book and a residential address.

"The thieves sell it for a quick buck," says Col. Sakkie van Zyl, head of operations at Stellenbosch Watch.

Van Zyl said he cannot single? out a specific scrap metal shop in Stellenbosch, but added his concern about the easy trading of the valuable metal. "Copper theft would be much less of a problem if the scrap metal shops would stop buying the copper from people. Some of the merchants don?t care if the copper is stolen or not. They buy it, quickly melt it down and sell it off at a huge profit."

Van Zyl said Stellenbosch Watch deals with an "alarming number" of copper theft incidents on farms in the area.

But owners of local scrap metal shops deny any dealings with copper thieves.

"We are very strict about what we buy," says Mr Rudi Nel, owner of Star Scrap Metal in Cloetesville.

According to him, the police check his stock on a weekly basis. All scrap metals allegedly have to stay put for seven days before they can be sold. "So even if we would buy the illegal metals, we cannot sell them. So what would be the point for us? Maybe the thieves sell the copper in Cape Town, but not here."

At CL Trading, a scrap metal shop in Plankenbrug, one can get R33 per kilogram for copper.