A mystery over a bike that two students each claim is theirs has landed on the doorstep of local pawn franchise, Cash Crusaders. Joshua Oates reports.
A mystery over a bike that two students each claim is theirs has landed on the doorstep of local pawn franchise, Cash Crusaders. Joshua Oates reports.
Third-year BA Law student Maqhawe Mmango got a nasty surprise when he returned after a lecture to where he'd parked his silver GT Avalanche mountain bike just over three weeks ago – only to be confronted by a furious fellow student and three members of the Rhodes University Campus Protection Unit.
To make matters worse, someone had secured his bike to a railing with a lock he had no way of opening. Sibusiso Mtshali's fury was understandable though. Also a student, he was on his way to a lecture when he saw what looked like the bike that had been stolen from him in February parked on campus. It even still had his chain and lock on it.
To check that it really was his bike, he used the key – which he luckily still kept on him – to open the lock and re-secure it to the railing, before getting backup from campus security to await the presumed thief and confront them.
But when they accused Mmango – the bike's new rider – of having stolen the bike, Mmango assure them he'd in fact paid close to R1 000 for it at Cash Crusaders. Mmango had bought the bike with a lock, but no key, from Cash Crusaders.
“I parked it on campus when I went to attend a lecture, and when I returned the bike was secured to a rail by its lock,” said Mmango. Sibusiso Mtshali, the bike's original owner, said it had been stolen from him in early February.
He said he hadn't reported it to the police because he had a busy schedule and had run out of time before returning home. He opened a case of theft only recently. The two students went to the police on Monday 2 April, to resolve the issue. Mtshali showed the police a receipt to prove that he was the original owner and they accompanied the two students to Cash Crusaders.
But when Grocott's Mail visited the shop, they said the police had taken the bicycle away. “We work closely with the police to prevent stolen goods from being re-sold,” said Annelise Etsebeth, of Cash Crusaders. They produced a file which documents all the cases of stolen goods which they have assisted the police in retrieving.
Mtshali said that the bicycle is valued at R2 600. Cash Crusaders bought it for R400, and then sold it to Mmango for R799. Bruce Haynes, a journalism student, went with Mmango to try and pressurise Cash Crusaders into compensating Mmango, but with no success. He has not been compensated, as no police case number has been given to Cash Crusaders to prove that the bicycle was indeed stolen.
“The police must show us a case number before we can give any money back,” said Cash Crusaders. “All we ask for is police documents, but they won’t give them to us.”
Cash Crusaders require an affidavit from the police and an identity document from all sellers before they can buy any goods of any value. Etsebeth said they'd given the details of the bike's seller to the Grahamstown Police, and the matter was being investigated.
On Cash Crusaders’ Stop Crime page, on their website, they state: “We are 100% committed to playing our part in creating a safer future for all South Africans and take a firm stand against crime. “Our stores and records are open to full inspection at any time and there is a time-lag of seven days before anything we purchase goes on sale.”
These seven days are a cool-off period during which anything that has been reported to be stolen, can be retrieved from Cash Crusaders before it is re-sold. However, the bicycle was with Cash Crusaders for four weeks before it was sold which, according to them, was ample time for police to retrieve it had it been reported stolen.
“We got it at the beginning of February and the original owner said that it was stolen at the end of February,” they said. Police investigations are still under way.
