The US government issued a security alert on Wednesday and warned its embassy staff about a possible terrorist attack in Sandton, reportedly planned for Saturday, October 29.
But minister in the presidency Mondli Gungubele has rejected the US government’s cautionary warning. He said SA followed up asking for evidence, but none was given.
In an advisory published on its website, the US government said it had received “information that terrorists may be planning to conduct an attack targeting large gatherings of people” in greater Sandton.
It noted “no further information regarding the timing, method, or target of the potential attack” understood to be planned for Saturday.
Embassy personnel at the US consular-general’s offices on Sandton Drive were advised to avoid “crowds of people and large gatherings” in Sandton during the weekend.
The city is set to host a number of key events this week including the Winex exhibition from Wednesday to Friday, and the 33rd gathering of Jo’burg Pride for the LGBTQI+ME community this Saturday. The annual wine event draws 8,000 to 10,000 people over three days.
“I’ve checked that with my security unit. I want to say it up front that they are a bit disturbed. Because they say that this alarm has been going on. Up to this point it has not been [backed by] any evidence,” Gungubele told SABC News on the sidelines of the medium-term budget policy statement in Cape Town.
But Stellenbosch University criminologist Guy Lamb warned the government should not ignore the threat, saying things may very well be happening behind the scenes that South Africans do not know about.
The US government would not have put out such a notice “unless it had some form of intelligence that needed to be taken seriously.
“Sometimes you get groups who discuss this over the phone and have no capacity or ability or inclination to actually do the act of terrorism ... but one has to treat those threats with a high degree of seriousness.
“There haven’t been any reports of active groups trying to engage in this form of terrorist violence. But, of course, there may be things happening in the shadows that we don’t know about,” Lamb said.
“The information they have — whether it’s verifiable, whether it’s credible — it is unusual,” said Ryan Cummings, author of The Islamic State of Africa and director of Africa-focused security risk consultancy Signal Risk.
As recently as July 2022, Islamic State (IS) published a statement in which it undertook to launch terrorist attacks in SA if the government participated in the conflict in Mozambique.
“We engaged directly against IS-affiliated insurgents in Mozambique,” Cummings noted. IS “tends to target attacks on high-value areas” and attack “economic heartlands” in which multinational corporations are present.
Asked for comment, national police spokesperson Col Athlenda Mathe referred Business Day to Gungubele’s remarks. Department of international relations & co-operation spokesperson Clayson Monyela declined to comment.
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