4 September 2026 · Dealers · Gqeberha

The dealers being closed down are not being closed for what they sold

Cape Town's Metal Theft Unit closed 136 businesses between July 2025 and April 2026, made 88 arrests and issued 3 095 fines. The reason given for the closures was not that stolen goods were found. It was non-compliance and failure to register. For a dealer, that is a different and more manageable risk than it first sounds — and a more urgent one.

The short answer

In one South African metro, over ten months, 136 second-hand metal businesses were closed down. Not fined. Closed.

And the reason given was not that they were caught with stolen goods. The stated reason was “continued non-compliance with applicable legislation, or failing to register as a second-hand goods dealer or metal recycler.”

That is the part worth sitting with. The paperwork is not the small print of this trade. In the enforcement figures, the paperwork is the offence.

The numbers, and where they come from

Cape Town’s Metal Theft Unit published its figures for July 2025 to April 2026. In ten months, in one city:

• 1 257 scrapyard compliance inspections — roughly four every working day
• 42 scrap dealers closed
• 94 bucket shops closed
• 88 arrests
• 3 095 fines issued
• More than 800 kg of stolen metal and over 1 km of cable recovered

In April 2026 a separate conviction landed: fifteen years’ imprisonment for possession of 409,15 kg of Transnet cable stolen in 2023.

Those are one metro’s figures, published by that metro. We have not found an equivalent national breakdown, and we are not going to invent one by scaling these up. But four compliance inspections a working day, in one city, is not a department going through the motions.

Why the paperwork is the offence

The Second-Hand Goods Act 6 of 2009 does not ask a dealer to be innocent. It asks a dealer to be legible — registered, and keeping a register that can be read by someone who arrives without warning.

Two duties do most of the work:

Registration. Trading as a second-hand goods dealer without being registered is an offence in itself. No stolen item has to be involved. The business is simply not allowed to be open.

The register. Section 21(1) requires a dealer to keep a register of goods acquired and disposed of. Section 21(2) sets out what has to be in it, including how the seller’s identity was verified. Section 21(5) requires a copy of the identity document to be kept.

The penalties sit in Schedule 3, and they are not administrative:

• Section 21(1), the register duty — up to ten years
• Section 21(5), keeping the copy — up to five years
• Section 23, which carries the seven-day holding period — up to ten years

In each case a court may impose a fine instead, or both. But the ceiling tells you how Parliament ranked it.

The uncomfortable bit

A dealer who buys nothing stolen, all year, can still be closed down. And a dealer whose records are complete has an answer on the day an inspector arrives, whether or not something in the shop later turns out to have been stolen.

That is the whole logic of the Act. It does not try to make dealers into detectives. It makes the trade traceable, so that when something is stolen there is a paper trail from the counter it passed over. A dealer with a proper register is not being asked to prove innocence. They are being asked to show their working.

Which means the honest risk is not “am I a criminal”. It is “can I produce five years of readable records, today, without warning, for someone who does not have to explain why they are asking”.

What we would actually check, if it were our shop

None of this needs software. It needs answers.

1. Is the registration current, and where is the certificate? Section 39 requires it to be displayed at the premises.
2. Can you find one specific item from four years ago? Five years is the retention period. Four years back is the honest test of it.
3. Does the register record how identity was verified? Not just the number. Section 21(2)(a)(ii) asks for the manner.
4. Is there a copy of the identity document for every acquisition? Section 21(5). This is the one most often missing.
5. Can you show that goods were held before they moved? The seven-day period under section 23(1)(d), counted properly — which is its own trap, and one we have written about separately.

If a dealer can answer those five with a book, a lever-arch file and a bit of patience, they are in a better position than a business that has bought software and never tested it.

What we are not saying

No software makes anyone compliant. Not ours, not anyone’s. Compliance is what a dealer does at the counter, every time, and a system can only be as honest as the person filling it in. Any vendor who tells you differently is selling you something they cannot deliver.

What a good record-keeping system does is narrower and more useful than that: it makes the answer to those five questions fast, and it makes it hard to finish a purchase with a field missing. That is worth something on an ordinary Tuesday, and worth a great deal on the day someone walks in unannounced.

The free self-audit checklist covers the duties above and needs no sign-up, no email address, and no software. Use it against whatever you keep your register in now.