Thieves steal entire secondary school brick-by-brick in Cape Town, South Africa

The once-proud Uitzig Secondary School in Cape Town used to boast a grand entrance and reception area and five classroom blocks and two toilet areas.

But once the local education authority shut the gates for the last time and moved the 100 pupils to nearby schools the opportunist crooks moved in.

Within six months every single brick, window and every roof tile along with the toilets, electrics and plumbing and even blackboards had been stripped.

A Google Earth photo taken before the school was closed down showed Uitzig Secondary from above being fully intact and serving the local community.

A recent Google Earth satellite picture shows the building after thieves stripped it brick-by-brick.

But then the same photo taken a couple of years later shows the red brick and tile school had ‘vanished’ and only the concrete classroom floors remain.

A former school caretaker who refused to be named for fear of gang reprisals said: ‘It was a good school but over the years drug gangs took over the area.

‘Pupils became scared and there was just constant vandalism, and the school became run down and in the end in 2019 it was closed down altogether.

‘I do not joke when I say the day after it was closed the thieves moved in and stole the school brick by brick and window by window until it was all gone.

‘The bricks went for 50c (2.5p) each and the windows for R100 (£5) each and all the sinks and toilets and cisterns and plumbing pipes and electrics went.

‘There was nothing left except the concrete floors where the buildings used to be and now it is just a derelict open space where bad people hang out’ he sd.

Uitzig Secondary School pictured before it was stollen brick-by-brick by local thieves after it closed down in Cape Town, South Africa.

After Uitzig Secondary School in Cape Town, South Africa closed its gates, thieves seized their opportunity and stripped the buildings for materials.

The incredible story of the stealthily stolen school is proved 100% true when google earth photographs a few years apart are compared to each other.

Former pupil Lorna Balata-Peters confirmed that the school had been totally stripped to its foundations along with everything inside once it was closed.

She said: ‘My sporting memorabilia was on the walls and that is all gone along with the walls themselves and the roofs and windows and even the bricks’.

Street cleaner John Isaacs who once went to the school then sent his children there said: ‘We don’t know who stole the school but drugs destroyed it.

‘Once the gates were locked the local drug addicts came here to steal the school bit by bit selling all the materials for enough money to get a fix’.

Fareed Jansen of the Manenberg Business Forum said: ‘When you have a lack of housing and bricks are being sold for 50 cents then people will buy them.

‘They don’t see the goods as stolen but as a necessity to build homes’ he said.

Western Cape province Education Department spokesman Bronagh Hammond confirmed that due to ‘gangsterism and vandalism’ the school was doomed.

She said: ‘We provided security guards and barbed wire but still the gangs and the vandals would come in and threaten the teachers and even the guards.

‘In the end we were spending so much money on repairs to keep Uitzig going it became pointless and it was draining resources from our other schools.

‘There was so much damage being done by locals to the infrastructure that an engineers’ report stated that it was danger to the pupils and to the teachers.

‘Within a few days of the school shutting its gates and despite the security left behind the community members came in and stole everything that was left’.

Crime at schools across South Africa is a major problem with arson, vandalism and theft rife with most schools needing heavy 24-hour security cover.