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

The once proud Uitzig Secondary School in Cape Town used to have a grand entrance and reception area, five classrooms and two toilet rooms.

But when the local education authority closed its gates for the last time and moved the 100 students to nearby schools, the opportunistic crooks stepped in.

Within six months, every brick, window, and tile, along with the toilets, electricity and plumbing, and even blackboards, had been gutted.

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

A recent satellite image from Google Earth shows the building after thieves gutted it brick by brick.

But then the same photo taken a few years later reveals that the red brick and tile school had “disappeared” and only the concrete classrooms remain.

A former school warden who declined to be named for fear of reprisals from gangs said: ‘It was a good school, but over the years drug gangs have taken over the area.

“Students got scared and there was just constant vandalism, and the school fell into disrepair and finally closed down completely in 2019.

“I’m not kidding when I say the thieves came in the day after closing and stole the school brick by brick and window by window until everything was 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 and electrics went.

“There was nothing left except the concrete floors where the buildings used to stand and now it’s just an abandoned open space where bad people hang out,” he SD.

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

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

The incredible story of the secretly stolen school turns out to be 100% true when Google Earth photos that are a few years apart are compared.

Former pupil Lorna Balata-Peters confirmed that the school had been completely gutted and everything in it after the closure.

She said, “My sporting memorabilia was on the walls and it’s all gone, along with the walls themselves and the roofs and windows and even the bricks.”

Street sweeper John Isaacs, who once went to the school and 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 and sell all the materials for enough money to get a solution.”

Fareed Jansen of the Manenberg Business Forum said: ‘If you have a housing shortage and bricks are sold for 50 cents, people buy them.

“They don’t see the goods as stolen, but as a necessity to build houses,” he said.

Spokesman Bronagh Hammond of the Ministry of Education in the Western Cape province confirmed that the school was doomed to fail due to ‘gangsterism and vandalism’.

She said, “We provided guards and barbed wire, yet the gangs and vandals came in and threatened the teachers and even the guards.

“Eventually we spent so much money on repairs to keep Uitzig going that it became pointless and it drained resources from our other schools.

‘So much damage was done to the infrastructure by the local population that an engineering report said it posed a danger to students and teachers.

“Within a few days of the school closing its gates, and despite the security being left behind, community members came in and stole everything that was left.”

Crime in schools across South Africa is a major problem with arson, vandalism and theft, with most schools requiring heavy 24-hour security.