With newspaper articles safely archived for public access dating back to the 1900s, Mogale City’s Krugersdorp Library has not only enabled the telling of the famous 1977 Standard Bank tunnel robbery but also highlighting the richness of information safely kept in our 48-year-old CBD library.
Little did many of us know that the Krugersdorp Tunnel Robbery ranks among three such crimes that has and will forever intrigue the nation after an amount of R413 000 then (today estimated at R20m) got stolen in cash and other valuables in a true Hollywood-style robbery.
Robbers for almost three months dug a 21-metre tunnel from a neighbouring office/store fictitiously rented by a Mr. Nightingale under municipal records to access Standard Bank. Cheekily done during a period of adjacent building and under-ground excavating work which forced the bank to temporarily de-activate their tremble alarm, the robbers who suspiciously had some mining experience worked for the said months digging underground to access the bank. In the end making off with the loot and leaving no leads for any arrests in a story that still today grips the imagination of many.
In preserving the 1977 copy of the newspaper still in its original pristine form, our library has shown its significance in our community of not only providing books for reading, a place of study and research but also archiving and preserving of heritage to tell our own exciting tourism and other intriguing stories.
In telling this story our library was recently approached to avail the article, allow for filming of the library and to do an interview with a documentary film production company that will re-tell the infamous robbery, which today ranks amongst South Africa’s Top 3 most mysterious crime stories.
A big up goes to the current and past library teams for this work, staying relevant and standing the test of time in a digitally transforming era.