A 27-year-old man has been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on seven charges of armed robbery and seven of kidnapping.
Vuyisani Xaka who was already serving a 20-year sentence for an unrelated matter at the time of his arrest in January 2018, was sentenced at the East London Regional Court on Wednesday.
Hawks spokesperson, Yonela Mgolodela, said he was linked to several armed robbery cases during 2014 and 2015, in which British American Tobacco (BAT) vehicles were hijacked in Mdanstane, East London and Komani.
She said he was part of a group of robbers who would find a way to obstruct the BAT vehicles which were delivering tobacco products in the rural and urban areas of the province.
Mgolodela said they would threaten the drivers with firearms before putting them in a car and driving off to secluded areas.
She said here, they would offload the tobacco products and load them into a getaway vehicle, leaving the driver stranded in the abandoned BAT panel van.
Mgolodela said he will serve an effective 35 years behind bars, as 5 years of the given sentence will run concurrently with his previous sentence.
The BAT company lost an amount of at least R520 000 due to the robberies.
