Chilling details have emerged of a recent failed bomb attack in the packed Food Court of the Ballito Junction Regional Mall. The device was placed by a 15-year-old radicalised teen intent on committing mass killing, but it failed to explode. The FBI alerted The Hawks, but the bomb had already been placed. The teen was finally arrested last week. In this interview with Chris Steyn, Willem Els, the Senior Training Coordinator on Terrorism and Explosives Related Incidents at the Transnational Threat and International Crimes Programme of the Institute for Security Studies, says: “For a long time, we've been warning about your prevalence of the so-called Lone Wolf scenario in South Africa…And this is maybe a wake-up call for South Africa ”. Prior to placing the bomb, the teen had published his Manifesto on Telegram. In it, he glorified mass killings and claimed that traumatic personal experiences had driven him to extremist online communities whose members were the only people who understood him. Listing all the red flags in the subsequent handling of the case, Els calls for a thorough IPID investigation. .Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:00.844)Hundreds of people are lucky to be alive after a bomb placed in a packed food court in a mall in Ballito failed to explode. With me is Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies. Welcome Willem.Willem Els (00:16.528)Hello Chris.Chris Steyn (00:18.286)Willem, as the Senior Training Coordinator on Terrorism and Explosives Related Incidents at the Transnational Threat and International Crimes Programme, has it come as a surprise to you that this bomb was placed by a fifteen-year old teenager, radicalised, a Lone Wolf?Willem Els (00:38.522)Yeah, Chris, I think that's a very good question. For a long time, we've been warning about your prevalence of the so-called Lone Wolf scenario in South Africa. We had quite a few attacks in the past, but the Lone Wolf scenario is one of your most difficult scenarios to keep a tap on in terms of intelligence. Because this person tends to work alone and they function alone. They don't have a visible profile on the Internet normally. And also they don't discuss their intentions with a lot of people. So the very, very first time that your intelligence will maybe pick it up is when they maybe publish a Manifesto like what we saw in this incident where it was placed on Telegram. And unfortunately, it seems that our intelligence service still did not pick that up.And at the end of the day, after they were being informed by the FBI about this incident that took place, they actually started to act on it.Chris Steyn (01:41.091)Yes, there are so many red flags in how this case has been handled. Firstly, the boy was not arrested. The explosive device that smoked but didn't detonate was returned to his mother, and only after the FBI warned The Hawks was he placed in a psychiatric hospital for a while, but then he turned up back at the mall just the other day on the first of July.Willem Els (02:08.171)Exactly, you know, if you look at your legislation, of course, we believe and we also advocate the rule of law. So that is also applicable to the police as well. So in terms of your legislation, if you look at the POCDATARA Act, is your counterterrorism act. And also if you look at your Criminal Law, you know, there are some obligations on the police when something like this happens.So we see that the case was not registered. And when the mother didn't want to register the case, they actually returned the device, the explosive device that was illegally in his position to his mother. That was also not according to law because now she also committed a crime. And then what we saw is why did the mall not press any charges? Why did they not contact the police? That's also a question that we need to ask. We must remember, this is breaking news. It's unfolding. A lot of information will come to the fore. But based on available information, this is what we have now. The mall didn't lay charges. They didn't call the police. The parents didn't lay charges. The boy was not arrested. When the police got involved, they handed the device back and they didn't register a case. So in the correct way to handle it, it should have been notified to police. The police should have reacted. They should have then called in the Bomb Disposal Unit. The Bomb Disposal Unit should have rendered that device safe. Because remember, because this device only smoked, it doesn't mean that it can still detonate. We don't know. It must be examined. And that is why they call it an Improvised Explosive Device. It doesn't function according to any manual. It functions and it's built on the ingenuity of the bomb builder. That is why the bomb technician has to reverse engineer almost this thing and make sure that it is safe before it can be moved. And so there's a red flag there. What would have happened if the people of the mall…picked up that bag that it was in the food court and it detonated. You know, if you look at the fatalities in, for instance, look at Iraq, with the war in the Syrians in Iraq…Willem Els (04:27.96)…more than 85 % of your fatalities on the Allied Forces side was caused by Improvised Explosive Devices….And the intention of Improvised Explosive Device, we haven't seen it, we don't know whether it was shrapnel added, et cetera, it is normally to kill or maim as many people as possible. So if we think back about the so-called PAGAD Era, we had more than 300 IEDs that exploded in the Cape Town area in a matter of about two years.We saw that the so-called, the infamous Planet Hollywood bomb, where a British family that was also dining there, really bore the brunt of it. I know that it was a six-year-old girl and she lost one of her legs that was just severely cut off by the debris of the IED. We don't know what this one looked like. It could have happened here. And I think the way it was dealt with… There are a lot of questions to be asked and maybe it warrants a thorough investigation by IPID.Chris Steyn (06:03.243)And Willem the boy clearly stated his intent to commit mass killing in this Manifesto that he published on the encrypted app, Telegram. And if that had not been passed on to the FBI by somebody, we would not have been any the wiser. They would not have contacted The Hawks. The matter wouldn't have been taken further.Willem Els (06:27.372)Exactly. And you know, it could have happened again. We do not know what the outcome was of his treatment when he was in hospital and what the process was and whether he was rehabilitated or whatever. So, but what we saw in what we know about the Manifesto is that he referred back to the Columbine School shooting, the massacre that really shook America and the world. And he glorified the violence that was there.And we see that this boy, seems from his Manifesto that we know, is that he was bullied, was outcast, and he was targeted by the other school children. And as far back as in 2024, there was an incident where he chased some people with a knife. Now that should have been a red flag already. Why was there no action on that from the school side, from the parent side, the police, et cetera?So you see, that is why I say there's a lot of red lights that are flickering here in how this incident was dealt with by everybody involved.Chris Steyn (07:33.389)Hm and he was truly committed because he said he had found a home with extremists online. He felt understood by them.Willem Els (07:44.492)Exactly. And you know, we see that if you look at your terrorist cases that are currently being investigated, those that have been investigated, if you call for court and so on, we see that your social media plays a major role when it comes to radicalising, to facilitating, to actually also assist in the process of the radicalisation of these people and where they find then people that are like-minded and when they get together, they start to justify the actions, et cetera, et cetera. And it just fuels it further and further. And the red light that we see there is what is our capacity of intelligence to put a tab on that? The FBI has got a very vibrant capacity in order to monitor these type of social media discussions, whether it is linked to crime or whether it is linked to terrorism. So we seem, I don't think we've got that in place. And this is maybe a wake-up call for South Africa to really look at how can we strengthen our proactive actions when it comes to this? Because if they could have picked this up before he placed the bomb. If that bomb then detonated and killed people, it could have been prevented. Fortunately, it seems that there was a defect in the construction, and that is why it only smoked and it did not detonate.Chris Steyn (09:21.697)Well, the fact that he went back to the mall on the first of July and was arrested again on the third of July, indicates that he had not given up.Willem Els (09:34.084)Yeah, I think that is a deduction we can make. He could have gone and looked at a recce where he could place his next one. We don't know what is in his mind because. As I said, it is unfolding and a lot more information will come out. But it is really alarming because once a person, if you look at the profiles of these people that have been convicted and that have also been participating in these type of events, you know, the radicalisation take a period of time. But the de-radicalisation of those people, it doesn't happen overnight. So what are the processes? Was he then convinced that they de-radicalised him, if we can call it that way, into not pursuing his objectives? Or what happened? So why did he go back? And why was he arrested? So what I'm trying to say, there's a lot of questions to be asked there.And I think only with a thorough investigation by what I believe should be IPID because I think the police here did not act in the right way in terms of the Standing Operations as well as the Standing Operating Procedures. Also not in terms of enforcing and investigating the law because this is a crime. It's a crime in two of our legislations and it's very serious crimes. If you look at your Criminal Law act, I think the minimum sentence there is 15 years imprisonment. So it is not a misdemeanor. It is a serious crime.Chris Steyn (11:08.557)Well Willem, I think you can tell viewers from what you know and from your engagement with international terrorism experts how big the threat on South African soil really is and how local authorities have not really taken that on board.Willem Els (11:26.724)Yeah, I think, you know, in the recent history, we have a serious challenge and we really have a challenge when it comes to intelligence. We've been saying that for long time. It came out in the 2021 insurrections and so on. Where Crime Intelligence really came under scrutiny. We do not have the capacity that we're supposed to have. Now, intelligence is the only thing that can help your decision makers, your lawmakers, et cetera, to act and to plan proactively. And without that, they're actually working blind.…..So South Africa is not immune. We haven't had a major attack in recent years, but your conditions in South Africa are conducive for these groups to operate, to gather funds. That's why we saw about six people or people of interest were actually designated and blacklisted by the US Treasury in South Africa for terror funding.But also a very interesting one of them has been flagged that he commits organised crime and then use the proceeds of the organised crime. That is your bank robberies or your robberies of people extortion, et cetera. And then they channel that towards ISIS. So that is the current situation in South Africa.Chris Steyn (15:36.951)Thank you very much. That was Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies speaking to BizNews and I'm Chris Steyn.