ALEC HOGG: I spend a lot of time at the Rosebank Mall - not too much time, not like David with the coffee shops - and I've noticed there that the security presence is probably up 50% in the last couple of weeks

Tragically Jaco Pretorius, managing director of Protea Coin Security's guarding division, died in hospital after allegedly being shot while trying to stop three robbers who had just hit a Sterns jewellery store at the Irene Mall Village, Centurion.

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SHOOT: Crime is coming closer to us as financial conditions worsen for more and more people. Over 700 000 South Africans lost their jobs since the beginning of 2009.

clipped from www.realestateweb.co.za Gauteng malls have been hardest hit, but shopping centres elsewhere haven't escaped this growing trend of robberies. At Canal Walk, Century City, in Cape Town, a mall employee was shot and wounded by robbers in April and a restaurant employee was shot and injured in May in a robbery. Earlier this month two security guards were shot and wounded at the Trade Route Mall in Lenasia. In the first week of August there were at least five incidents involving armed gunmen at Gauteng shopping malls including at the Bracken City Mall, Alberton, where a gang of about 20 robbed a Pick 'n Pay supermarket, a bottle store and a pharmacy within a few minutes. The robbers, apparently armed with handguns, worked through tills and ordered customers and shop attendants onto the ground, before getting into a shoot-out with Ekurhuleni Metro police officers as they were making a get-away. One officer was injured.  And, so the list goes on, of one shopping mall "hit" after the next.