Well-known South African radio presenter attacked after his car broke down

Cape Talk radio presenter John Maytham was recently attacked and had his belongings stolen while travelling on the M3 highway in Cape Town.

Maytham told the story of his ordeal on Cape Talk. He said he was travelling on the highway around 9:30 pm when his tyre burst. 

He managed to safely pull his car over to the side of the highway after the Blue Route turnoff and before Steenberg Road. 

He got out of the car to change the tyre, noting that the area was particularly dark. After 15 minutes of working on the tyre, a car headed in the opposite direction towards Constantia stops.

“Two guys cross their side of the highway and come towards me. I start doing a bit of racial profiling and I’m nervous,” said Maytham. 

The two men ask the presenter if they can help him with the tyre. He initially refuses, but the young men insist.

“And I thought: ‘How dare you racially profile them. This is so embarrassing. You should feel ashamed of yourself.’” said Maytham. 

One of the men asks Maytham if he has a torch on his phone so that they can better see what they are doing. He responds that he does, pulls out his new iPhone 16 and turns on the light. 

“Next thing – punch in the face, slap in the face, thrown to the ground, phone snatched out of my hand, and they run across the highway to their car,” Maytham recalls. 

He said he should have known something was wrong when they left the engine running to assist him. Maytham ran after them with a spanner in hand, but didn’t reach them before they sped off. 

A sleepless night followed for Maytham when he finally reached home. He considered himself lucky that the two men didn’t finish changing the wheel and hold him at gunpoint to take his car. 

“And then I think, you’re not lucky that something worse didn’t happen to you. You’re unlucky that something did happen to you,” he said. 

“It’s the way this narrative is constructed in this country. Because there is so much crime, when we’re a victim of crime and it would have been worse, we say ‘oh, we’re lucky.’”

Highway crime booming

Highway crime has been increasing in Cape Town recently. Newsday recently reported that Cape Town’s N2 highway near Cape Town International Airport had become a crime hotspot.

The City of Cape Town, seemingly aware of the issue, deployed 40 new officers to the stretch of highway in October.

This is after 2,215 incidents occurred on the highway in the 2024/2025 financial year. 85% of these incidents were related to vehicle mechanical issues, motorists running out of fuel, or a result of flat tyres.

Of these incidents, officers recorded only eight occurrences when they intervened to help affected motorists. 

Cape Town already had a dedicated specialised Highway Patrol Unit in its Traffic Service, but the stark statistics of highway crime prompted the deployment of additional officers. 

The City now has an Integrated Freeway Safety Plan, which identifies priority freeways for crime, including the N2, the M3, where Maytham’s incident occurred, as well as the N1, N7 and M5. 

“The plan goes beyond the deployment of more officers, to also tracking these areas with sophisticated camera technology, including automated licence plate recognition,” explained Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. 

These frequent incidents are primarily opportunistic, targeting motorists who have stopped on the side of the road. 

Even as additional security has been added, motorists in Cape Town are still advised by the city to avoid travelling by night if they can help it and make sure their vehicle is mechanically sound before driving.