HIS footballing talent helped him escape a city ravaged by poverty, drug-dealing and pock-marked by gang violence.

But former South Africa international Benni McCarthy, whose school friend grew up to become one of Cape Town’s most prominent gangsters, has told how he was forced to leave his Edinburgh home after it was targeted by housebreakers.

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The former Porto and Blackburn Rovers star was on holiday with Scottish wife Stacey when thieves raided their mansion, stealing his luxury Range Rover and laptop computers and also made a failed attempt to take his Mercedes-Benz.

The South African said the robbery had left his wife terrified to return to the house and they have moved to another part of the city.

The 38-year-old, who is set to join Neil Lennon’s coaching staff at Hibernian FC, told how he and Stacey and their children were on their first day of a family holiday in Dubai earlier this year when their home was robbed.
Speaking to a South African newspaper, he said: “The b****rs took computers and stole my Range Rover.

“They took the Mercedes keys. They could not get it out of the garage, so I guess the keys were a consolation.

“I’m just glad my daughters were not in the house. I would have probably tried to fight to protect them. 

“Now my wife, she was scared you know, she didn’t want to continue living in that house anymore and then she left to go and stay with her mother. When a woman is scared, you must act, and we’ve moved to a nearby neighbourhood.”

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Mr McCarthy said he was happy that the family was not in the house when the raiders broke in.

He added: “We had just gone on holiday; in fact it was on our first day in Dubai when we were alerted about the break-in.”

They took his wedding ring, watch and a diamond earring.
Mr McCarthy wed model and former Miss Edinburgh Stacey, 32, in the capital in May 2014. The couple met when he was filming an advert for Nike in Edinburgh.

He previously said: “We met in Edinburgh. I went there on a shoot and she was one of those pretty girls they have as extras. I couldn’t concentrate on what I was supposed to do.”

Last year, the police watchdog reported that Edinburgh had recorded the highest rate of crime in Scotland. 

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary also found the capital to have the lowest rates of detection of the Scottish divisions.

Housebreaking has been a particular issue, with an increase of 20.8 per cent in reports made, according to the 2015 survey.

The murder rate in South Africa is around five times the global average with 17,805 murders recorded last year in a population of a little under 55 million.
Mr McCarthy, who was robbed at gunpoint at a barbershop in Johannesburg in May last year, said it was important that South Africans realised that “crime is everywhere, it is all over, not just there”.

“It is just that in South Africa they also kill, they just don’t take, they hammer you,” he said.

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“We have bought another place, still in Edinburgh. 
“The issue of security had to be taken care of.

“Where I come from, I didn’t have nothing. I had to leave home and everything behind to make a success of myself. And then people just come and want to take, just like that.”