News crew robbed on camera seconds before live report

JOHANNESBURG -- As a TV camera rolled, armed men robbed a news crew of the South African Broadcasting Corporation in a Johannesburg street.

The robbery happened Tuesday night when journalist Vuyo Mvoko was seconds away from going live outside a hospital in South Africa's biggest city, SABC said.

SABC video footage showed two men accosting Mvoko as he waited to deliver his report in front of the camera with a microphone.

SABC's Chriselda Lewis tweeted a photo of the two suspects:

No weapon is visible in the footage, but Mvoko said later in a SABC interview that one of the men threatened him with a gun when he did not immediately give up his cellphone. The thieves took two or three cellphones and a laptop, Mvoko said.

The journalist said he and his team called police, who arrived at the scene.

Police said no arrests had been made by Wednesday morning.

The South African National Editors' Forum appealed to anyone who recognized the assailants from the video footage to alert police to their identities.

"Every South African lives with the reality of crime, but to see thugs brazenly ignoring television cameras and robbing media workers in the course of their work, yet again brings home the level of criminality in our society," the editors' group said in a statement.

Mvoko was reporting from outside Milpark Hospital following reports that Zambian President Edgar Lungu was being treated there after traveling to South Africa for medical care.