Originally Posted by Internaut
I can confirm that unspecified people do indeed open up checked in bags and inspect the contents at JNB. Quite often, they also take some of the contents (laptops are especially popular with the JNB "security" people as a colleague found out the hard way
) so it's best not to check in anything valuable.
Glad to know then that I am not going out of my mind! I posted a similar question on the Fodors forum and got lots of (presumably US-centric) replies saying this was the norm now post 9/11 and that the TSA did indeed leave notes when they did this. However I have not heard of it outside the US and this leads me to believe it was opportunistic thieves, especially as our bags were tagged FIRST (no note of any kind).
In fact the Fodor guys went further and said that they did not lock their bags any more for this reason, which to me seems risky especially somewhere like JNB, although some used cable ties. So I would be interested to know - who out there does or doesn't lock checked luggage?? I know it will not change my habit...