Four crooks, two crowbars and a sturdy South African security gate

They push, wrench, twist and kick, but eventually four hapless South African criminals are forced to slink off empty handed after coming up against a security gate that does exactly what it was designed to do.

Private CCTV footage of the attempted break-in on February 21 at a private residence in Johannesburg was posted online last week, with the uploader saying they want to show the "scumbags'" faces to the world.

The video begins with three men running up the front steps of the Edenvale home, two of them equipped with crowbars.

One of the men goes back down the steps, presumably to act as a lookout, while his partners-in-crime start to work on the wrought-iron security gate, giving it a few testing kicks, and then wedging the jemmies into the jamb and attempting to prise it open.

They barely have a chance to start before something spooks them and they run back down the steps, but they are not gone long before they come back and get started in earnest.

The gate, which opens inwards, flexes tantalisingly but the crims simply cannot get it open.

Eventually the stooge comes back, now wearing a stocking on his head and putting on a pair of gloves; he takes over from his mate in the baseball cap, but still it is no use.

The three of them are hard at it when a fourth would-be-thief shows up, but it is all to no avail – the quartet become visibly exhausted before skulking off with nothing to show for their nefarious toil.

Disturbingly, the uploader noted that this was the second attempted break-in at his parents' house that afternoon.