More than 200,000 pirated DVDs worth more than R2m were seized from unlawful distributors and street vendors and destroyed in Johannesburg on Friday.

According to police, many of the DVDs seized from black-market traders contained pornographic material and were mainly being sold next to taxi ranks.

There was a risk of exposing children to harmful content, said police spokesperson Col Lungelo Dlamini. "The destruction process is conducted to prevent the seized material from finding their way back to the black market," he said.