Leo Prinsloo and Lloyd Mthombeni Tribute - Three Days Grace.

Tribute to Leo Prinsloo and Lloyd.

A heroic cash-in-transit driver who earned viral fame for keeping his cool when his armoured truck came under attack in South Africa has been placed under protective guard after receiving death threats.

Leo Prinsloo, 48, a former police sniper and 12-year veteran of the elite South African Police Service Special Task Force, earned worldwide fame after footage of the failed heist was published online.

A two-and-a-half minute video recorded inside the truck cabin showed Prinsloo immediately taking evasive action, appearing to ram into one of the vehicles before speeding off.

After a high-speed chase and another hail of bullets hitting the truck, the video ended with Prinsloo grabbing a rifle and exiting the vehicle to confront the attackers.

The heavily armoured Toyota Land Cruiser was escorting millions of rand – 1 million rand is around $90,000 – worth of mobile phones.

Prinsloo and Mtombeni spoke to news channel eNCA earlier this week about the incident.

"You start off with a day like that, you sort of need to expect things like that to happen because it prepares your mind for what you need to do," Prinsloo said.

"There's nothing that really can prepare you 100 per cent for a situation like that. The first time I knew they were there was when the gunshots went off. Instinct kicks in – when we train people we usually tell them to pre-visualise what they're going to do. It's a mindset, and that's pretty much what happened. I pre-visualised what I was going to do, and to the best of my ability I did what my mind told me to do and it worked out for me on that day