Sixty illegal miners snake their way across a hillside into a mine in Mpumalanga — a glowing white centipede captured on a thermal surveillance camera. Further west, just outside Emalahleni, a criminal syndicate targets a train carrying chrome to Richards Bay. Hundreds of people living in an informal settlement nearby join in the looting.
Three hundred kilometres away in Johannesburg, a taxi boss is shot dead as he leaves a meeting of operators. Near Maraisburg, 10 bullet-riddled bodies of zama zamas are found dumped at the side of a road. In KwaZulu-Natal, an induna is assassinated shortly after returning home from the annual Zulu reed dance in Nongoma. And in Cape Town, two armed kidnappers bundle a businessman into a car, ignoring the cries of witnesses filming them.
These and countless other recent incidents like them are the fruits of organised crime in a country that is teetering ever closer to dangerous criminal anarchy.
A STORY TOLD IN BLOOD
The story of organised crime in SA in recent years is one told in blood. Our annual murder rate is now 40 murders per 100,000 people. That is higher than in Mexico, where drug cartels have cut a homicidal swathe across several states.
SA has long had a stubbornly high murder rate. Extensive research by Dr Anine Kriegler at the University of Cape Town’s Centre of Criminology shows a steady increase in murder to the 1950s, a slightly more rapid rise to the 1960s, some years of relative stability, and then a huge spike to a peak in 1993.
The first decade-and-a-half after our democratic elections in 1994 saw a dramatic 50% decline in murder from a staggering 64 murders per 100,000 in 1994 down to about 30 per 100,000 in 2011. As academic and columnist Jonny Steinberg has written, this was primarily attributable to the sharp reduction in political violence in KZN and Gauteng, the “peace dividend” of post-apartheid SA and the implementation of the Firearms Control Act of 2004.
But in 2011/2012 — a critical inflection point in the recent history of organised crime in this country — that changed. The murder rate began to climb steadily — with close to a 40% increase over the next decade. It is a significant reversal of the gains made in the first 15 years of the new democracy.
THE EROSION OF POLICING AND THE RISE OF GUNS
Why this regression? It is likely (in the absence of unequivocal data) that the upturn in murder is the result of several factors: the erosion of policing independence and skills during this period, reflected in far fewer murder cases being solved; the release of comparatively large numbers of state firearms to the criminal underworld; an enormous increase in the issuing of gun licences (including semi-automatics) to citizens and criminals partly thanks to corruption in the firearm licensing system; finally, as a result of the first three factors, an increase in deaths related to organised crime in cases of robbery, assassinations, gang violence and the like.
Several crime types closely associated with organised crime — most notably aggravated robbery, including carjacking — also increased during the same period in alignment with the murder rate.
An often-invisible thread connects numerous seemingly disparate criminal incidents
ORGANISED CRIME THREATENS OUR EXISTENCE
It is no exaggeration to say that organised crime poses an existential threat to SA's democratic institutions, economy and citizens. An often-invisible thread, it connects numerous seemingly disparate criminal incidents and a multiplicity of illicit markets. Interlocking criminal ecosystems reinforce one another, gradually — at first — and then more rapidly, increasing in scope and scale. Organised crime’s victims can be found across the social spectrum, but SA's poorest invariably suffer the most.
The mass shootings in taverns across the country or the horrific gang rapes in an illegal mining community on the West Rand; continual outbreaks of violence at taxi ranks; shop owners threatened at gunpoint; the assassinations of whistle-blowers, police detectives, gangsters and game rangers: these incidents are not as random or isolated as they appear.
Below the surface, and often not immediately perceptible in each incident, is a dark, tangled web: a criminal ecosystem that links many of these countless criminal acts, which need to be understood as the manifestations of an escalating set of problems driven by SA's increasingly sophisticated, violent underworld economy. These overlaying illicit economies — and the multiple actors involved — are evolving faster than day-to-day analysis allows.
CRIMINAL GOVERNANCE
In communities across the country, where the government is mainly absent or ineffective, where entire police stations are often on the take, where corruption and criminality have all but shredded the social contract, where trust is broken and where political promises have proved meaningless, and where the future holds only the prospect of worsening inequality, crime groups have been quick to fill the void with alternative, parallel forms of criminal governance. In a country where youth unemployment is at more than 66%, it is no wonder gang bosses and criminal entrepreneurs become aspirational figures to be feared and admired.
A GRIM OVERVIEW
This week, in response to the worsening situation, we published a Strategic Organised Crime Risk Assessment of SA. It is the first of its kind in more than a decade. Our objective was to take a long view and examine SA's illicit markets from a strategic perspective to better understand their implications for the country. Understanding the nature and risk of organised crime in SA and the harm it inflicts is essential in developing a coherent, effective strategy to disrupt it.
We also hope that the document carries a sobering message, giving policymakers, police, prosecutors, politicians and citizens a clear sense of the enormity of the challenge facing us all. In the days leading up to its publication, we met a range of high-level government agencies and departments, including the presidency, to brief them about our findings. They shared our concern that the country is at a crossroads and that decisions taken now will reverberate for years.
Failing to act strategically and with a sense of unity and purpose will have dire results. SA's criminal ecosystem is complex and evolving. It affects the lives of millions, along with the country’s economic health and, ultimately, its political and democratic integrity.
SA arguably has one of the world's most diverse sets of criminal markets – certainly as diverse as Brazil or the Democratic Republic of Congo
INTERCONNECTED CRIMINAL MARKETS
A year in the making and drawing on the input of more than 50 experts, the assessment identifies 15 embedded, interconnected criminal markets that pose the greatest threat to SA's democratic project since 1994. We have grouped them into three categories:
- Selling the illicit: Older, more established markets for drugs, illegal firearms, human trafficking and smuggling and wildlife, fishing and environmental crime;
- Dealing in violence: Extortion, kidnapping for ransom, organised robbery and organised violence — which includes murder-for-hire; and
- Preying on critical services: Attacks on critical infrastructure, organised corruption, cybercrime, economic and financial crime, health sector crime, mass public transport including minibus taxis and buses, and illegal mining.
SA has one of the world's most diverse sets of criminal markets — certainly as diverse as Brazil or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These markets are facilitated by corruption, interlinked in a set of regional illegal economies and notable for their extreme violence.
But SA is also uniquely positioned, as shown in the Enact project’s 2021 Africa Organised Crime Index, as a country with extremely high criminality but also one with relatively high resilience. But that resilience — based on a measure of factors including government transparency and accountability, political leadership, national laws, the justice system, law enforcement, anti-money laundering efforts and witness support, among others — is waning.
Also noticeable since the first Africa Index in 2019 is the dramatic growth of “mafia-like” criminal groups such as in the taxi industry, illegal mining or more traditional gangs and criminal groups running extortion rackets. It is a surge more significant than anywhere else on the continent.
MORE AND MORE GUNS
Greater access to firearms has increased gang-related violence since 2009 and led to a “professionalisation” of violence-for-hire, manifesting as hits in the taxi industry and assassinations of whistle-blowers, law enforcement officers and political figures.
Despite an overhaul of gun controls in 2000, institutional corruption at the Central Firearms Registry, the diversion of civilian firearms, state-controlled weapons and firearms in the private security sector have sustained a flow of illegal firepower, often funded by booming profits from the drugs trade. Expanding drug profits enable gangs to procure more firearms; these firearms allow greater control over territory and, as a result, generate greater profits. It is a vicious cycle and innocent bystanders are often caught in the crossfire.
SA is a geographic nexus linking Afghan meth and heroin producers, Mexican cartels, Colombian cocaine suppliers, Indian and Chinese synthetic drug syndicates and European organised crime groups. While dagga remains the most widely sold drug, SA is one of the largest heroin consumer countries on the continent. Johannesburg and Cape Town are the major distribution hubs, with the former’s sphere of influence encompassing the entire Southern African region, while Durban and Pretoria are also significant heroin markets.
A STREAM OF DRUGS BY AIR, SEA AND LAND
In addition to flows along the southern route, heroin is trafficked through OR Tambo and Cape Town International airports and by container through the Cape Town seaport and the inland dry port of City Deep in Johannesburg. Overland cross-border flows to Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe are facilitated by public transport and private vehicles.
Meth, or tik, as it is more commonly known, is the dominant drug used in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. It was produced domestically before supply diversified to include Nigerian and comparatively cheap Afghan-manufactured meth. SA is also a significant consumer and transit market for cocaine from Latin America, especially en route to East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Drug use has become widespread in many South African cities, increasing the incidence of transmissible diseases.
Access to guns has also seen a dramatic expansion, diversification and legitimisation of extortion across the country. It is textbook organised crime, a highly corrosive criminal practice, bringing fear and violence to local communities and causing severe economic and political harm by undermining economic development, corrupting state processes and eroding trust in the rule of law. Pay up or else, their targets are told.
Most kidnappings are likely to be low-level, targeting marginalised communities for small amounts
PANDEMIC BOOSTED EXTORTION
In KZN, “business forums” have sought to enrich themselves from government and private sector contracts and may have an eye on deeper political involvement. Nightlife extortion networks in Cape Town were driven partly by the pandemic into the so-called “day-life” economy, targeting cafes, restaurants and luxury apartments.
This expansion may also be linked to the increased contestation for control of the protection market in Cape Town, which began in 2017. There have been reports of paramedics being targeted by extortionists in Cape Town — a phenomenon that a Western Cape spokesperson said had increased after the first national lockdown and had affected emergency medical service delivery.
In Tshwane, the notorious Boko Haram extortion group, which began as a business forum for young people before morphing into armed extortion of residents, allegedly infiltrated the ANC before a series of arrests and killings of prominent members in 2021 saw the gang’s strength decline. And in the aftermath of the widespread destruction of malls and business premises in KZN that followed former president Jacob Zuma’s brief imprisonment for contempt of court, several business owners reported that “armed groups” claiming to represent “business forums” had begun trying to “negotiate” with them at malls in townships for cleaning and rebuilding contracts. “They said they wanted to negotiate. They had guns and said if we give them R1m, they will clean up. We called the police, nothing was done.”
KIDNAPPING ON THE RISE
Kidnapping for ransom or extortion (KRE) has risen sharply in SA since 2016, skyrocketing in 2019/2020 and continuing a seemingly inexorable climb. The increase is believed to be due to foreign-based syndicates (notably ones expanding their activities from Mozambique and others based in South Asian countries) and local “copycat” syndicates which, realising the lucrative nature of KRE, replicate the modus operandi of foreign groups.
Lockdowns implemented in connection with the pandemic may also have introduced new players to the market and established new criminal relationships. Cigarette and alcohol bans gave gangs an opportunity to enter new markets and a foothold to other trades. With fewer cash-in-transit vehicles on the road — and greater law enforcement presence — CIT gangs also began to pursue other avenues for illegal revenue, including kidnapping, which represented a comparatively low-risk venture given that small-scale kidnappings are seldom reported. This favourable profit/risk calculation means that syndicates previously (or continue to be) involved in other crimes are likely to make the expansion to KRE permanent.
Victims include vulnerable members of townships and informal settlements, migrants, prominent businesspeople and their families — with ransoms calibrated accordingly. Transnational crime syndicates have driven a recent wave of high-level extortion and given rise to numerous local copycat groups. Most kidnappings, however, are likely to be low-level, targeting marginalised communities for small amounts — cases that often go unreported due to police mistrust. Law enforcement has made notable arrests concerning kidnapping gangs, but growing incidents suggest that it has become an established and lucrative criminal practice.
Should SA develop an international reputation as a “kidnapping country”, the affect on our already battered economy will be profound.
INFRASTRUCTURE UNDER ATTACK
As SA battles intensifying electricity blackouts, its infrastructure is also facing a sustained and organised attack. Theft of copper on an industrial scale has a catastrophic affect, further crippling power supplies, communications, railways and water supplies. Thieves target diesel and petrol pipelines. Corruption around infrastructure provision, mainly procurement fraud, has also inflicted a high cost, holding back development and seeding widespread discontent over the country’s political architecture. This has severely eroded state capacity to provide critical services, disrupting the daily lives of millions of South Africans. Unless action is taken soon, the damage to the fabric of the South African state may become irreversible.
THIS AFFECTS US ALL
The state’s law enforcement responses have failed to check the expansion and evolution of organised crime. We live in a nation where there is often little if any accountability. Amid this surge in criminal activity, it is vital that fatalistic thinking does not take root. This affects us all. The prominence of organised crime is not an immutable fact, and the country still has an array of crime-fighting tools at its disposal. Given the right reforms, investment, institutional leadership and political will, law enforcement can turn the tide on organised crime.
Achieving this will be slow, patient, and unglamorous work, but the task needs to be undertaken with great urgency, with nothing less than the country's future at stake.
• Shaw is the director, and Rademeyer is the director for East and Southern Africa at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime
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