When an eye specialist decides to close shop in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, it is not an event that would normally make the national news. However, when Dr Anele Yako shut down his business and went, not into retirement but rather into hiding, the story of his plight resonated with many South Africans.
In surrendering his livelihood rather than continuing to risk his life, Dr Yako became one of countless South Africans whose business ventures, no matter how small, are being sabotaged by extortion gangs who demand regular payments for the right to operate a business at all — and insist on a share of the profits under threats of violence. This is the sorry state of affairs for businesses large and small in South Africa today.
This week and next we are reporting on several of these cases, in which ruthless and violent gangs have been allowed with something close to impunity to prey on innocent people trying to make an honest living in an environment characterised by rampant violence and criminality, made all the worse by corrupt elements in the police.
And it’s not just doctors who are being targeted. Funeral parlours, hairdressers, street vendors and tavern owners alike are being subjected to the same shameful and predatory treatment by thugs who don’t fear the police and know the prospects of punishment are often minimal.
The success of township business ventures is vital to the wellbeing of all of us
It’s all very well for well-heeled tenderpreneurs such as socialite Shauwn Mkhize to hail the “construction mafias” as “business forums” and a necessary cost of doing business. This apparent normalisation of predatory behaviour gives criminals succour while making it harder for those who quite rightly balk at sharing the fruits of their labours with criminal elements whose only contribution has been intimidation.
This type of economic crime is a huge danger to the success of the South African democratic project, which is predicated on the eradication of gross inequality and a rising standard of living for all South Africans prepared to work for it. With mass unemployment, and with our leaders in government urging young people to start their own enterprises, the success of township business ventures is vital to the wellbeing of all of us — rich or poor, black or white.
According to police statistics, in the past five years 772 people accused of extortion have been arrested, and 58 successfully convicted. It’s a drop in the ocean compared with what needs to happen if this problem is to be curbed, even if it will never be stamped out altogether.
While not excusing extortion on any level, it is worth bearing in mind that the political elite has made certain to line its pockets through BEE and other redistributive measures that are part of our law, by virtue of the — and rightly so given the inequalities bequeathed to us by apartheid and colonialism.
At the lower rungs of society, however, the promised benefits of redistribution have been elusive and often non-existent.
Perhaps sensing this gap in our law and policies, as well as the failure of economic benefits to “trickle down” to local communities, “business forums”, often with criminal links, have made an expensive nuisance of themselves, adding to business costs and enforcing long delays when they fail to get their way. Similarly, the same criminal tendency has filtered down to common criminals, who have come to view the old lady selling nuts on the side of the road as being as legitimate a target as the listed construction company.
The result has been a free-for-all in which all productive and value-adding activity is viewed as an opportunity to extract rent from the business sector generally.
When small businesses in townships and rural areas fail, there are many who suffer as a result. But the impact on the national effort to provide a better life for all is also severely handicapped. When small business cannot flourish, big business with its security resources will step in, dealing a blow to family businesses and ensuring profits quickly leave the areas in which they are made.
While making South Africa a less conducive place to do business in, for both big and small businesses, extortionary activities also increase business costs. Thorough policing is required, but there is also an obvious need for a government plan to help small businesses in particular to prosper in the face of increasingly insurmountable odds.
In addition to other sociological interventions, the crisis requires the police to review their crime-fighting approach, which must include increasing their intelligence-gathering and crime-detection capacities.
Eradicating this evil will require urgent multi-stakeholder intervention, lest it become a truism of our society that crime pays and enterprise is a hazardous undertaking.
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