Last Friday, while DA councillor Duncan Monks was putting up election posters on the streets of New Brighton, Gqeberha, a group of heavies arrived and held him up at gunpoint. On his escape, an ANC councillor allegedly tailed him to the local police station.
According to DA Eastern Cape leader Andrew Whitfield — speaking on Monk’s behalf — the heavies are from local business syndicates that work with politicians. With the municipal elections less than a month away, they’re apparently concerned about losing their contracts.
As it stands, the mayoral seat in the Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) metro has shifted back to the DA after a period of some turbulence — but the syndicates remain. They’re "deeply entrenched", says Whitfield.
In his view, the issue goes back to the "great drain heist", which occurred soon after Athol Trollip, the DA’s first mayor in the metro, was unseated in August 2018 by a "black caucus".
Upon taking power, the UDM’s Mongameli Bobani, who has since died, awarded a drain-cleaning contract worth more than R20m to a number of SMEs.
Bobani was "like the Pablo Escobar of local government", says Whitfield — a reference to the notorious Colombian drug lord.
"Since the award of the [drain-cleaning] tender, more than 18 people have been killed," he says — deaths that police have described as politically motivated "hits" linked to the contract.
With Bobani in the mayoral office, the DA brought a motion of no confidence against him. During that time, the speaker received death threats, and shots were fired at her neighbour’s house — but nobody was arrested or held accountable.
"The gangster state in NMB is real, and it is terrifying," Whitfield said at the time.
In the metro’s political merry-go-round, Bobani was said to have had the support of ANC councillor Andile Lungisa, who was himself convicted for assaulting a fellow councillor with a glass jug.
"The ANC, in its efforts to fully capture the local state, deliberately disabled the municipal administration, creating a network of competing criminal syndicates of rent-seeking ANC cadres whose patronage networks became so deeply entrenched in the functions of the municipality that it was as if they were a parallel administration," Whitfield said.
There’s another well-documented case of apparent political gangsterism, this time in the Free State, under former ANC provincial chair Ace Magashule.
In Gangster State, investigative journalist Pieter-Louis Myburgh quotes former Free State premier Beatrice Marshoff as saying Magashule used his position to determine "who became mayor, municipal manager or CFO at all the municipalities".
He allegedly then used these networks to secure contracts for allies or potential allies. (Magashule has disputed the facts in Myburgh’s book.)
Wars over tenders can consume communities. Take Jouberton, in Matlosana municipality based in Klerksdorp in the North West. It resembled a war zone earlier this year.
In early March, local newspaper Lentswe reported that several homes and vehicles had been set alight, and that members of the Vietnam gang had forced their way into the police station after accusing the station commander of conniving with a breakaway group called the Boko Harams.
"It is suspected that the violence is linked to gangs who are disgruntled by the awarding of tenders," a local councillor said.
A community member said one gang was all but in charge of the municipality as a result of its political connections. Armed with inside information, the gang would approach contractors, demanding 50% of the tender value in return for getting them the contract.
In another instance this year, the gangs were said to have blocked the opening of a health facility that was finished four years ago, demanding that their friends and families be employed there.
Perhaps not by chance, infighting in the ANC is apparently also rife in Matlosana. It took close to three months to elect a new mayor after Maetu Kgaile died of Covid in July. Rose Thabanchu, who got the job, was supposed to have appointed a mayoral committee last week but this had to be postponed due to infighting, says Joe McGluwa, the DA’s head in Matlosana.
In part, this seems to be related to disputes over the ANC’s election candidate lists.
"Everything that is happening now is because of the factions, and service delivery is suffering," says McGluwa, adding that the roads are potholed, equipment meant for service delivery is not being maintained, and protesters have blocked the N12 to Coligny.
In KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), several assassinations of councillors, municipal officials and party members have been attributed to infighting and entrenched interests in municipalities.
While a number of commissions of inquiry have been set up to look into the issues, recommendations are rarely acted upon, with the police apparently lacking either the will or the capacity to do so.
Journalist Greg Ardé, whose book War Party is about political killings in KZN, says there’s an overlap between politicians and the underworld, either directly or through proxies.
"In most instances it’s pretty crude and obvious. To up his stake in the local ANC branch [the politician] will align himself with a dodgy security company with connections to the taxi industry, or to underworld heavies," he explains.
Last month, three women on their way to a meeting to decide on an ANC ward candidate were killed in Inanda in a drive-by shooting.
Everything that is happening now is because of the factions, and service delivery is suffering
— Joe McGluwa
In Tshwane, ANC councillor Tshepo Motaung died last month after being shot 20 times. Those close to him believe his murder was related to his running for re-election.
In 2018, two ANC councillors in Tshwane were similarly executed. No suspects have been apprehended.
But it’s not only the ANC whose name has been linked to such activities.
DA federal council chair Helen Zille, who became Cape Town mayor in 2006, writes in Not Without a Fight that she found the now-defunct New National Party had established corrupt networks in the city that were difficult to dismantle.
In Joburg, the ANC accused former DA mayor Herman Mashaba of ignoring an alleged shakedown attempt at the Joburg Roads Agency to appease coalition partner the IFP.
And investigative journalism outfit amaBhungane has published several articles on alleged tender networks established by the EFF, including the questionable awarding of a fleet contract in Joburg.
History may play a big part in the origins of political gangsterism. In NMB, for example, it stretches as far back as the discredited apartheid-era Ibhayi city council, writes social activist and researcher Crispian Olver in "State Capture at a Local Level", a 2016 paper for the Public Affairs Research Institute.
The council was "well known for dubious dealings and a large number of irregular payments and fraudulent transactions were revealed in a succession of audit reports".
These involved senior, mainly white officials and councillors, and patterns were established that were repeated on a grander scale later on — "incestuous relationships between officials and contractors, cutting corners on development projects, pension fraud, ghost employees, missing programme funds — all hidden by what seemed like deliberately poor record-keeping".
Olver quotes a 2016 lecture by the ANC’s Joel Netshitenzhe, in which he pointed out that the apartheid government, in its dying days, became "deeply corrupt" through sanctions-busting activities and giving its security agencies extrajudicial space to help enforce its authority.
"This broadly is what the liberation movement inherited, and in situations where transitions include the integration of old-order political and bureaucratic functionaries, the problem is multiplied manyfold," he said.
On the other hand, the liberation movement had set up a raft of extralegal systems of its own to make the country ungovernable and there was "an implicit acceptance among communities that breaking the law was acceptable".
In NMB’s northern areas, where many coloured families were resettled from the city centre, gangs became entrenched, says Olver.
"A whole political generation grew up in the northern areas. Some became politicians, some gang leaders or shady businessmen. They were able to operate both in the political terrain and in the gangster terrain. The ability to navigate the two terrains helped people to become kingpins to set up really sophisticated extraction operations," he writes.
Can political gangsterism be eradicated?
Violent protests in Tshwane preceded the 2016 local government elections, in which the ANC lost the metro to a DA-led coalition.
DA MP and spokesperson on local government Cilliers Brink says it was after those elections, when he was appointed mayoral committee member for shared services, that he first encountered "political gangsterism".
Brink believes the root of political gangsterism lies in the breakdown of services meant to be delivered by municipalities, such as fleet management or waste collection. Officials then have to outsource these at a premium. The tender specifications are complicated, and contracts are almost always irregularly concluded, he says.
Once outside contractors are in control, they can even sabotage attempts by the municipality to get value for money.
"Even if there is a change of municipal administration, and the outside contractor loses a potentially favourable political partner, they can still rely on protection [from] the highly favourable contract concluded under the old order," he says.
Brink says it’s difficult to expose such syndicates in court. "The police lack the training to interpret evidence of negligent or wilful flouting of tender regulations," he says.
Not helping matters is that the National Prosecuting Authority has, since 2005, only prosecuted a handful of cases of financial misconduct under the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA), Brink says.
"The other problem is that disciplinary procedures in the MFMA and the Municipal Systems Act are so cumbersome that officials can game the system."
For example, these provisions require allegations of misconduct against senior officials to be reported to the municipal council, and a vote is held on whether to investigate or suspend the relevant official.
"Disciplinary cases can be turned into political battles in council," says Brink. And any misstep by the council can lead to a disciplinary matter dragging on for years in the Labour Court, or being settled out of court at great expense.
But Brink believes there is hope. "If a new mayor who is serious about cleaning up understands the phases of municipal capture … [they] will be forearmed in acting against rent-seeking officials, service providers and political bosses," he says.
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