With the police force having decided to wholeheartedly embrace their purely ceremonial role in society, stories of industry mafias on every block in SA’s big cities are making western Sicily in the 1840s seem positively law-abiding by comparison.
Perhaps more terrifyingly, these gangs seem to be itching to diversify beyond the narrow confines of the construction industry.
There has been plenty of in-depth coverage of how scores of building projects have been gobbled up by these “protection rackets” in recent weeks, which underscores the empty chasm these gangs have risen up to inhabit.
In particular, Carol Paton artfully sketched how the KwaZulu-Natal construction mafia had changed tack, from demanding a 30% slice of contracts to rebranding as a “legitimate operation” pursuing “radical economic transformation within the law”.
The public procurement rules opened the door for this extortion, by mandating that public entities must subcontract 30% of all contracts over R30m, with the expectation being that it goes to “local goods or services” — regardless of their ability to contribute to those projects.
Actually, one such “business chamber” in KwaZulu-Natal that had gone legit, the Black Business Federation, did seem to be doing a passable job of providing “protection” for construction companies in the area, halting intimidation of workers on projects — provided you were in its camp.
Which is pretty much how things worked in Sicily in the 1800s. In the absence of police, and with strong-arm groups flourishing, the mafia sprang up as a localised protection racket which was, at least, in your corner.
Back in SA, while KwaZulu-Natal seems to be the worst hit, it’s a national racket. In Cape Town, gangs are extorting companies building housing projects — so much so that the municipality described this experience as “endemic to contracts in the human settlements sector nationally”. Reports in the Sunday Times this week recounted how a R250m housing project in Gugulethu had ground to a halt because the contractors had been hit up for extortion money.
But it didn’t stop there. In Khayelitsha, gangsters dressed in Fabiani clothes and driving a VW Polo gave a salon owner two hours to raise R400 as “protection money”, while leaning on women selling meat for “fees” of R300.
The larger companies, at least, often have resources to resist this. Gold Fields, for example, told of how it had been targeted by the mafia for two projects, one of them a R715m solar plant at its South Deep mine near Joburg.
Gold Fields spokesperson Sven Lunsche, a former deputy editor of the FM, said local mafia had asked for a 30% cut of the project “without any contribution to it”. He said the experience was “a horrible one”, adding that the company then had to hire security for the procurement team.
Another JSE-listed company bemoaned how a R5bn project that would have created 1,000 jobs was torpedoed because the foreign shareholders “ran for the hills” when invaders pitched up at the site.
This creep is happening because at no stage are the perpetrators facing any resistance. In almost all the stories in recent weeks, a common refrain has been that people “don’t trust the police”. In one case, the police told a businessman in Umhlanga that “he needs to find a way to work with these guys”.
The police were right there, passively witnessing the scene with all the fiery indignation of a poodle eyeing a stick of broccoli
The policing problem was crisply evident in a June report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime. Entitled “Extortion or Transformation?”, it calculated that in 2019 alone, around SA, the construction mafia compromised 183 projects worth R63bn.
It said there were “clear links” between some of the business forums and “certain political players”, which has probably contributed to the fact that these forums “have been able to operate with impunity”.
In one anecdote from March 2019 that recalls many of the scenes during last year’s riots, the “construction mafia” invaded a R2.4bn oil storage project site in Saldanha Bay.
The police pitched up, but said they had to wait for the public order policing unit — which took three hours to arrive. Meanwhile, the police “stood by and watched while the invaders burned and looted the site. By the time the unit arrived, there was not much left.”
But even that is preferable to instances where contractors have reported police arriving, then “hugging and shaking hands” with the invaders.
It has contributed to the impression among some of these groups that they’re doing nothing wrong. The Global Initiative report recounted the view of one “business forum” member who said: “If we are criminals, or have been involved in criminal activities, why haven’t we been arrested?”
It’s a legitimate question, and it’s why the tentacles of illegitimate business are spreading. As the Global Initiative report said: “Not dealing with this will have dire consequences not just for the construction sector, but for the entire country … [it can] result in the spread of extortion practices in other sectors”.
It’s already starting to happen. This week, someone I know had his car impounded by taxi drivers, because he’d dared to transport his staff home on a number of occasions. They demanded a R10,000 “release fee” for infringing on their business.
Where were the police, you ask. Well, you needn’t have worried: they were right there, passively witnessing the scene with all the fiery indignation of a poodle eyeing a stick of broccoli.
What’s clear is that a more co-ordinated and proactive strategy is needed, before we lose more industries, and more jobs, to this racket.
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