Failure to act decisively against the murderers of anti-gang unit kingpin Charl Kinnear could send SA into a terrifying tailspin of organised crime, according to transnational crime expert Julian Rademeyer.
Kinnear was gunned down outside his Cape Town home on Friday afternoon in what appears to have been a well-orchestrated hit. He had been investigating several cases linked to known underworld figures.
Rademeyer, a former prominent journalist who helped expose criminal networks involved in the illegal rhino horn trade, said Kinnear’s murder represented a potential tipping point for the state’s ability to fight back against organised crime: “The reason I say it is at a tipping point is that it seems pretty clear that organised crime groups have reached the stage where they have no compunction about taking out a top police officer who they think is getting in their way.
“This is something that should be making every South African angry and fearful about the future of the country,” said Rademeyer, now director for East and Southern Africa at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
He said Kinnear was the second high-profile police investigator killed in 2020, just months after the murder of Lt-Col Leroy Bruwer, who was investigating organised crime involved in the illegal rhino horn trade.
“One needs to look at how something like this could happen – two cases within a matter of months,” Rademeyer said, adding that the public should demand an appropriate police response to avoid the “slippery slope” witnessed in several other countries plagued by powerful criminal networks.
Already SA had witnessed the murder of lawyers and a magistrate, and a number of police murders. “Where does it stop? Prosecutors? Judges? It becomes a really terrifying situation,” he said.
Corruption and a failure of crime intelligence within the police force were partly to blame for the current challenges, problems that needed to be speedily addressed to restore morale.
“Years of maladministration and corruption have taken their toll,” Rademeyer said. “You have good cops out there doing their jobs, getting arrests – the people who really still believe in the work they are doing. But they get undercut by their corrupt colleagues.
“The threat here is that the murder has a chilling effect that spirals down. Good cops see that they won’t have protection that they need, that they are exposed to being taken out because of the investigations they do, and that stops them in their tracks,” he said.
Decisive action from senior police management was needed to restore faith across the system.
Speaking at the weekend after Kinnear’s murder, police minister Bheki Cele said the police had lost a good man. “It is not every day where you find the media saying this was the best of the best,” he said.
Cele said he had spoken to President Cyril Ramaphosa about Kinnear’s killing. “From here I will go back to the president and the national commissioner,” he said. “I must say, unfortunately at the present moment there are more questions than answers even from ourselves as the South African Police.”
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