Last year a friend, who used to work in the arts sector in KwaZulu-Natal, told me an unbelievable tale. Men who claimed to also be from the “film industry” called her to demand a meeting. The tone of the conversation made it clear that failure to agree may have serious physical consequences.
On acceding to the meeting, together with a senior colleague, the men demanded funding, claiming that they had been “continually overlooked” when they submitted funding applications to the provincial government agency. They claimed to belong to a “business forum”.
Their statement was a lie, of course. Most of the companies had been registered with the CIPC long after the previous window for funding applications. They had consequently never submitted an application they could plausibly claim had been “overlooked”. The provincial government took over dealings with these menacing “filmmakers” who did not have a single creative bone in their bodies.
The targeting of KZN’s puny film industry budget is another chapter in an ongoing saga of violent extortion. The construction, mining and trucking industries have in recent years experienced violent threats, beatings and killings unless they handed over a 30% share to these “business forums”.
Amazingly the government preferred to negotiate with these extortionists instead of pressing charges against them. Consequently they were never arrested.
In recent weeks there have been multiple violent incidents where long-distance trucks have been torched. According to the Sunday Times, 21 trucks were torched in KZN, Mpumalanga and Limpopo last week, leading to the deployment of the South African National Defence Force. Several people have been arrested with the help of private security firms.
We are a lawless country. Thugs are emboldened to do whatever they like, including brandishing semi-automatic weapons in public.
Last Sunday the Sunday Times published a chilling voice note in which an unidentified man called for another perpetrator to be killed for not covering his face while setting a truck alight. The man in question is reportedly in police custody, but getting him to trial will be, as is usually the case, a Hail Mary.
Notable in the incidents reported by the Sunday Times is the lack of fear of being identified or arrest.
First, the suspect caught on video had so little fear of being arrested that he did not try to hide his face at all. He was also remarkably calm for someone who was committing a serious offence.
Second, the man recommending he be shot and killed did so through a voice recording, another sign that he, too, has no fear of consequences. It is difficult to reach any other conclusion, short of saying both are profoundly stupid, which I doubt. They have over the years seen how extortionists like them have grown in confidence to the point of impunity.
In all the descriptions I have seen of this pattern, there is a word that has been conspicuously missing, and that word is “mafia”. While movies may have convinced many South Africans that the Italian and US mafia profit primarily from drugs, this is not true. Their core business is violent extortion.
The pattern we see in South Africa is a crude, still developing version of what was par for the course in New York’s real estate industry. From the main construction contract to all major sub-contracts, the mafia families made certain they had a share. Those who failed to comply would lose the contracts or find themselves with broken bones or in a coffin.
Other forms of the same are so-called “protection rackets”, where violent men instruct businesses to pay “protection fees” from no-one other than those demanding these fees themselves.
In Cape Town townships such as Nyanga and Gugulethu, residents talk of turf wars between extortion gangs. The main channel of extortion are spaza shops, mainly owned by Somali and Pakistani immigrants. Sometimes these gangs engage in shoot-outs or surprise mass killings, often reported in the media.
The other channel made my spine cold because it is very personal. Women have to pay extortion fees to keep their wigs, bags or shoes. Men, too, have to pay a fee for the privilege of wearing their own Adidas or Nike sneakers on the pain of either losing them altogether or being harmed.
I would love to believe that the government can put an end to all of this, but I don’t. Deep down in my soul I know we have neither the capacity nor the will in government to do anything meaningful. Everything takes forever, and when something is finally done, it is painfully shoddy and insulting.
In 2021, news camera lover and hogger Bheki Cele, who doubles as minister of police, told us that government knows who the instigators of the July riots were. It is clear that either it was untrue, or his police have lost the motivation to out those instigators.
Recently he claimed the government knows who is behind the truck attacks and arson. Consistent with the claim made about the July 2021 riots, he declined to release a list of “people of interest” who should contact the authorities for an interview.
We are a lawless country. Thugs are emboldened to do whatever they like, including brandishing semi-automatic weapons in public.
There are people who always demand “better solutions instead of criticising”. Sometimes there is no magic solution. When a designated driver cannot get the car to move or repeatedly crashes it, the solution is to find a different driver who has the energy and skill for the task.
Until enough South Africans accept that simple fact of life, we will be a lawless mafia state where, at some point in the future, people will pay “protection fees” to continue living in their own homes.
For those who may not be aware, the next election is less than a year away.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.