Politics dominates our front pages because politicians will determine our democracy’s future. But eroding what we take for granted to be a stable system of democracy are absurdly powerful crime bosses.
People in poorer communities have learnt over the past decade that when the government loses its monopoly on violence endowed to it by the voter, strongmen with guns fill the void.
This has happened in neighbourhoods such as Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Mamelodi and Westbury, where people have discovered the material reality of being ruled by crime lords.
Emboldened by the ease at which they were able to sweep away a weak civil service and civilian resistance, crime lords started a protracted campaign of infiltrating government through public representatives and officials who are susceptible to corruption.
By February this year, the construction mafia phenomenon reached Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis’s offices, where men allegedly attempted to exert pressure on the city council to hand over government construction contracts to alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield.
According to the City of Cape Town, they have helped the police to investigate 77 cases of intimidation against city staff and councillors relating to extortion this year alone.
By that time, the shooting of a city official at a R500m construction site in Delft had sent the message that city officials were legitimate targets for powers that are now directly challenging the state.
According to the City of Cape Town, they have helped the police to investigate 77 cases of intimidation against city staff and councillors relating to extortion this year alone.
Potentially billions of rand and thousands of low-cost housing opportunities and infrastructure upgrades hang in the balance as construction mafias in Cape Town hold a gun to Hill-Lewis’s head demanding contracts be given to mafia-controlled companies.
Yet Glomix, a construction company controlled by Stanfield and his wife Nicole, remains on the National Treasury’s supplier database, according to a statement by Ntobeko Mbingeleli, spokesperson for Western Cape minister of infrastructure Tertuis Simmers.
The city has flagged about 16 other entities linked to Stanfield that are trying to do business with the city and the province.
Financial institutions have shown their willingness to debunk certain politically exposed individuals, but what about the crime bosses?
Crime bosses will use the means available to them to turn South Africa into a post-democracy narco-state, where the elections and politics that make our front pages are a farce set up to create a veneer of legitimacy.
Or government, business, and civil society can wake up to this clear and present danger and use all the means available, including blacklisting, debunking and seizing of assets, while enabling law enforcement and prosecution.
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