Police and business turn the screws on extortion mafia terrorising SA

Ninety-one cases of mainly construction-related extortion are under investigation across South Africa.

The real number of such crimes is probably much higher, but police face problems, including people being reluctant to open cases and witnesses not wanting to testify.

It is easy to understand the reason: this sphere of crime is marked by violence and assassinations.

Bloodshed aside, extortion is forcing construction projects to a halt, leaving scores of people waiting for homes. Various forms of transport are affected. Businesses and schools have had to close, with school­children among those targeted.

This week, South African Police Service (SAPS) spokesperson Athlenda Mathe told Daily Maverick that 91 cases of extortion, mainly related to the construction industry, were under investigation nationally.

Of those cases, nearly half – 43 – were in the country’s gangsterism capital, the Western Cape.

Underreported

Mathe said that in June 2022 “economic infrastructure task teams were established in all nine provinces as force multipliers to address the scourge of extortion”.

She added that monthly provincial meetings, involving the National Prosecuting Authority and the private sector, were being held to deal with extortion. There were also national monthly police meetings to monitor cases.

Mathe said difficulties included cases being underreported, because people are reluctant to approach the police, and others don’t want to testify.

The situation has grown so serious in the Eastern Cape that the SAPS announced this week that more officers had to be deployed there. The national police commissioner, General Fannie Masemola, said: “We urge the communities’ cooperation… We are … looking at increasing capacity to register more cases and ensure takedowns.”

On Friday, 23 August, Eastern Cape police commissioner Lieutenant General Nomthetheleli Mene launched a special hotline to enable people to report extortion.

The number of cases under investigation in South Africa

Schools shut down

Eastern Cape department of education spokesperson Mali Mtima confirmed this week that three schools had temporarily closed in Mthatha after criminals demanded “protection” money.

The schools are Efata School for the Blind and Deaf, Laphumikhwezi Primary (where rent money that the school receives is being demanded) and Mandela Primary School.

Mtima said the situation at a fourth school was under investigation.

Five people – Nomlandelo Pamla (44), Sithembiso Mbube (46), Bongile Mnyanda (44), Kani Boyse (67) and Nkosiphendule Mseswa (54) – have been arrested in connection with the Efata School extortion.

The Abathembu king, Buyelkhaya Dalindyebo ka Sabatha, intervened this week in the Laphumikhwezi Primary matter, and classes resumed.

Education MEC Fundile Gade said the department was drawing up its own security plan. He said attacks on schools were also soaring in the Nelson Mandela Bay district, where schools were “prone to extortion”.

Speaking at the Archbishop Thabo Makgoba Memorial Lecture this week, University of Fort Hare vice-chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu said extortion was “killing the soul, not just the body, of this province and our towns”.

Soldiers

Provincial government spokesperson Khu­selwa Rantje said this week that reports of extortion were still being received and “we are not yet in a position to provide a comprehensive number of projects impacted”.

“In accordance with government protocols, (Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mabuyane) is engaged in ongoing discussions with the President regarding the deployment of soldiers to the province,” she said.

Pensioners and protection fees

Mabuyane has said that some “protection fees” being demanded ran into millions

of rands.

Other victims targeted by extortionists in a recent small “shakedown” said they had been forced into handing over R50 for parking in a street or to walk to a shop without being robbed.

They told their stories at a police imbizo on organised crime about a week ago.

Hawkers and pensioners said they could not sell anything or even rent out a room without having to pay protection money. An Mthatha businesswoman said she had to pay R100,000 a month just to keep operating.

NGOs, including those offering health and education services, were also being robbed for refusing to pay extortionists, with even their spoons and plates taken.

A medical specialist, who closed his Mthatha practice after being threatened by extortionists, told Daily Maverick this week that he could not share any information about his situation because he feared for his safety.

He said he has opened a case with the police, who were still investigating.

Contractors who work on electricity installations reported that they, too, are being threatened at job sites and forced to pay thousands of rands to be allowed to work.

Government insiders said there were allegations that some of the extortionists in the province were employed by the government, including in the emergency services.

Roads targeted

Extortionists were also affecting work on major infrastructure in the Eastern Cape, including the N2 highway, the Mtentu Bridge and the Addo Road.

Mbulelo Peterson, the southern region manager of the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral), said the agency had advised affected contractors to report incidents to police.

“The construction mafia and extortion syndicates prevalent in parts of the Eastern Cape present a major challenge for Sanral’s road infrastructure service delivery,” he said.

“Although the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces are seemingly the most affected currently, this is fast becoming a problem across all our regions, which is ­hinder­­ing the implementation of our road infrastructure build and maintenance programme.”

Countrywide scourge

The SAPS issued a statement saying other “problematic provinces” included the Western and Northern Cape, the Free State, Limpopo, North West and Mpumalanga.

Daily Maverick has put together a snapshot of some recent extortion matters stretching across various provinces:

Eastern Cape and Western Cape: A Gqeberha High Court judgment from February 2024 outlined a case involving the bus company Intercape. It said extortion-style issues included “the payment by Intercape of the sum of R5-million to two taxi associations to ensure its continued operations in the Western Cape”. The judgment added: “Intercape (previously) lodged 165 criminal complaints with the police in respect of acts of violence and intimidation allegedly perpetrated against its drivers, passengers and buses. Despite this not a single person is under arrest for these offences and no prosecutions are imminent or pending.”

Western Cape: Gangsterism plagues the province, where extortion groups include the notorious Boko Haram gang that targets, among others, businesspeople. Other forms of extortion extend right into Cape Town’s central business district. At the end of July it was announced that an establishment, the Beerhouse in Long Street in the city centre, was shutting. A doorman, Joe Kanyona, was murdered at the Beerhouse in 2015, allegedly after the venue’s owner refused to sign up with a certain group offering “services” styled as security. Accusations of gangs forcing purported security on venues in the city centre have done the rounds for decades.

Gauteng: The Boko Haram gang is also prevalent here. Earlier this month it emerged that four police officers attached to the Crime Intelligence division were arrested along with two other suspects for crimes including extortion. A police statement said officers in plain clothes approached a man, drove with him to a police station, and said they were investigating a fraud case against him. It added: “They took him to his house in Fourways, assaulted him and took his phones and transferred R180,000 from his bank account into one of theirs. They then threatened him before they dropped him off in Roodepoort.”

KwaZulu-Natal: In May, the Metro Police in Durban arrested eight suspects who had allegedly ambushed an independent contractor repairing water infrastructure in Inanda. Metro Police spokesperson Colonel Boysie Zungu said at the time: “We were informed that 10 suspects ambushed site workers, demanding to speak to the foreman and the (community liaison officer). The men, who were armed and aggressive, demanded that the site be closed, and work stopped immediately.”

North West: Last month Letlhogonolo Molefi, a former ward councillor with the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality, appeared in court on charges of extortion, intimidation and obstruction at a construction site. Police alleged two men introduced themselves to a contractor, who was installing fibre in the province, as being representatives of the Klerksdorp community. According to the SAPS, the men also demanded jobs and a R50,000 “protection fee”. The contractor was told to leave the site and return with the money.

From streets to cyberspace

Because extortion manifests in so many different ways, it is tough to gauge exactly how widespread it is in South Africa.

Several people Daily Maverick spoke to this week, some linked to policing, explained that related crimes stretched from suburbs, towns and cities to cyberspace.

“It’s stripping people of being constitutionally free,” said a source with ties to law enforcement, who declined to be named. “It boils down to citizens not feeling safe … that they have to go to the extent that they pay criminals.”

There are also concerns related to police involvement, and officers have been arrested in certain cases.

Another factor that makes it difficult to measure extortion is underreporting.

We therefore have to rely on the cases and arrests that the police publicise.

Analysing the numbers

The SAPS usually updates the public on crime statistics only when they are officially released, quarterly and annually.

However, extortion does not appear to have been listed as a category of crime in the statistics, although it may fall under other categories.

On Tuesday, 20 August, however, the SAPS issued a statement that focused on the Eastern Cape, but added that 722 construction site extortionists had been arrested nationally over the past five years.

Of those, 52 were convicted.

This means that over five years there was an annual average of about 10 construction site extortion convictions countrywide – which seems low and incongruent with the extent of the problem.

Daily Maverick established, based on SAPS press releases, that during 15 days into this month, 10 suspects were arrested in just three cases and faced charges including extortion not related to the construction sector.

This hints at just how vast South Africa’s extortion problem is.

Meanwhile, the SAPS statement also

said that the 52 convicts were “collectively” sentenced to 89 years and seven months in jail.

Daily Maverick established that those figures the SAPS publicised were previously released a few weeks ago and are roughly what President Cyril Ramaphosa referenced in a weekly newsletter earlier this month.

However, Ramaphosa said convicts had been “sentenced to terms ranging from seven months to 89 years”.

‘Living hell’ vs ‘lucrative business’

In the Western Cape, the province with the highest number of extortion cases under investigation, the problem has affected areas from the city centre to townships.

A Cape Town High Court judgment from April this year, related to a mass shooting in Khayelitsha, said: “The City of Cape Town is one of the areas in the Republic which is in the eye of a storm of extortion.”

It went on to say that in “black settlement areas of Cape Town, greedy criminals solicit money from business people” and would “make your life a living hell” if you did not, or could not afford to, pay them. “They would rob, or even kill you. (Extortion) did not just become standard practice, but seems to have become a lucrative business.”

Construction sites have also been targeted in Cape Town.

Crackdowns and ‘mafia’ accusations

Towards the end of last year, the Infrastructure Built Anti-Corruption Forum, which is convened by the Special Investigating Unit and the national Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, congratulated the police on the work done against “construction mafia” criminality.

It cited the arrests of alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield and his wife Nicole Johnson, who were detained in September last year in the upmarket Cape Town suburb of Constantia.

They were accused of crimes including fraud and car theft.

The fo­­rum’s statement mentioned that one of Johnson’s companies had been involved in building houses for local government.

It said: “Several Cape Town construction contractors had to abandon government housing construction sites following alleged acts of intimidation and violence.

“Thereafter, the Western Cape government’s human settlements department awarded Johnson’s company, Glomix House Brokers, the contracts for completing these abandoned projects.”

Daily Maverick reported that the City of Cape Town and the National Treasury later blacklisted Glomix in a saga involving allegations of fraudulent paperwork.

‘Disguised as legitimate work’

About two months ago, an amaBhungane and Daily Maverick investigation revealed that entities and associates of Stanfield and Johnson linked the couple to a R3-billion Cape Town industrial property project.

Developers Atterbury and Old Mutual were aware of this – and were apparently unconcerned about it.

A statement released earlier this month, involving the developers, the City of Cape Town and the South African Property Owners Association, said they had “joined forces” to try to eradicate construction mafia elements in development projects.

Louis van der Watt, Atterbury’s group chief executive, explained that criminality in the sector was often disguised as legitimate work.

“The construction mafia in Cape Town regularly operate through legally registered entities with valid bank accounts and tax clearance certificates.

“Financial statements, company registration documents, directorship information and other business certifications are in order, making it extremely difficult to detect any connections to criminal activities through standard procedures,” Van der Watt said.

Report it

This week Rudolph Viljoen, Business Against Crime’s national project manager, advised that those who were targeted should try not to give in to extortionists’ demands, and they should collect evidence.

“We had a huge workshop with police on Wednesday this week,” he added. “What’s worrying is that role-players on the right side of the law are not saying everything.

“There are more cases not reported because businesses rather use money to avoid the disruption, adding to costs…

“Businesses also choose court interdicts rather than reporting the crime. Police cannot investigate if a case has not been reported.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.