JEREMY LOVELL, Cape Town | Tuesday
HUNDREDS of organised crime syndicates from around the world have moved into South Africa in the past decade, spreading their tentacles across the country and even into the prisons, say government ministers.
”We have identified 400 [organised crime groups] active in our country. Most of them have their origins outside our country,” Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete told a news conference.
”We are being targeted by big drugs syndicates from Asia and Latin America,” he said, adding that he also had evidence of organised car theft on a huge scale, details of which he would release at a later date.
But he said strong coordination between the police, intelligence, prison and justice ministries had enabled 200 syndicate leaders and more than 2 300 members to be arrested last year alone.
Justice Minister Penuell Maduna said the syndicates covered all aspects of crime from drugs to prostitution, car theft and smuggling. He listed Chinese triads, East European mafia, Nigerian gangs as well as groups from Portugal, Mozambique and Zimbabwe as examples of the various origins of the criminals operating in South Africa.
Correctional Services Minister Ben Skosana said he had evidence that the murder last year of Piet Theron, a leading judge investigating a series of bombings and shootings in Cape Town, had been organised from jail.
The government has accused Muslim militant group People Against Gangsterism And Drugs (PAGAD) of carrying out more than 20 bomb attacks in the city in the past two and a half years and of trying to undermine the country’s fledgling democracy.
PAGAD denies the accusations, but many of its members are in jail awaiting trial on firearms and explosives charges. The group’s leader, Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim, who is due to stand trial in May on charges of murder and state terrorism, was moved to a different jail after Theron was gunned down in the driveway of his home.
Tshwete said the police force was in the middle of a reorganisation, merging a series of independent and often overlapping investigating agencies into just two – one tackling organised crime and the other violent crime.
He said the police were also seeking out its own members who had become corrupt – although he quickly added that ”rogue elements” were a tiny fraction of the total police force.
”The rogue elements are quite a problem. They are in collusion with criminal syndicates,” he said, adding that prosecution files were known to disappear from the justice department, often ruining a case. – Reuters