Acts of extortion should not be viewed as isolated incidents but outlines of a larger picture of dysfunctionality and misgovernance
The flare-up of reports on extortion and demands for protection fees signals an apogee of a long-simmering culture of criminality, lawlessness and state failure. This manifestation of criminality points to the broader breakdown in law and order that has been long in the making. Extortion reflects poor leadership and mismanagement of the state.
South Africans have been placed like frogs in a pot on a fire, initially enjoying the gradual warmth of the waters until it is too late to jump out. It is not just about extortion and protection fees; the grim picture contains numerous seemingly unrelated oddities that society has become accustomed to. The president has since weighed in sternly, stating that people are tired of being terrorised by criminals and that police are at the forefront of the fight. Meanwhile the police minister told the National Assembly that the four provinces of Gauteng, Eastern Cape, Western Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal account for 73% of crimes including extortion, the illegal occupation of buildings and stock theft. Extortion has exploded and it affects private citizens, businesses and public institutions alike. For example, in the Eastern Cape, several schools, filling stations and food outlets have been forced to close to avoid confrontation.
Why should people believe anything the president and the police minister have to say? Extortion is not the only crime that has become prevalent and entrenched. We know the drill under this ANC government. New crimes and vices appear in the horizon, and instead of being nipped in the bud they are normalised and become a permanent feature of society. They include illegal mining, human trafficking, building hijacking, kidnapping, illegal immigration, drug smuggling, illicit cigarettes, construction mafias, road spiking, and corruption at home affairs. There is one special trait that the post-apartheid government possesses — its inability to prevent, arrest and reverse crimes. Once a new crime or wicked behaviour has emerged, it is only a matter of time before it is institutionalised. The government merely goes through the motions in their occupation of public office.
Unlike in other countries, the concepts of national sovereignty, national security and protection of citizens are not of high priority in South Africa. The government is unable to read the environment, lacks discernment and cannot decide what could be of national interest whether in the short or long term. There is more to the ANC’s anaemic performance of 30 years than what meets the eye.
The last time a new negative phenomenon was eliminated was urban terror during the first democratic administration after 1994. The Institute of Security Studies noted in 2001: “Between 1994 and the end of 2000 over 400 criminal detonations and explosions occurred in South Africa. Most occurred in the context of internecine gang warfare and vigilante action against criminal gangs and suspected drug dealers in the Western Cape.”
A social problem such as drug abuse has resulted in many communities having to coexist with youths who are drug addicts, the nyaopes, or pharas, with each of these monikers assigned to specific parts of the country. The phara nation of tik, nyaope and whoonga-dependent youth is a new abnormal. And there has been zero efforts to reverse this devastating phenomenon, no national dialogue, no awareness campaigns.
The existence of government incompetence raises its ugly head beyond South Africa’s shores. Corruption at the home affairs department was once flagged by the British in the 2000s and the South African government did not show any sense of urgency in attending to the matter. The United Kingdom subsequently reacted to the selling of South African passports to foreign nationals by corrupt home affairs officials with the introduction of a visa for people travelling on a South African passport in about 2009. There were no subsequent interventions on the part of the South African government to reverse those developments. As of 2024, Ireland has followed suit in ending visa-free travel for South African passport holders — and this is more than a decade since the British raised the issue.
Communities have also acclimatised to living with criminal gangs of illegal miners, the zama zamas, and their value-chain of criminality which includes cross-border crimes of guns, cash-in-transit heists, explosives, ATM bombings and illicit cigarettes. The illegal activities of zama zamas were felt across the border in Lesotho when dust-stained notes entered the mountain kingdom’s money system, almost collapsing the economy. When a group of young women were allegedly gangraped by illegal miners in Krugersdorp, President Cyril Ramaphosa downplayed the gravity of the crime as just another incident of gender-based violence. The Lesotho government sent a letter of apology to South Africa, with the prime minister referring to the incident as an act of terror. It has been reported earlier this week that illegal mining gangs have taken over the historical town of Pilgrim’s Rest in Mpumalanga.
So, society has been subjected to a gradual and cumulative normalisation of lawlessness, and all sorts of wrongdoings. Moreover, once the state no longer has the monopoly of violence and there are numerous competing actors who can coerce society, that state disintegrates. For the sake of citizens and posterity, South Africa needs a new calibre of leaders and political parties that can distinguish between mundane operational problems and routine policing of common crimes, and issues of strategic and high-level importance pertaining to national sovereignty and security.
Dr Mabutho Shangase is a senior lecturer in political studies and international relations at North-West University. @nativconscience