DONALD SELAMOLELA: Hopes pinned on police to crack extortion gangs

The swiftest response to the persistent scourge of protection fee gangs in SA is for the state to compile a list of infrastructure projects affected by the phenomenon, forward it to the police for speedy investigation, and get the projects back on track. 

The parliamentary portfolio committee on transport heard last week that among the challenges the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) faces is thugs demanding ransom money to avoid deliberate disruption resulting in noncompletion of projects.

So many infrastructure projects have suffered through this practice, especially road and rail projects that involve large-scale construction. The “30% syndicates”, as these organised criminals are also sometimes called, frustrate not only investment into our country but the developments themselves. 

Protection fees can be described as a practice to demand money (“fee”) for a so-called service (“protection”) from a client in order for the same thug to “guard” your business against him and his gang causing chaos. Failure to oblige, as happened in a school in KwaBhaca in the Eastern Cape, can lead to threats, violence and even murder. 

Not long ago on a municipal housing project a council employee was shot dead on site after an unknown man approached her and demanded the protection fee. That project has since been stopped, disadvantaging beneficiaries and workers. 

In the rail space the activist Loyiso Nkohla was murdered a mere kilometre from the Philippi police station in Cape Town while trying to secure the central commuter rail line, which had been occupied by squatters, thereby frustrating the efforts of the Passenger Rail Agency of SA to get commuter trains back on track. Not only has little progress been made in getting the line operational again, but it came at the cost of a human life. 

Still in the Cape, around Netreg Train Station gangs brandishing guns chased contractors off site. These are known thugs, many of whom have done time in prison. 

Instil fear

Gang culture, which coincides with a proliferation of guns among black communities, is a foreign concept that has recently flourished in raw communities whose youths were ripe for exploitation. The corrective and rehabilitative approach to convicts and prisons has failed. Instead, prisons have become convenient sites for criminals to plan the most gruesome attacks and cruelty imaginable.

The intention is primarily to instil fear, but also to drive competition away. It sometimes boils down to recklessness and downright criminality. All of these acts frustrate government objectives to roll out or repair infrastructure and thereby create jobs and enable viable livelihoods. 

This phenomenon has reared its ugly head while government is challenged for investment viability and by uncontrollable unemployment, with most casual employment opportunities disappearing into thin air. The reversal of government objectives sadly directly contributes not only to unemployment but dependency on the state. The squeeze of these thugs is so real that companies opt to leave sites and some abandon projects, resulting in huge losses.

Government cannot be seen to be co-governing with thugs. Law enforcement must rise to the occasion and do whatever it takes to restore state power, which had just been usurped by gangsters even as everyone was watching, though apparently no-one was seeing. Such is the fear these gangs instil. 

The message from the committee is that the rollout of road infrastructure and rail projects will not be frustrated, and government will not back down for criminals posing as community forums.

Anyone found to be engaging in this kind of behaviour will be arrested and prosecuted, as has happened with the five who appeared in the Camperdown magistrate’s court in KwaZulu-Natal recently for disrupting a bridge construction in the area of kwaXimba.

An example has been set. At least this group was successfully arrested. Many threaten the police and shoot at them once they realise the game is up. Sadly, the only retort when a wanted criminal shoots at the police is for the police to fight fire with fire. 

Those involved should be sent to prison, and if paroled the parole conditions should be invoked on parolees who are repeat offenders. That is because this is where these acts and hits are said to originate — inside prison walls. In fact, prison is where economic saboteurs seem to do their planning. 

Strategy

Last week police minister Senzo Mchunu tabled the Comprehensive Strategy to Combat Extortion, which ups the ante for how the SA Police Service will be dealing with extortion in future. He said police were encountering resistance from criminals but that justice would prevail.

“Extortion has been emerging over time and has now reached levels where all communities have become very angry, bitter and agitated. The pain has gone very deep. The modus operandi used by these thugs is well known. Most of them are individuals who do not want to work but rather choose to parade as armies of murderous parasites that must be fought and rejected by society,” Mchunu said.

Mchunu and President Cyril Ramaphosa recently signed an agreement on the matter, signifying the importance the presidency is placing on putting a stop to protection fee gangs. This is relieving and exciting news to the country and those whose lives depend on the government implementing infrastructure projects. 

Ramaphosa acknowledged that gangsters are tearing communities apart and costing innocent lives. “Businesses are tired of being forced to pay protection fees, and of being under siege from criminals who are destroying their livelihoods. Utshilo kwanele. Genoeg is genoeg. Enough is enough,” he said. 

It is therefore incumbent on departments tasked with rolling out infrastructural projects to compile a list of projects that have been hijacked and stalled on account of nonpayment of protection fees, to be handed to the police. Meanwhile, the police should deploy intelligence and identify the collectors of extortion money.

Communities, contractors and even small businesses such as spaza shop owners must report those who illegally collect money from them, for investigation and prosecution purposes. We can expect the thugs to react with vengeance, but ultimately reviving these projects, especially those involving roads and rail infrastructure, is not optional. 

No-one should have to pay a protection fee to exercise the right to do business. The police are up for the challenge and will prevail. 

• Selamolela, an ANC MP, chairs parliament’s portfolio committee on transport.