The trees of corruption, extortion and a great lack of trust must be uprooted to return the country to the observance of the rule of law, writes Ian Cameron.
What started with isolated incidents, mainly with the protection fee racket affecting entertainment areas in the City of Cape Town, has grown into a leviathan, threatening businesses across the country, long-distance buses and, most chilling, schools.
Like any entrenched crime trend, reversing it will not be easy and will require a multifaceted approach, anchored in state law enforcement capacity, resource allocation for proactive and intelligence-led policing, a society-wide approach and, most importantly, trust between the police and our communities.
Need for better crime intelligence
The recently released 2023/24 Governance, Public Safety and Justice Survey (GPSJS) by Stats SA highlights this erosion of trust between the police and the communities they are meant to serve.
The report underscores that 48% of victims of crime do not report crimes because of the perception that the police will not do anything about it.
Extortionists thrive in an environment of lawlessness and lack of consequences for their actions. When police officers themselves are corrupt and take bribes, further erosion of trust will occur, empowering protection fee syndicates. Corrupt and criminal elements within the SAPS must be isolated and removed. But SAPS’ lethargic consequence management, largely due to an inadequate South African Police Service Act, especially section 40 of that Act, as well as the 2016 SAPS Disciplinary Regulations, entrenches misconduct and erodes trust. When misconduct is not met with meaningful repercussions, it simply erodes the credibility and legitimacy of the police.
Extortion syndicates thrive in the shadows and require a capable and capacitated intelligence service that is able to gather information and set up sting operations necessary to undermine these groups. Our efforts against organised crime will continue to be undermined in an environment lacking an adequately funded crime intelligence service. The history of crime intelligence services not focused on fighting crime must be reversed and is an area of focus for the 7th Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Police. The police’s ability to operate in the shadows, through crime intelligence services, is an important pushback mechanism for breaking extortion rackets.
Work with communities
Neutralising extortion syndicates will require a well- resourced detective service to enable effective investigations and enhanced reporting.
The current docket-to-detective ratio is unsustainable, with one investigator saddled with over 200 dockets. To ensure prosecution, the detective service must be capacitated with properly trained personnel and enhanced collaboration with the National Prosecuting Authority. The arrest of extortionists alone will not deter extortion; we also need effective prosecution. But the police are overstretched, and the continued unwillingness to devolve some of the crime-fighting authority to provincial and local government will continue to undercut the effort to fight crimes like extortion.
Because of the proximity to these crimes and the communities affected, local law enforcement can counter these trends, but the police cannot, by themselves, reverse the status quo. Community-based activism aimed at creating an environment unsuitable for extortion rackets to thrive is critical to overturning the current trend. An uninterested community, which does not actively participate in community neighbourhood watches and community police forums, helps to create an environment that is attractive for extortionists.
At the same time, community-based activists require state capacity to back up their actions and support them to achieve success. It is equally important to urgently address the twin challenges of unemployment and poverty by ensuring a healthy, functioning economy that is labour-intensive and creates opportunities for employment.
By creating more jobs and getting more people employed, we can guard against our struggling youth falling into crime. This is especially so for extortion crimes, because they are so easy to commit, with perpetrators often only having to threaten violence to get what they want.
Dare not fail
The murder of Babita Deokaran, a corruption whistleblower in the Gauteng Department of Health, highlights the challenge of the inadequate protection of whistleblowers in our country. Extortionists flourish in a society gripped by a fear to act, to report crimes, and the threat of persecution.
Integrated strategies that include reporting hotlines to enable the protection of whistleblowers, and the intelligence capacity to then investigate those allegations are necessary to counterbalance the fear of reporting. These are only some strategies that can help reverse the rising trend of protection fee syndicates. Still, they all require a capacitated law enforcement structure that is trusted by the community to investigate and prosecute perpetrators.
Avoiding the legitimacy crisis facing the SAPS is equal to giving a free hand to extortionists. Breaking these rackets, on the other hand, is grounded on SAPS regaining its credibility in the eyes of the public and the relationships it must build with our communities. As people seek new opportunities to better their lives, the state must ensure that they have the safety to engage with their communities and reverse the scourge of extortion. We cannot and dare not fail. – Ian Cameron is a DA MP and chair of the of the Portfolio Committee on Police.