De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
Organised crime can be beaten, given political will.
Dit artikel komt uit The Economist
Members of the SAPS (South African Police Service) and state pathologists inspect the body of one of the women found dumped on the side of a road in Boksburg, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Organised crime is „the most immediate threat” to South Africa’s democracy, society and economy, says Cyril Ramaphosa, the president. Business leaders say it worries them more than any other issue, even power cuts. Over the past year, a public inquiry has revealed staggering collusion between gangs, officials and senior police. By one estimate, South Africa is the seventh-most vulnerable country in the world to mafia predation. Only Congo, Myanmar and a few Latin American states do worse.
South Africa has long had a reputation for violent crime. It has also been a hub for trafficking drugs, people and endangered wildlife. But a number of trends have made a grim situation grimmer. One is the growth of illicit forms of businesses that are normally legal. Most cigarettes sold in South Africa are bootlegged, as are huge volumes of booze and petrol; and illegal mining knocked 0.8% off recorded GDP in 2024. Another is the rise of extortion mafias, which demand cash for not sabotaging building projects, setting fire to buses or murdering teachers. A third trend is that gangs have infiltrated the state, like the bloodsucking ticks that give bush hikers a fever.
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
The good news is that South Africa is fighting back. It has independent courts, a lively civil society, punchy media and voters who are utterly sick of crime. Mr Ramaphosa, who came to power promising to clean up after a gangster-coddling predecessor, Jacob Zuma, wants to leave a decent legacy. So the country has a chance to avoid mafia-state status.
Evidence from elsewhere suggests that it pays to attack criminal structures from the top. That means sacking tainted prosecutors and senior cops, while targeting criminal kingpins. In the past year or so the police minister, the head and deputy head of the police and the bosses of two elite units that supposedly tackle organised crime have all been removed. That purge should gather pace. Officials who still have their jobs must disclose their finances to show they have no links to gangs, or resign. Cities with a record of clean governance, such as Cape Town, should be allowed more policing powers. Reformers should study Nuevo León, a Mexican state that built a new police force from scratch, replacing one infiltrated by drug gangs; and „Hidden Carbon”, a Brazilian operation to bust money-laundering networks.
Prosecutors should focus on putting the worst bosses away. They can build on past successes. South Africa’s once-sick tax authority has recovered under Mr Ramaphosa. In the 2000s an elite crime-busting unit known as „the Scorpions” collared syndicate bosses and helped convict senior officials over aniffy arms deal. Prosecutors should draw on financial and technical help from the private sector.
South Africa could also do with an independent gangbusting agency. It would need protection from political interference to avoid the fate of the Scorpions, who were disbanded after investigating Mr Zuma and his friends, or of CICIG, a popular UN-backed body that probed organised crime in Guatemala but was shut down by President Jimmy Morales. One option would be to give such an agency constitutional protection, so that only a parliamentary supermajority could abolish it.
The biggest obstacle to beating South Africa’s gangsters is that too many politicians are in cahoots with them, steering dodgy public contracts their way, pocketing kickbacks and borrowing their muscle to settle political disputes. Mr Ramaphosa must find ways to take on influential but dirty actors inside his own party, the ruling African National Congress. Since he rarely acts decisively unless he must, CEOs and the leaders of other parties in the coalition government should press him to do so before he gives up the party leadership.
If he fails, calamity beckons. Nearly 75% of South Africans say they would favour a strongman leader who could provide jobs and cut crime. They may be tempted to elect someone like Nayib Bukele, the gangbusting autocrat of El Salvador, who has locked up tens of thousands of suspects without proper trials. South Africa needs something better: the rule of law.
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