Last month, Mpho Motsumi, a businessperson and president of the greater Alexandra Chamber of Commerce, and his bodyguard died in a hail of bullets. They were attacked by nine gunmen wielding AK47 automatic rifles in the township's East Bank section. Barely a month earlier, Rand Water executive Teboho Joala was gunned down in broad daylight, in front of horrified school children gathered at the Zakariyya Park Community Centre, south of Johannesburg. Joala, who, among other roles, oversaw procurement at Rand Water, died with the bodyguard who had been assigned to him after he had received death threats. Cellphone video footage of the attack showed the man, who had been sitting among the children, approaching Joala on stage and opening fire. A day before that attack, taxi boss and Delmas Taxi Association chairperson Isaac Mathe and his two bodyguards were gunned down in a driveby shooting in Delmas in Mpumalanga, according to the police. A Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime report revealed that there had been 141 assassinations in South Africa in 2022. The report noted that most killings were politically motivated or related to taxi violence. It cited the erosion of independent policing and lack of skills, fewer solved murder cases, state guns in the hands of the criminal underworld, and gun licensing corruption as the main contributors to the spike in assassinations. According to the report, more than half 51% of the contract killings are linked to the taxi industry, politics 21% , organised crime 20% and personal hits account for 8% of the murders. KwaZuluNatal is the most volatile province with more than 103 assassinations between 2015 and 2020; 22 hits were recorded in Gauteng, 20 murders in the Eastern Cape and 15 in the Western Cape. The hitmen are paid handsomely. Last year the Daily Maverick quoted a KwaZuluNatalbased inkabi who claimed he had been paid up to R500 000 for a hit. Of the more than 20 hits he had carried out, working mainly in the taxi industry, R20 000 was the lowest payment. The alleged killers of rapper Kiernan "AKA" Forbes were allegedly paid R800 000, according to reports that emerged before they appeared in court early this month. David Bruce, a consultant on policing with the Institute for Security Studies, said the failure to arrest and successfully prosecute not only the hitmen but also their paymasters, was a barrier in dealing with targeted killings. "I think there is a sense among many of the people involved in the killings that they can act with impunity. "However, we should acknowledge that there have been some successful investigations for targeted assassinations, including in respect of political killings, as well as the Babita Deokaran assassins. Though it is a good thing that the alleged hitmen have been arrested and even convicted, it is of course regrettable that it is almost unheard of for their paymasters to be brought to justice." Deokaran was a corruption whistleblower in the Gauteng department of health. She was assassinated outside her south Johannesburg home in August 2021. Six hitmen, who were reportedly paid R2.8 million, have been jailed, but the masterminds remain free. Bruce lamented that investigations of targeted killings were difficult and timeconsuming for the detectives because it was very hard to identify the perpetrators. Only highprofile cases such as those of Deokaran and Forbes the latter was shot and killed outside a club in Durban last year were likely to be solved as they were allocated a lot more resources, Bruce told City Press. "On the one hand the level of impunity highlights the difficulty involved in investigating these cases. But it is also reasonable to say that it reflects the absence of effective leadership of the police. These killings have been going on for a long time but government has not taken proper steps to ensure that the policing system is better able to respond to them." Johan Booysen, the retired former head of the Hawks in KwaZuluNatal, said the fight for the control of tenders, extortion, and construction and security industry mafia had become prevalent, leading to a spike in assassinations. Organised crime syndicates with links to government officials, politicians and crooked police officials worsened the problem. "Law enforcement in South Africa is rapidly losing the fight against organised crime. They don't have the ability to make a meaningful impact in reducing these crimes, resulting in mafia bosses, corrupt officials and other criminal elements operating with impunity. I don't want to be alarmist, but we are approaching a dangerous precipice," said Booysen, who now heads investigations at Fidelity Security. All law enforcement branches and the National Prosecuting Authority must work in a concerted
effort to eradicate this scourge, he said. Last week the SA Human Rights Commission SAHRC announced that a police task team would investigate the string of assassinations of members of the civic organisation, Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement. At least 24 of its leaders and supporters have been assassinated over the past 14 years. This after the commission wrote to President Cyril Ramaphosa in June asking him to intervene. Pavershree Padayachee, the SAHRC's KwaZuluNatal manager, lamented that there had only been two convictions for these killings. Efforts to get comment from the police were fruitless.


Source: City Press