When a state develops into a mafia den.

The existence of any illegal market or context where favours are exchanged for protection at any cost is a precondition for all forms of mafia-ism to develop and thrive in any society. As legitimacy to lead society and merit as criteria to be appointed to positions or provide services started to give way to connections, a new and illegal market began to develop in South Africa. Because this market grew into a political economy, it required a unique sophistication and 'government' to survive and thrive. 

In democracies where a substantial number of well-trained military personnel are unemployed and where employed, idling, the crime market becomes essential to open demand for security. The abundance of people skilled with violence and the capacity to kill is generally a dangerous resource when the quality and calibre of politicians a democracy attracts is at unacceptably low levels. The need for protection that a state in crisis cannot provide makes paramilitary security the best option for elites to survive.

 

The end of the apartheid state-sponsored violence against its opponents reduced the contractual capacity of the state to continue using its underworld assassins. This has led to these operatives creating a market for their services. As the apartheid criminal justice system entered a legitimacy crisis, public safety plummeted, and misconstrued notions of transformation eroded the state's capacity to police criminality. The inconvenient outcome of the post-1994 political arrangement is that the political (and criminal) oligarchy of the apartheid era grew into a multifaceted and sophisticated crime group. It morphed into a complex criminal network, including some in the former liberation movements and undercover special agents of the then apartheid state who would not risk being integrated into the new for fear of revenge-based repercussions. 

 

The operating national crime syndicates and organisations did not only emerge from the collapse of the apartheid system and the increase of criminal opportunities that accompanied the end of apartheid but extended to include operatives of the liberation movement that still work as part of the underground. There is no credible account of how the underground arms caches were returned or demobilised. As the state lost control of its policing capabilities, the monopoly of public protection got diffused, and society lacked recourse from threats of violence. As law and order fractured, alternative policing systems, including political vigilantism, moved to the centre stage of law and order commensurate with the bravery to challenge the establishment to transform. The privatisation of state violence and the capture of management discretion to and by crime syndicates at all levels of government meant the post-apartheid state was compromised at its birth.

 

What has emerged instead are criminal groups which settle and collect debts, organise and resolve business disputes, at times help businesspeople obtain special political favours, and have even shown the ability to restrain their demands and consider the ups and downs of the economy. This has been intertwined with the 'izinkabi' phenomenon that undergirded the Askaris, which operated under apartheid. With police protection services compromised and public service being commodified by corrupt public servants, society and government started to rely on the 'alternative state' for survival. Police stations have private security companies guarding them. Private companies have the criminal justice value chain capability on the payroll. For the elites, the choice is between paying for extra police protection or being exposed to greater danger as a citizen. Approval or endorsement by the criminal elite to have political influence in society is also rising and creating a cocktail of public accountability challenges. 

 

The South African situation, as Stephen Ellis in his book External Mission accounts, is known to have not worked to demobilise the criminal underworld that supported those in conflict. As the organised underworld becomes sophisticated, petty criminality, such as village political economy-inspired vigilantism, becomes new crime forms. The formalisation of such syndicates in legislation and regulations, albeit not being the true intent of the policy, has created a bureaucratic efficiency fundable only by the criminal underworld. Therefore, the links between the thirty per cent mafia and, usually dubiously elected, politicians are well known [due] to the extraordinary degree to which these links were openly displayed for much of the periods before leadership contestation conferences of most political parties and, acutely the governing ANC.

 

The relationship between organised violence and crime with the state, and more acutely, the local government state, is growing complex. As people get into leadership positions or remove others from leadership through contracted violence to render the targeted organ of the state ungovernable, those they employ to execute see it as a service available to the highest bidder. It is a well-known fact that there are considerable economies of scale within the protection business. Obviously, this industry depends on military power, which is partly a function of size. Those seeking to monopolise it will amass resources with which they can dispense anarchy at will, significantly when contracting is declining. 

 

The impunity to stop service delivery is to outside the violence industry operator abnormal, and yet normal to those that know the trustworthy source of their power to 'close water supply' and, in previous circumstances, 'even closing hospitals' to make a point that one leader was not wanted. In the build-up to the section 100 declaration in the North West Province in 2018, anarchy was procured to create ungovernability, which pulled out the President from an international obligation to address a sheer law and order matter the police failed to quell. The anarchy was orchestrated to levels where patient care became bait to make political points by those who were committed to the same political party regime change as a dividend of the 2017 National Conference triumph.  Interestingly, these rogue, impune, and violent acts were rewarded despite the to-date disastrous consequences. 

 

The brute truth is that if organised crime (in this context, the 30% mafia) is beneficial to critical constituencies, possibly including judicial, political, and law-enforcement personnel, there can be no expectation that all of these actors will be seriously committed to the enactment, implementation and enforcement of measures to stop it. The sincerity of the political establishment in its avowed commitment to eradicate the 30% mafia must be viewed with suspicion. In the nomenclature similarity between leaders of the 30% mafia and some political formations, you will realise other syndications. As former President Mbeki opined, there is evidence of criminals being branch leaders of some jurisdiction governing parties or coalition partners.

 

An ineffective policing system is not the only indicator of chaos in South Africa's service delivery value chain. The supply of services and takeover of the role of government or the state by criminal elements has spiralled into a political economy the country might have to negotiate its formalisation or enter into a bloody war with its militias. The adjudicative power of the state, vested in courts, is in shambles and gradually incurs legitimacy crisis costs. Contract enforcement, the fundamentals of any rule of law-based democratic system, have ceased to mean anything as they are essentially unenforceable by the policing system. In such circumstances, "businesspeople quickly learn to settle disputes not with lawyers and legal documents, but with thugs and violence". Settling disputes through violence has become easier than applying the law. Demands for the right to be involved in state-procured services have become the order of the day in the construction industry. 

 

MAYBE LET ME SAY CUT!!! AS WE REMINISCE...