Police plan to catch up with extortion gangs

Police Minister Senzo Mchunu told parliament that the current wave of extortion has gone beyond the four provinces of Gauteng, Western and Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal and is causing anger, bitterness, insecurity and pain across the country. Mchunu made the statement during the National Assembly sitting on the South African Police Services’ plans to deal with high levels of extortion in the country.

The four provinces, according to Mchunu, carry 73% of the crime in the country. The extortionists are heavily armed and operate in groups. “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 as a whole. They are often heavily armed, operating in groups that instill fear and chaos. The relative ‘silence’ of communities and low reporting is all due to these fears,” said Mchunu.

While releasing crime statistics last week, Mchunu said that those who are involved in extortion are only committing crime to benefit themselves and any idea they are protecting the community is false. “There are stories of some of them after committing the crime they are seen at bottle stores and at taverns,” he said.

“Crime is generally on the increase, crimes that should worry us most are: murder, rape, hijacking, kidnapping for ransom payments, and extortion. Four of the nine provinces recorded increases in murder cases, with the highest increase recorded in the Western Cape, followed by North West, then the Eastern Cape and Limpopo. All the top 30 stations for murder were in only four provinces, namely Western Cape (11 stations), KwaZulu-Natal (8), Eastern Cape (6) and Gauteng (5). The leading stations among them were Nyanga, followed by Inanda, Umlazi, Khayelitsha and Harare,” said Mchunu during the release of the quarterly crime statistics last week.

Response by parliamentarians

Both the MK Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters allege that the reason for low reporting of extortion amongst victims is that there are members of the police who are involved in the criminal activity. Rize Mzansi pointed out that the rising levels of extortion are as a result of “failure of crime intelligence” while Build One South Africa called the policing budget to be increased.

On the failure of crime intelligence, Mchunu assured the MPs that it is being strengthened at the moment. A 2019 report by the community safety department in the Western Cape found that detectives are under-resourced, lack training and that their work is not guided by intelligence.

“Since last year, we have trained 1,000 detectives and we are currently re-enlisting 200 detectives and we would have loved to employ more but due to the budget, we can employ only 200,” said the national police commissioner, General Fani Masemola, responding to a question from a MP about the capacity of the detective services around the country.

Opposition parties believe that one of the reasons for high levels of extortion is that some police officers are involved.

Last month, Mchunu told parliament that there are over 8,000 vacant detective positions in the country. Since the police launched a hotline for anonymous top-offs following reports of increasing extortion in Mthatha, targeting even schools, he said they have received 12 calls relating to an occupation of buildings and stock theft.

Integrated approach lauded as an answer

Last week Friday, the three spheres of government launched and signed an agreement that is meant to integrate resources to fight crime. Mchunu said that the plan is to roll it out in all the metros around the country. “Currently the operational plan is being rolled out in Cape Town with its new 6 sub-districts. The model will be replicated in all metros in the country. The operational plan will include CPFs and private security companies,” he said