Two weeks ago, Ali van Wyk wrote a piece for Vrye Weekblad: “Let’s Go for a Ride: South Africa’s Growing Kidnapping Plague”. His account covers the morbid reality of mutating crime phenomena in which the same syndicates and cartels migrate between different types of crime.
Over the past year I have happened to spend a lot of time in the company of forensic legal professionals and investigators in the government, financial institutions and the private sector. A few days ago I wandered into the office of one of these forensic investigators. Small in stature, he has a clinical mindset with a strong dash of paranoid instinct for strange patterns. Generally, forensics come into play after the fact.
He looked up from his computer and said: “Did you hear the zama zamas are suspected of involvement in organised grain theft?” I’m too long in the tooth to be shocked, but what he said is news to me. The idea that the zama zamas are shifting their paramilitary culture from mining to agriculture fills me with burning resentment towards South Africa’s inept government, and the hopeless and helpless South African Police Service.
But first, some background. The term “zama zamas” comes from Zulu for “those who try their luck”. A significant number are South Africans, but most are miners from Lesotho, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique; neighbouring countries characterised by poverty and an acute scarcity of economic opportunities. And the huge decline of formal employment in the South African mining industry has inevitably run parallel to the rise and rise of illegal mining.
It’s important to distinguish between the labour that zama zamas do and the organised network of cartels and syndicates that abuse them to commit economic crimes. It is these organised outfits that are shifting their interests to the logistical value chain of the grain industry. The armed zama zamas only carry out the orders of syndicate leaders, quite possibly for wages that do not justify the personal risk.
The fact that Cyril Ramaphosa’s government is currently targeting the zama zamas’ support structures and food supplies in an attempt to make their living conditions unsustainable in illegal mines increases the risk to such an extent that the syndicate leaders are looking for other equally vulnerable industries to target.
Enter the farms
I also wonder if the police might not be involved. Corrupt and untrained, the force is not just one of the primary sources of weapons to criminal cartels, but a significant player in our woeful crime statistics. If a cash-in-transit robber and I both mistakenly ended up in a roadblock where Bheki Cele hung out, when he was still the minister of police, we would have been equally nervous.
So, I call one of South Africa’s mega farmers and ask whether he’s heard that organised crime is muscling in on his turf. He is a maize farmer with a deep footprint in organised agricultural organisations. He wants to make inquiries and says he’ll get back to me. When he does, this is what he says: grain theft takes place in “three phases”. The first is at green maize stage, usually in January/February. He has even eaten some of his own maize at the taxi stands where women cook the green cobs in 44-gallon drums that have been cut in half.
The second phase happens between June and July – harvest time. Organised transport, usually vans, arrive at night and a bunch of people load maize into bags that are beaten with sticks to separate the maize from the stalks. This stage of theft is harmful, but not yet on a really large scale.
The real losses come when organised criminals collaborate with truck drivers where they pull up their vehicles at the loading dock for the combine or truck driver to transfer an agreed amount of tons. That generally happens in about November/December, when transport contractors take the maize from the silos to the feed factories and millers.
Talk from the legislature
This past Monday I ran into Ian Cameron at television channel KykNet’s Stark Studios. Cameron is now a DA MP and chair of the parliamentary committee on police. In his days at trade union Solidarity, I was sceptical of the ideological prism through which he looked at South Africa. However, the incredibly good work that he did as director of community safety at Action Society impressed me beyond measure. He walked the hard miles for the victims of crime. His defiant attitude towards Cele at a crime imbizo in Gugulethu was proof to many South Africans that we do not have to put up with the political bigots who treat us like idiots.
Cameron tells me he works well with the ANC members in his committee. His knowledge of crime networks of the Cape Flats is astonishing. Asked about the mobility of criminals between industries and value chains, Cameron says: “I think it’s a very attractive business move.”
Mutating crime
The problem is that this mutation is typical of a police intelligence service that no longer functions properly. The state can put enough pressure on criminals, forcing them away from one crime category to another, but the problem remains unsolved.
History offers numerous examples of crime that has evolved or “mutated” over time into new forms of illegal activity. During the Prohibition era (1920-1933) in the US, the production, distribution and sale of alcohol was prohibited. Organised crime groups moved in by establishing a black market for alcohol. When the ban was lifted, many of these groups shifted their activities to other illegal markets, such as gambling, drug dealing and prostitution. The structures and networks created for alcohol smuggling made it possible for these groups to switch easily.
Since most zama zamas come from South Africa’s neighbouring countries, products that are looted on a large scale may be “exported” to those countries, with Zimbabweans singled out as likely players.
As with the mafia families of Mpumalanga who illegally mine chrome and export it through the ports of South Africa as part of the formal economy, grain theft takes on a transnational dimension. The illegal gold trade from South Africa and Zimbabwe is similarly laundered through the bank accounts of international crime syndicates in Dubai.
The likely internationalisation of grain theft is as disturbing as it is logical, given that it may be as rewarding financially as illegal mining, only with much lower risk.
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