‘Extortionists are overwhelming the police’: SA’s continued slide into a mafia state

Extortion incidents are expected to rise in 2025 as the trend grows.

According to Parliament’s police committee chairperson Ian Cameron, extortionists target large and small businesses in the retail, hospitality and construction sectors as they see an increase in cash flow.

The extortionists thrived during the festive season due to a reduction in law enforcement officers who had taken leave or were reassigned to monitor tourist hotspots.

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“This created a temporary gap in security coverage that criminals could exploit,” said Cameron.

Extortion task teams

In his State of the Nation Address (Sona) in 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa promised to prioritise the government’s response to criminal groups extorting money from construction sites and other businesses.

He announced that the government would establish specialised units, including the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), to combat these crimes.

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In his 2021 Sona, he said that task teams had been set up in several provinces to address extortion and violence at sites of economic activity.

“We need to confront the criminal gangs that invade construction sites and other business locations to extort money from companies. This requires a focused and coordinated response. The government has therefore established specialized multi-disciplinary units to address economic sabotage, extortion at construction sites, and vandalism of infrastructure,” said Ramaphosa in his 2022 Sona.

In October last year, he provided details, announcing the formation of 20 task teams to combat the construction mafia and their extortion activities in the country.

He said an operational budget of R20 million was earmarked and allocated for implementing the Economic Infrastructure Task Teams during the 2022/2023 financial year, along with a further R17 million for the 2023/2024 financial year.

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Among those arrested by the task teams, seventy suspects were charged with extortion at construction sites.

The government said that since 2019, extortionists have disrupted over 180 projects worth R63 billion, using tactics such as extortion, intimidation, violence and sabotage.

Homes targeted

Although the construction industry is the hardest hit by extortion, crime has spilt into the homes of the vulnerable.

Lieutenant-General Khosi Senthumule told Parliament’s portfolio committee on police last month that in some parts of the country, extortionists were now targeting the elderly and disabled.

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“Vulnerable communities such as the disabled, blind and pensioners have had their social grants being extorted by criminals,” she said.

Eastern Cape

There has been a reported rise in extortion in the Eastern Cape, where businesses and government institutions are told to pay protection fees or face severe consequences, including death or business closure.

To curb this rising crime trend, the SAPS has deployed additional forces to the province. In August, Provincial Commissioner Lieutenant General Nomthetheleli Mene launched the extortion hotline number in Mthatha.

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“This follows an outcry from various communities regarding crimes of extortion, especially in the OR Tambo and Nelson Mandela Bay policing precincts,” said Mene at the time.

The following month, National Police Commissioner General Fannie Masemola provided an update on the progress made since the hotline’s launch.

He expressed concern about the number of extortion cases reported since his visit, saying that the figure did not reflect the true scale of the problem.

“Simply put, there is underreporting of cases when it comes to extortion. This is indeed worrisome because for police to win the war against these extortionists, we are going to require community members to report these incidents by opening cases with the police,” said Masemola.

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“We can only conduct a thorough investigation with the assistance of witnesses and victims of crime to put these perpetrators behind bars.”

In Gauteng, police reported a rise in kidnappings for extortion, with the crime statistics from July to September recording 29 of these cases nationwide, with 15 of these recorded in the province.

Extortion trend in 2025

According to Willem Els from the Institute for Security Studies, extortion goes hand in hand with kidnapping for ransom, which has increased in recent years.

Els explained that there are two kinds of extortionists: major gangs or organised crime gangs and copycats of these groups. The copycats are small-time criminals who are opportunists.

“At the end of the day, it’s just good money that you don’t work for,” he said.

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“You see that they have even started to target students coming to universities.  They come to the city, they come to university, and then they are vulnerable. And they target them for kidnapping, for ransom, and then, then extortion.

 ”But in the Cape, we’ve got the [Nafiz] Modack case currently on, and they were the kingpins of extortion. They managed to refine the art of extortion. And that’s the same with [Mark] Lifman. They’ve been active for many years, where they do this protection thing.

“So if you don’t pay protection money, then of course you will be robbed, or your property will be vandalised.”

Political will for extortion

Els said only political will and new strategies from the police can help curb the scourge of extortion.

A restructuring of the top police management is also needed to ensure the right people are leading the force.

Another problem, according to Els, is the understaffing of the police force.

“It seems they [extortionists] are overwhelming the police,” he said.

“The crimes that we are talking about are also one of the reasons why South Africa is being rated in the upper quadrant of mafia states along with countries like Mexico and Italy because of the mafia-style crimes that are so prevalent in South Africa. So, what can the police do?

 ”Of course, the police will have to show up from the top, the government will have to show political will, they will have to come up with policies, they have to come up with strategies.

“The minister has given the national commissioner more sort of a clear hand to start to implement all these policies.

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“So, it’s in the hands of the national commissioner now to develop a new strategy, because it’s clear that the old strategy is not working.

 ”The police are under pressure. They are understaffed, they are under-resourced. That is the task of government to see how they can straighten the police, because the more you are under-resourced, the more you are understaffed and the harder you have to work.

“You have to start at the top. You have to clean up and look at corruption within the police.  You have to resource the police.”

Crime intelligence

According to Els, crime intelligence is the game-changer in the fight against extortion.

 ”You can pre-empt before the gangs can take action, hit the streets and extort people. They can infiltrate those gangs and they can arrest them even before they do that. So, that is the first problem that we have.

“We don’t have the intelligence needed to make inroads to curb these extortions.

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 ”At the end of the day, the public has lost their trust in the police.  

“The police will have to work on that because the public are the eyes and the ears of these people.

“They live amongst us and if we could give that information to the police, we know that the police will act on it.

 ”The police is like a big ship in the ocean. You are not going to turn that ship around in one day or two days but they have to start somewhere.

“We hope that with a good strategy and political will, they will start to turn the tide.”