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Editor’s Note: This piece is part of an ongoing series on organized crime worldwide.
Few countries have seen such a positive turnaround in the past two decades as South Africa. Emerging from a broadly condemned policy of apartheid and decades of economic stagnation in the early 1990s, the nation of 45 million people at the southern tip of Africa has become a hub of business activity in the continent and an attractive destination for tourists and businessmen from the rest of the world. Gross domestic product growth has steamed along at around 5 percent since 2000, and South Africa is fostering relations with other developing countries in anticipation of increased investment in Africa during the 21st century. On top of all this, South Africa will host the World Cup in 2010, marking its move from pariah status to the world spotlight in just under 20 years.
But the same characteristics that attract foreign investors — world-class infrastructure, economic stability and good climate — also attract criminals. Organized crime is very visible in South Africa, from the drug trade to stolen cars to poached snails. Both indigenous and foreign criminal syndicates darken the positive image that South Africa has fostered for the 21st century. The legacy of apartheid, the political instability it created in the 1990s and geography have shaped the criminal world in South Africa into what it is today.
History
Organized crime in South Africa can be traced back to the gangs that operated in the prisons there starting in the late 19th century. Just as in prison systems around the world, survival in South African prisons at the time (and today, to a lesser extent) required membership in a gang for protection and sustenance. Prison wardens were at best indifferent to the health and well-being of criminals and at worst, physically beat them or denied them their basic needs. The organization of prison gangs ensured security against aggressive guards and facilitated the flow of necessities like food and water to counter the indifferent guards.
But organized crime in South Africa did not really pick up until the era of apartheid. After South Africa became a sovereign state in 1938, the ruling white class (by far the minority in a predominantly black country) quickly enshrined a system of strict segregation that had already loosely been in place. The system was designed to disenfranchise blacks and protect the power of the whites — especially the Afrikaner population, whose political party, the National Party (NP), held a firm grip on power until 1994.
By the late 1940s, blacks had been systematically removed from urban areas in Cape Town, Johannesburg and any other city where whites lived and placed into peri-urban areas known as townships. The general motivation for these moves was fear of unrest. Blacks formed a majority in the country and whites feared that their power could easily be undermined by sheer force should blacks become unhappy with the political arrangement. The townships were created in order to control (or at least attempt to) activities within the black community. But the black population generally was not moved far; townships were always located just on the edge of towns so they could be closely monitored and drawn on as a source of cheap labor.
The notion of “separate but equal” failed just as miserably in South Africa as it did in the United States. While blacks in the townships were supposedly seen as equal under the law, their situation was noticeably worse than that of neighboring whites. From the education system to medical care to the organization of labor, blacks were consistently and purposefully suppressed and treated as inferior.
As the situation in the townships got worse, people did start to organize to protest the apartheid policies. The banning of political parties, including the African National Congress (ANC), made all forms of anti-government political organizations illegal, so any meetings and coordination had to be done in secrecy. Secret labor unions began to form; groups that wanted to talk about the political situation would meet up secretly at shebeens — the townships’ versions of speakeasies. These activities themselves are not considered organized crime, but the fact that even the most benign of civic actions were forced underground gave an air of conspiracy to almost any activities in the townships. The ANC, formed in the early 20th century, was forced to go underground during this period. A militant wing of the ANC — referred to as the MK, short for Umkhonto we Sizwe, or “Spear of the Nation” — formed in the early 1960s. It was moderately successful in attacking government interests but mostly only led to crackdowns in the townships.
Overseeing the day-to-day security of the townships was the South African Police Service (SAPS). Infamous for its brutality, the SAPS paralleled the prison guards of the 19th century: at best negligent, at worst extremely violent. The police were not stationed in the townships to provide order and security to the inhabitants; they were there to root out and crack down on any kind of activities that could be seen as political subversion. As for internal stability, the police were ambivalent toward violence among blacks. If they had any opinion on it at all, they probably condoned the violence, since keeping the opposition divided is a good way to control the population.
The spread of communism in sub-Saharan Africa and uprisings in the townships during the 1970s and 1980s threatened the regime and led to some of the most violent police crackdowns under apartheid. Blacks in South Africa had positive views of the liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique aided by the Soviet Union and its proxies. Blacks largely saw those movements as victories over white rule in southern Africa — a view that was worrisome to the South African government. But the involvement of the Soviet Union introduced the threat of communism into South Africa’s security equation. After the Portuguese left southern Africa in 1976, and with Rhodesia facing serious difficulties fighting Zimbabwean liberation movements, the South African regime became nervous of being surrounded not only by black uprisings in neighboring countries, but also by communism. That many blacks sympathized with the revolutions (not necessarily because of communism, but more because it marked the end of white rule there) made the South African elite even more nervous.
Subsequent uprisings in the townships were met with harsh crackdowns. Mass casualties were inflicted by the police during protests outside of Johannesburg and Cape Town, further riling the population in the townships. By the late 1980s, facing economic troubles and soaring security costs, the NP began negotiations with the ANC and other political parties marking the beginning of the transition out of apartheid. By 1992 (not coincidentally, around the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse), apartheid officially ended and by the 1994 elections, the ANC formed a government, ending more than 50 years of one-party, white-minority rule.
While the end of apartheid was a cause for celebration, there were dark sides to the event. The gangs and conspiratorial networks that had formed during apartheid were now no longer confined to the townships. Severe restrictions on the movements in and out of townships were immediately revoked, releasing the populations of townships (and the criminals among them) to move about the country and cities freely. A police force that for so long concentrated on stamping out political subversion was not able to control street crimes like drug dealing, thefts and stick-ups. The political wrangling over the future of the state police weakened law enforcement further. The result was a crime wave during the 1990s that is still visible today.
Structure
As outlined above, organized crime in South Africa really got its start in the prison system in the 19th century. Gangs formed within prisons to provide protection and basic needs for prisoners, and as prisoners were transferred across the country and served sentences at various locations, the gangs spread. By the time apartheid had become institutionalized in South Africa in the 1940s, the prison gangs were nationwide and were referred to as the Numbers. The 26s and the 28s are the two most prevalent gang systems in South African prisons. Membership in the gangs required a brutal initiation that often included killing a guard or fellow prisoner. The gangs built their history around folklore and a tradition of hierarchy. As members circulated between confinement and freedom, knowledge of the gangs spread across the prisons and townships of South Africa.
Living in prison was difficult in South Africa and so prisoners required tight groups to watch each other’s backs. But the need for such protection gangs did not arise in the outside world until the 1970s and 1980s, when the situation in the townships became ever more heated. It was during this time that some of the “super gangs” of today got their start — groups like the Americans, a gang that got its name by identifying strongly with American paraphernalia. Meanwhile federations of gangs like The Firm gained strength and consolidated their resources.
Gangs may have gotten their start providing protection in the townships, but they quickly used their strength to work their way into the drug market. The Americans, allied with other local gangs like the Mongrels and Fancy Boys, and The Firm all got started in Cape Town — the center of criminal activity in South Africa where over 130 gangs are expected to be operating. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as more and more drug dealers and street gang bosses started going to jail, the connection between the prison gang system and the street gang system converged. The Americans and their allies aligned themselves with the 26s and the federation of gangs under The Firm aligned themselves under the 28s. By aligning with the Numbers gangs, the street gangs were exposed to a national network of criminals. Names and numbers mixed so that a franchise system was formed, with street gangs all over the country lining them up with the 26s (headed by the Americans) or the 28s (headed by The Firm).
Both major street-gangs-cum-drug-syndicates operated much like a corporation. The Firm (founded by Colin Stanfield) and the Americans (founded by Jackie Lonte) built themselves up during the 1980s and 90s, merging with, swallowing up or simply stamping out the competitive local gangs. Their business plans called for them to be wholesalers; they both knew that the real money and power in the drug business lay in providing the drug dealers with product and forging partnerships with international drug producers.
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