Killing is now ‘a boom industry’

ACROSS South Africa assassinations are on the rise as organised crime, corruption and criminality turn contract killings into a booming industry.

Over the past couple of weeks, South Africa has seen a spate of suspected high-profile contract killings.

Last Saturday insolvency practitioner Cloete Murray and his son, Thomas, were gunned down at the Engen Big Bird 1 Stop, on the N1 Highway in Midrand. Thomas died on the scene, his father two days later. Just over a month earlier rapper, Kiernan Forbes, known as AKA, died afger a gunman approached him on Durban’s Florida Road and shot him in the head. Both crimes are still unsolved, despite pleas by police for information and large rewards.

Besides the high-profile killings, there have been others, too. Even paramedics attend- ing crime scenes have noticed a disturbing trend.

Emer-g-med operations manager Kyle van Reenen said they had seen a noted increase in cases related to high-calibre weapon shootings, mostly within the ethekwini region. The high-calibre weapons are often used by assassins, frequently in drive-by shootings.

“It is speculated that a few of the victims we have attended to have been involved in either gangs or the taxi industry. However, this is not something we investigate because it’s not our mandate to do so,” said Van Reenen.

For Lizette Lancaster, an analyst for the Institute of Security Studies, it is not surprising South Africa is experiencing this form of murder.

“The increase in assassinations is linked to the rise in organised crime and criminality rooted in a society marred by historical and systemic violence and trauma,” said Lancaster.

“This violence in society provides fertile ground for the emergence of hit men for rent.”

Fuelling this is a police service buckling under a rising murder rate and battling to close homicide dockets.

“Everything defaults back to the police,” said political violence researcher Mary de Haas.

“Crime intelligence is totally dysfunctional. They are supposed to pick up who the hijacking syndicates are; where the chop shops are.”

De Haas called this a crisis in policing that made it easy for hit men to operate in an environment where they can use stolen cars, fitted with false number plates, with little fear of getting caught.

She said only parliamentarians could do something effective about it and they were not doing so.

“Opposition parties are just scoring points against each other. You can’t touch politicians,” De Haas said.

Andreas Mathios of Marshall Security said the availability of illegal firearms on the streets was also making it easier for hit men to do their work.

“The lack of law enforcement is an ongoing problem in South Africa, the collapse of the system used to crosscheck firearms on a national database is of serious concern. This needs to be tightened up so the process flow of a firearm being licensed or deregistered has a proper track path. At this stage, you know the system is failing the victims,” Mathios said.

Mathios said the highest levels within the police service were working on solving the latest suspected assassinations. Good forensic work was also being done to link murders, he said. Still, there was room for improvement

“There are very, very good forensic processes in place, but they need to be jacked up. They need to be modernised and be 100% rock-solid so the chain of evidence is absolutely 100% in place,” he said.

Police had not responded to queries sent to them regarding the rise in recent contract killings by the time of publication.

Criminological Society of Africa exco member Professor Nirmala Devi Gopal said information in the public domain showed that about 50% of the perpetrators in suspected killings do not receive sentences or see any jail time. Those who hire the killers to do their blood work are rarely caught.

“Regarding hit murders, we have evidence demonstrating that our criminal justice system is ineffective,” she said. And still the killings continue. In Durban over the past week alone, 12 people have been killed including a 9-year-old girl, in eight separate drive-by shootings, two of which were related. Three people were seriously injured.

A man was also killed in an attack on a Cape Town sushi restaurant. Mowbray police are investigating cases of murder and attempted murder after a shooting at Rock Thai Sushi Restaurant in Rondebosch. Apparently a man and a woman were shot while dining at the eatery last Thursday afternoon. The man died at the scene.

In Westbury, to the West of Johannesburg, apparent targeted killings caused by gang violence have left at least three people dead and a dozen injured in the last month.

“The murders of AKA, the Murrays and so on will carry on happening if nothing is done about it,” said De Haas. “It’s terrifying. It makes one wonder who’s next?”