[imagesource: Die Burger / Jaco Marais]

South African business owners, both in the formal and informal sectors, are doing their best to eke out a living under the most strenuous of situations.

Sadly, a ruthless extortion racket in the Cape has grown in both size and strength, with the woes of Long Street and CBD owners well documented.

Business owners live in fear, and the same is true for informal business owners who operate in and around the Cape Metro municipality.

In Khayelitsha, traders have spoken about receiving constant death threats, and writing for the Sunday Times, Philani Nombembe has outlined how these rackets run as “parallel revenue collectors” to SARS:

The gangs – who have adopted monikers such as the Guptas and Boko Harams – demand “protection fees” from the traders. Crèche owners, carwashes, backroom-flat owners, the woman selling chicken trotters on the side of the road, hair salons, spaza shops and a myriad other informal businesses are not spared. Those who do not comply are threatened with untold violence.

Social media is awash with messages, allegedly from the gangs, informing communities that they now have to pay annual “protection fees” for their cars and businesses. One of the messages reads: “Cosovo, Samora, Marikana nibe ready sifikile (residents of Cosovo, Samora, Marikana, be ready we have arrived), if une flat ezintandathu ezithathu zezethu (if you have six flats, three of them are ours). The message then stipulates the annual “protection fee” for various items.

When the criminals are using social media to openly broadcast their operations, you know that they feel they have complete impunity.

Those rates vary, depending on the size of the business they are targeting, and communities say they are paralysed with fear as the gangs ran amok.

Meetings held to combat the scourge can be poorly attended, as residents worry spies will be present to see who has raised the alarm, and the reach and violence of the gangs is growing:

Its tentacles extend to Gugulethu, Nyanga and the surrounding townships. Bloody killings, such as the shooting incident where seven people died in Gugulethu, followed.

A Gugulethu community leader, who also asked to remain anonymous, said the extortion racket ran deep and wide – and “decent and respectable people are involved….

“We have heard of a number of cases where these guys have allegedly intervened in the awarding of construction tenders and provide security at construction sites. You have to be very careful, they have ears everywhere.”

Police say they have opened a 24-hour hotline ( 21 466 0011) for the public to report extortion and other crimes carried out by the gangs, and four arrests were made in early December.

That’s a start, but there are still entire communities living in daily fear.

You can read the full Sunday Times article here.

[source:sundaytimes]