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Businesses and schools in the Eastern Cape town of Mthatha are increasingly being forced to close doors due to the extortion syndicates treating their hard work like playthings.

The extortion syndicates demand “protection fees”, ranging from R20,000 for small businesses, R50,000 for medium-sized, and more than R200,000 for big businesses or they risk being attacked and taken down.

The concern for Mthatha is growing, as some business owners have closed their outlets while others have fled the town after being threatened with death if they do not pay the “protection fees”.

“Pay or you will die,” they were warned, per News24.

Even the education of SA kids is being controlled by these gangs, who reportedly make some Mthatha schools and school teachers renting properties pay between R500 and R1,000 a month for their so-called protection.

Police minister Senzo Mchunu told 702 that this problem needs to be faced head-on, calling the current situation “ugly”.

“This has grown to such an extent that we hear women in villages have to either post R50 on their window or they get raped if they don’t do that. So it has gone wild,” Mchunu said.

“It’s criminal. It’s not confined to the Eastern Cape and Western Cape. It’s also KZN and elsewhere. In the next few weeks, we should sort it out.

Mchunu said there are even suspicions that some police officers are involved. However, he said there is a plan to end this chaos.

“We have started laying ground plans to deal with this and collecting as much information as possible on names of the people who are in this at any level. There are those who are identified as kingpins and there are those identified as runners.”

The Citizen notes that the national commissioner of the South African Police Service (Saps), General Fannie Masemola has deployed extra boots to the Eastern Cape to clamp down on the extortionists and gangs.

The ANC in the province called for the government to deploy South African National Defence Force soldiers in order to combat and arrest those behind incidents of gang violence and extortion.

[source:news24]