South Africa’s fight against organised crime was not hampered by a result of lack of political will but by its inability to bring back lost skilled people, attract the youth and the country’s incomplete transition as a united nation, said advocate Bulelani Ngcuka.
Former head of National Prosecution Authority (NPA) Ngcuka was speaking recently at an online meeting organised by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) titled, “Breaking the bombers; lessons for tackling organised crime”. He said he did not believe the fight against organised crime lacked enough political will.
If anything, Ngcuka said, there were initiatives reporting directly to the president, taken up by the business sector working alongside the government which had set up three crucial streams to combat some of the challenges plaguing the country, namely energy, infrastructure and combating crime.
In addition to that, he said the amendment of the NPA Act, had helped to bring focused attention to deal with the issues of corruption.
"So to a certain extent, they are bringing back the Scorpions to deal with that (organised crime) hence you hear from all levels even the likes of Fikile Mbalula saying: ‘We made a mistake in disbanding the Scorpions’. And that is important coming from people like that as he is sending a message that we have a problem and they accept that they made a mistake and need to deal with it."
Ngcuka did, however, explain that in his view, the challenge the country was facing was that many talented and skilled people had left the government during the advent of State Capture and had either gone to the private sector or were simply lost in the system.
“Second because of this intersection between politics and crime, many young and bright people do not want to work for the state as they think they are going to be identified as being corrupt. So one ends up working with people who are not the brightest of the bright which you want in this environment."
He added: “What makes matters worse is that criminals also study what we do and they are always a step ahead because as they commit the crime they are already working out how to get out of it and you are coming back to play catch-up.”
Ultimately, however, Ngcuka said the main problem was that the country’s transition had never really been completed, making it difficult to bring in some of the best skilled people in the country, who believed they and their services were unwanted.
“We do not, even up today, work as one nation and one people because we are a society in transition that has not been completed.”
Concerns regarding the prevalence of organised crime in South Africa have been in the spotlight in recent weeks following increasing incidents of cash-in-transit heists and kidnappings taking place in Eastern Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
This was further highlighted by the most recent ENACT Global Organised Crime Index which detailed how South Africa’s organised crime resilience placed it at 42nd in the world, second in Africa, and first in the southern African region.
Similarly, the country recorded a 0.47 rise in levels of organised crime with a criminality score of 6.63, putting it at 19th in the world for criminality, fifth in Africa, and first in southern Africa.
The index also detailed how more than three-quarters of countries in the southern African region were assessed and found to have non-existent, extremely ineffective or moderately effective anti-organised-crime frameworks, limiting their ability to withstand and counter the impact of organised crime.