As South Africa reels from imploding entities such as Eskom, Rand Water, Transnet and failing municipalities, agile organised crime ecosystems intensify the looting of strategic infrastructure – as foretold in a recent report by the Global Initiative on Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC).
And as the country’s infrastructure faces systemic collapse, official institutions such as Parliament still cast about for “reports” with no cogent response in sight from any official source.
defenceWeb took a deep dive into the issue and spoke with former SA Police Chief General George Fivaz on the intensifying crisis and what can be done.
The GI-TOC report put the direct cost of infrastructure predation in South Africa regarding cable theft and infrastructure vandalism on Eskom, Telkom, Transnet and Prasa at R7 billion per annum, with associated costs of R187 billion to the broader economy every year.
Only an inclusive multi-sectoral Hybrid Lawfare Centre (HLC) can effectively counter the existential threat posed by predatory Organised Crime (OC) to South Africa’s critical infrastructure and indeed its very democracy, economy and people.
But South Africa has failed to mobilise the massive intelligence and crime-fighting potential in the private and business sectors to support the State – only that could ensure staying ahead of and eventually destroying crime ecosystems penetrating both Government and business sectors alike.
So says Fivaz, former SA Police chief under President Nelson Mandela and the only National Commissioner of the post-1994 democratic era to complete his term untainted by corruption.
Fivaz, who runs GFFR, his own forensics company, was a contributor to the GI-TOC report released last month by the Geneva-based organisation, the first of its kind to quantify the scope and nature of the organised crime threat to South Africa.
The report painted a dismal picture of the organised crime situation across a variety of sectors, but highlighted infrastructure predations as the single biggest – even existential – threat to South Africa.
The only credible and effective response remaining to South Africa to prevent a tipping point of no return was for the business sector to establish an HLC which could gather and co-ordinate intelligence and launch targeted sectoral and multi-sectoral responses in support of both State and private sector.
This should be the immediate response of the critical Banking, Tourism, Trucking & Transport, Warehousing, Energy and municipal sectors, said Fivaz.
Agile syndicates were also exploiting the simplistic and counter-productive mindset of many State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), provincial governments, municipalities and State organs who still see the infrastructure threat as a reactive guarding problem and not a pro-active intelligence-driven process.
“Of course guarding and security contracts are a multi-billion Rand industry and often seen as a self-perpetuating money-spinner for both officials and companies who then claim to be doing something about the problem.
“But the stripping of assets, infrastructure predation and wholescale theft of resources such as diesel are in fact increasing from Government, municipalities and companies – and badly-paid security guards are no barrier to penetration by syndicates who simply buy them.
“There simply is no bigger threat than infrastructure predation by organised crime to South Africa and its future economic survival and well-being, and therefore requires a commensurate response by all affected stakeholders,” Fivaz said.
No form of organised crime does more harm than mass predation against critical infrastructure relied on by the whole of South African economy, society and State, the GI-TOC report found.
“No State, including South Africa, organised along traditional bureaucratic lines can hope to decisively meet and beat the rapidly-growing organised crime threat without first strengthening its resilience and trust vital to unlocking defensive and offensive capabilities from all societal sectors and levels”, said Fivaz.
Echoing GI-TOC Director Mark Shaw, Fivaz emphasised an unrelenting and sustainable struggle needed to be waged against organised crime “from the JSE down to the spaza shop”.
Yet even the staggering direct costs of infrastructure predation noted in the GI-TOC report did not account for the looting of municipal water and electrical infrastructure throughout South Africa, with syndicates waging a relentless scorched earth campaign uncontested by local authorities not geared for intelligence-driven counter-operations.
As founder National Commissioner of the SA Police Service (1995-2000), Fivaz established innovative hybrid responses with the business sector but these were subsequently largely dismantled by a series of incompetent and corrupt National Commissioners.
Intelligence and law enforcement specialists point to a series of multi-sectoral Fivaz-sponsored initiatives in the mid-1990s, especially establishing hybrid covert intelligence structures on issues ranging from cash-in-transit robberies to taxi violence, tax compliance, threatened species, serial killers and political violence.
Since leaving the SAPS, Fivaz has also established a reputation for innovative hybrid strategies in combating cable theft at local Government level and closely-associated illegal mining by Zama Zamas, which overlap especially in Gauteng.
“We must go far beyond reactive multi-disciplinary teams on an ad hoc basis to respond to criminals who are already more sophisticated and nimble than most criminal justice and intelligence systems across the globe”, added the five-star retired General.
Municipal Lead Administrator Gilberto Martins, who has extensive experience on the impacts of infrastructure predation and its revenue generation and service delivery denial risks at local government level, agreed with Fivaz and the GI-TOC report.
“Municipal institutions get caught in a steep downward vicious cycle as infrastructure predation severely curtails service delivery and revenue generation whilst sharply increasing both costs and corruption, not to mention encouraging a culture of non-payment to authorities and lessening trust in them.
“This is a Molotov cocktail that cannot be fought through traditional security guarding methods but clearly only by intelligence-driven actors and methods,” said Martins, formerly the Lead Administrator at both the Tshwane Metro and Emfuleni Local Municipality (ELM).
