Ninety-one cases of mainly construction-related extortion are under investigation across South Africa.
Mathe said difficulties included cases being underreported, because people are reluctant to approach the police, and others don’t want to testify. The Abathembu king, Buyelkhaya Dalindyebo ka Sabatha, intervened this week in the Laphumikhwezi Primary matter, and classes resumed. Government insiders said there were allegations that some of the extortionists in the province were employed by the government, including in the emergency services.Extortionists were also affecting work on major infrastructure in the Eastern Cape, including the N2 highway, the Mtentu Bridge and the Addo Road.
Several people Daily Maverick spoke to this week, some linked to policing, explained that related crimes stretched from suburbs, towns and cities to cyberspace. However, extortion does not appear to have been listed as a category of crime in the statistics, although it may fall under other categories.
A Cape Town High Court judgment from April this year, related to a mass shooting in Khayelitsha, said: “The City of Cape Town is one of the areas in the Republic which is in the eye of a storm of extortion.” “Thereafter, the Western Cape government’s human settlements department awarded Johnson’s company, Glomix House Brokers, the contracts for completing these abandoned projects.”