When hitmen are trendy our country is in deep trouble

Strictly speaking, the term inkabi refers to an ox — even though it is on occasion translated into English as “bull”. But the correct translation of the word “bull” in isiZulu would be inkunzi.

Brought up in a township where our relationship with cattle was limited to big occasions where they were slaughtered for a celebration at a wedding, to appease the ancestors or feed mourners at a funeral, I will not try to explain the difference between the two.

These days, a quick google of the word inkabi brings up an explanation that has nothing to do with the generally peaceful bovine species: “Inkabi: A Zulu term for an assassin or hitman ... very popular in KwaZulu-Natal province”. That’s how the Africtionary.com website puts it.

It is a term one increasingly encounters in news stories about contract killings, taxi industry players, regional politicians, local government officials and business people — mostly involved in tendering for state business.

But it is not new. It actually predates the democratic dispensation we now live in. Its original roots were innocent. Migrants from rural KwaZulu would affectionately greet each other as nkabi yami to distinguish themselves from their township counterparts who referred to each other as nkunzi.

Over time, however, as men arrived from Msinga and other rural parts of KwaZulu and the then Natal that were associated with the “faction fighting” of the late 1970s and early 1980s, nkabi became associated with violence.

Warring taxi bosses in urban centres were partial to hiring hitmen from areas with a history of “faction fighting”, as they were assumed to have been made brave and heartless by their experience of past killings. Suddenly a taxi boss would become feared in an area and control major routes purely on a reputation that he had deadly izinkabi.

By the mid-1980s the mere sight of an unknown Toyota

Cressida — apparently the transport of choice for such killers back then — would send shivers through the members of a community.

Though prevalent in the taxi industry, izinkabi were, however, not a major factor in other spheres of life.

There is very little evidence, for instance, of hired hitmen — if you exclude security policemen and other terror groups hired by the apartheid state to commit extrajudicial killings — being paid to take out political opponents in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many of the assassinations then were motivated by political prejudice rather than making money.

So how is it that in a democratic dispensation — where the rule of law is supposed to reign supreme — this industry has grown so exponentially that it has permeated almost all spheres of the country’s public life?

This week’s arrest of seven suspects in connection with the killing of local rap megastar AKA and his friend Tibz Motsoane has once again shone the spotlight on South Africa’s seemingly thriving hired hitman industry.

Police minister Bheki Cele recently pointed out one of the most glaring facts about this industry, which is that not only are most of these hitmen linked to the taxi industry, but that they tend to hail, overwhelmingly, from

KwaZulu-Natal. Whether a contract killing is executed in North West or the Western Cape, the shooters almost invariably turn out to be from that province. This is not to say that other parts of the country do not breed contract killers, but in KwaZulu-Natal they are prolific.

So pervasive are izinkabi in that part of the country that they are becoming a fashion trend, if not a subculture. It is not uncommon these days to hear men affirming each other as izinkabi when they are not referring to oxen or the 1980s use of the term.

Social media is awash with widely shared videos of men in their ill-fitting Brentwood trousers, Carvela moccasins and double-mercerised cotton golf shirts brandishing firearms in celebration of the nkabi subculture.

If even ordinary citizens have taken to celebrating such a lifestyle, will we ever win the battle against our country’s culture of violence?

Sometimes it feels like a lost cause. But South Africans cannot give up the fight without risking losing the entire country.

The battle against corruption, for instance, will never be won without also doing away with contract killings. For it is izinkabi who are hired to kidnap and kill public servants who refuse to look the other way when others steal. When investigations are conducted into cases of graft, it is izinkabi who are used to take out whistleblowers and other possible state witnesses.

The prevalence of contract killings at local government level is chasing too many experienced and upright officials out of municipalities — leaving many of our towns and cities without much-needed professional skills.

Parties competing in the upcoming general elections are bombarding citizens with impressive manifestos — some stopping just short of promising heaven on earth and others presenting realistic plans — but as long as none of them are thinking about how to put an end to the industry, we are all in grave danger.