Call to prayer to take on racketeers
Gangs order traders in township to pay ‘protection’ money
Nolitha Mahamba* panics whenever she receives a call from an unfamiliar number.
The Khayelitsha spaza shop owner is one of many informal traders in the Cape Town township who have been targeted in extortion rackets that have been ramped up since SA moved to level 1 of the lockdown.
People selling braaied meat on pavements, hair salons, car washes, crèches and people renting flats in their backyards have received so many demands for protection money that they called a prayer meeting last weekend. It was attended by deputy minister of state security Zizi Kodwa.
Mahamba said three gangs — one called the Guptas — had demanded between R300 and R1,000 a month. “If you don’t pay they rob you,” she said.
“A group of men approached my shop and said, ‘ We heard you are the leader of these traders. Each stand must pay us R500 monthly.’
“I told them there was another group that demanded R300. Before that, another group came and demanded R1,000. I asked them to find the other groups and thrash it out among themselves.
“We got a report from crèches that the gangs want R100 per child monthly.”
After reporting the extortion to the Khayelitsha Development Forum, Mahamba said she was called by someone claiming to be using an untraceable phone.
“He said, ‘Since you are protecting those informal traders you must know that in the end we will find you.’ I told him if they want to kill me, so be it. There is nothing I can do.”
Three other traders in the township told similar stories. Nomandla Nyokana*, who sells meat, said a man had made a “very forceful” demand for R800 a month.
Nophelo Mbiza* said: “I am 66 and I cannot get a job anywhere else. I am using this income to supplementmy pension. I will not survive if I am forced to pay R800 protection fee. My business would collapse.”
Nomzimasi Gwaqa* said a trader was threatened next to her on Wednesday. “The man pretended to be a customer,” she said. “He asked if the trader was already paying a protection fee and said he should start paying, otherwise he will lose his life and leave his children behind. The trader refused to pay and said, ‘so be it’.”
Forum chair Ndithini Tyhido said the prayer meeting was held to “empower” the besieged community.
“What annoys me the most is the targeting of the poorest of the poor. The history is that the people who are involved have been [targeting] Somalis and it went on and on to a point where it got to everyone. People are now being targeted in their own households.”
Randolf Jorberg, the owner of Beerhouse in Long Street, fled to Germany at the height of a nightclub extortion wave in the Cape Town city centre. He said he had faced the same threats as those in Khayelitsha.
“What you are seeing now is an escalation,” he said.
“[The racketeers] moved from one industry, which they dominated, to all kinds of related industries and they now want to install the same mechanism of wanting to be paid a security fee without any service being delivered other than ‘ we will not visit you again’.”
The Somali Business Association said it had not “received any complaints from the business community” about extortion in Khayelitsha.
Western Cape police spokesperson Brig Novela Potelwa, said “numerous disturbing incidents” of extortion in Cape Town townships had come to the attention of police.
“A common thread ... is that the SA Police Service gets informed through third parties but not the primary victims. The main reason advanced is that victims fear for their safety. This has somewhat constrained the SAPS response to the claims,” she said.
A telephone line (021-466-0011) had been set up for reports of extortion as part of an operational plan that also included “targeted operations at identified hotspots”.
Potelwa said: “The past two weeks have seen forces descending on areas such as Khayelitsha, Harare and Dunoon. Detectives are also probing are murder and attempted murder cases linked to intra- and intergroup conflict as there have been reports of the alleged extortionists fighting over territory, thus resulting in multiple murders and serious injury.”
* Not their real names