Contract killers thrive in taxi industry

There has been a marked increase of contract killings or hits in South Africa, with the highest number of incidents occurring in KwaZulu-Natal.

The province is followed by Gauteng (24%) and the Western Cape (14%), with firearms being the main choice of weapon (83%).

This is according to a report The Rule of the Gun – Hits and Assassinations in South Africa, January 2000 to December 2017, by the Assassination Witness project, the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Criminology and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (GITOC).

The data analysed for the report covers a period from January 2000 to December 2017, and it reveals a rapid increase in the number of hits towards the end of the period – from 2012 to 2017.

“The study found that a large proportion of assassinations in South Africa are contracted for political, economic or social gain, and that commissioned killings also targeted professionals in the country’s criminal-justice system,” the report states.

The violent taxi industry in the country is attributed for nurturing and “feeding this criminal market” by providing “a recruitment pool where hitmen can be hired”.

The authors of the report say the data reveals that there were 159 assassinations reported throughout the country last year, a 36% increase from the 2016 figure when 117 hits were recorded. In 2012, 46 contract killings were reported.

“Targeted assassinations have resulted in the deaths of many citizens, but, among the victims, there is a notable proportion who had been politicians, whistleblowers, proprietors of taxi businesses, known colloquially as taxi bosses and members of the legal fraternity,” the report states.

The report says that political conflict, poor governance and political uncertainty, which was a defining feature of the country’s administration between 2014 to 2017, contributed to the increase in the number of hits related to politics.

“But there were also increases in cases associated with organised crime and a large recorded growth in the number of targeted killings associated with the taxi industry,” the report states.

The breakdown of hits per category is as follows:

• Taxi industry – 43%
• Political killings – 22%
• Organised crime – 22%
• Personal category (cases that involve infidelity or perceived infidelity (love triangles), attempts to obtain life insurance pay-outs and several cases of children arranging for their parents to be killed) – 13%

“Analysis of each of these cases indicates that in 86% of the incidents, the victim was male, while 7% involved female targets; 7% of the incidents involved the deaths of both male and female targets,” the report states.

It adds that most of the hits are carried out outside the victim’s place of residence, usually as the victim arrives home late at night.

“More political hits take place in areas where the local-government party in power has remained the same, indicating that hits are more often related to internal power struggles within political parties – most notably the ANC – than to conflict between them,” says the report.

Speaking on Power FM, researcher and analyst for the GITOC  Kim Thomas said the findings of the study are alarming because of the increase of such incidents impacts on the country’s democracy.

“Another concerning issue is the impact assassinations have on the justice system and how that had a ripple effect also to intimidate witnesses not to testify and therefore impacting on the whole functioning of our justice system,” Thomas said.

To curb and reduce the incidents of contract killings, the report recommends the following:

• Improve firearm control
• Focus on reducing violent competition in the taxi industry
• Bolster prosecution-led investigations
• Expand efforts at monitoring assassinations and disaggregate homicide data

The report comes after the conclusion of the Moerane Commission of Inquiry, which investigated political killings in KZN since 2011. Violence has claimed the lives of 22 politicians in the province since 2016.

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