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The Progressive Professionals Forum (PPF) calls for the State to commission a study to look at the impact of construction mafias and protection rackets on economic growth and possible harm to the country’s future investments.

Recent reports have exposed how these so-called construction mafias and the protection rackets have gone rogue while there is no action forthcoming to tackle these endemic occurrences. Unabated, this has the potential to turn our democratic state into a mafia state.

PPF President Kashif Wicomb says: “One of the biggest threats to South Africa’s economic viability and infrastructural development is the ruin caused by the so-called construction mafia and protection rackets, the State needs to act courageously and decisively before it is too late."

The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) in its September 2022 “Strategic Organized Crime Risk Assessment South Africa” report painted a gloomy picture of how the criminal networks operate in at least 15 sectors in the country.  The report points to a criminal ecosystem that ranges from mass shootings in taverns, horrifying gang rapes, outbreaks of violence in taxi ranks, the assassination of whistle-blowers, and not to forget, the ongoing attacks on long-distance bus drivers.

In another report, titled “Extortion or Transformation?”, the GI-TOC defines how these groups have masterminded extortion under the disguise of local business forums and negatively impacted the construction sector to the extent that property developers have stopped developments because of the demands made by these groupings are so ridiculous.  Their modus operandi is that they identify developments in the area and invade construction sites, demanding money, or a stake in the projects.

"The PPF calls for the Security Cluster to investigate and establish the causal factors that led to the emergence of the so-called construction mafia and to develop an action plan that will decisively deal with the construction mafia and the protection rackets.  Furthermore, the PPF calls for the Joint Sitting of Parliament to debate this scourge which has the potential to undermine our democratic state, and our efforts to rebuild the economy and hamper the infrastructure roll-out," says Kashif Wicomb.

Issued by Ngokwethu Communication on behalf of Progressive Professionals Forum