South Africa has landed among the world’s top organised crime hotspots, not because of the drugs alone, but because the police and criminal justice officials meant to stop them have allegedly become part of the trade.
According to experts and testimony before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, alleged pervasive criminal influence within law-enforcement and justice institutions is systematically crippling the state’s capacity to dismantle transnational trafficking networks.
The country’s ranking among the top 10 countries globally for organised crime reflects far more than its role as a strategic drug-transit hub for markets across the Indian Ocean and Europe.
Dr Mark Shaw, executive director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC), informed the commission last week that South Africa ranks in the top 5% of all nations on GI-TOC’s Organised Crime Index for criminal markets and actors – placing it alongside high-risk jurisdictions such as Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Ecuador, Nigeria and Türkiye.
Alleged collusion between senior police officials and drug syndicates has emerged as a primary focus of the inquiry.
The conduct of top Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks) personnel came under intense scrutiny during testimony concerning two major 2021 cocaine seizures:
- The theft of a 541kg cocaine seizure – valued at R200 million – from the Hawks’ secure storage facility in Port Shepstone.
- The illicit diversion of a 700kg cocaine consignment, valued at R300 million, trucked from Durban to Aeroton, Johannesburg.
Former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head Major-General Leseja Senona resigned shortly after being cross-examined regarding the Port Shepstone theft.
High-profile underworld assassinations – including the 2022 killing of Oupa John Sefoka, also known as DJ Sumbody – are allegedly linked to a retaliatory feud triggered by the stolen Port Shepstone shipment.
In response to questions from The National, Shaw further noted that while Colombia functions primarily as a production hub and Ecuador as a transit corridor, South Africa occupies a unique position.
It serves as both a primary transit corridor for Latin American cocaine and a major hub for industrial-scale methamphetamine production.
“Colombia is primarily a production hub for cocaine, while Ecuador and Paraguay, given their proximity to major production areas, are important logistics corridors,” he said.
“South Africa is significant as a transit point for drugs, notably cocaine, towards markets across the Indian Ocean and in Europe, and has also become a hub for industrial-scale methamphetamine production.”
He said South Africa reached the global top tier because of multiple, large and overlapping markets sustained by powerful actors inside the state and the legitimate economy.
“A critical factor is the prominent presence of state-embedded actors, for which South Africa scores 8 out of 10.
“This matters because state-embedded actors have a strong negative relationship with resilience: when criminal actors are able to operate from within or through state institutions, the state’s capacity to prevent and respond to organised crime is weakened,” he said.
Security strategist Andy Mashaile said South Africa is developing its own form of criminal governance.
“The critical question is no longer merely whether organised criminal groups are operating in South Africa.
“They clearly are. The more consequential question is whether criminal networks are acquiring sufficient influence over legitimate economic and state structures to compromise the institutions responsible for preventing and prosecuting organised crime,” he said.
Mashaile added that South Africa is attractive to transnational criminal networks because of its ports, airports, road networks and regional commercial connections.
He stated that South Africa’s criminal economy is not limited to drugs.
Professor Mpho Matlala of Unisa’s School of Criminal Justice Department: Police Practice, said the country’s biggest problem is weak law enforcement.
He flagged senior police officials living beyond their means as another problem.
Matlala said that while South Africa differs from Colombia, Paraguay and Ecuador, the Organised Crime Index groups them together because they share similar structural risk factors, not identical criminal markets.
“Some of the commonalities include strategic positioning in global drug routes. As such, Colombia is one of the world’s principal cocaine producers; Ecuador is a major exporter in the Americas; Paraguay specialises in dagga and cocaine production and trafficking; whilst South Africa is a major transit and destination hub for drugs that include cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and other drug markets, connecting Latin American, African, Asian and European trafficking networks,” Matlala said.
He added that South American cartels have increasingly been renting properties in South Africa to set up drug labs.
Some intelligence reports and security experts indicate that Latin American syndicates, specifically linked by intelligence to the Sinaloa Cartel, are expanding their manufacturing footprint into Africa.
Two Mexican nationals were arrested last month in Musina, Limpopo, after police raided a farm and seized crystal meth and laboratory equipment valued at around R600 million.
Four other Mexicans were arrested in May after police dismantled a massive operation valued at over R1 billion, seizing 481kg of crystal meth near Swartruggens in the North West province.
In September last year, five Mexican nationals were arrested during a raid in Volksrust, Mpumalanga, where police seized chemicals and drugs worth R350 million.
According to Matlala, arrests do not seem to deter international drug cartels from operating in South Africa because cartels operate through flexible networks, so arrested operatives are quickly replaced.
“For drugs, the Dutch model of legally administering such drugs to addicts for free at medical facilities might address the dealing aspect, but I doubt this will eliminate South Africa as a production and transit destination for trafficking to other jurisdictions,” he said.
Security expert Eldred de Klerk said the SAPS approach to organised crime is not about elimination or prevention, but about disrupting the operation.
“Disrupt simply means, yes you disrupt them, they readjust, they are agile, they are more into something completely different based on the facts that they now understand how you can disrupt them,” De Klerk said.
He said that criminal networks have short decision-making windows, committed resources, a shared objective and a willingness to sacrifice themselves and others.
Those in jail, he said, are not the people at the nodes of the criminal enterprises the country is trying to dismantle.
De Klerk said the prevalence of criminal networks and their operations in the country should not be surprising, as the GI-TOC has been highlighting this for some time.
According to him, the criminal trajectory can be reversed but it will require political will and bolder action regarding technology and comprehensive security.
“We need to rethink our entire national security operation, we need to start talking about things like reform and reset,” he said.
The GI-TOC asked the commission to consider recommending a Chapter 9 Anti-Organised Crime Agency as one of the interventions to fight against transnational criminal networks.
Mashaile, however, warned that South Africa must not respond to institutional weakness by simply creating another one.
“The Hawks, IPID and NPA already perform important functions. The issue is whether the existing architecture is sufficiently capable of identifying and dismantling complex criminal networks that cross the boundaries between organised crime, corruption, business, politics, policing, intelligence and the broader criminal justice system,” he said.
rapula.moatshe@nationalmg.co.za