Hundreds of engineers and other highly skilled technical workers have left South Africa over the years because of the risks and disruption surrounding construction projects, according to the chief executive of the country's largest property owners' association.
Neil Gopal, chief executive of the South African Property Owners Association (SAPOA), said construction projects were being violently disrupted or halted, with workers left without work when developments were stopped.
“Over the years, we believe hundreds of engineers and highly skilled technical personnel have left the country due to personal risk and lack of work when projects are disrupted at gunpoint,” Gopal said.
His warning comes as parliamentary figures reveal that at least 42 construction and infrastructure projects in Cape Town, with a combined value of R1.483 billion, were affected by extortion, intimidation or alleged construction-mafia activity over the past five financial years.
And despite the scale of the disruption, Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia said no arrests had been made and no convictions had resulted from the cases covered by the parliamentary response.
The figures were disclosed in response to questions from ActionSA MP Dereleen James, who asked for the number of affected projects, their value and the number of arrests and convictions.
Cachalia said 12 projects had been affected by extortion, 16 by intimidation and 14 construction and/or infrastructure projects by construction-mafia activity.
The figures highlight the growing pressure on Cape Town's property and construction sectors, where developers say intimidation is no longer confined to large public infrastructure projects.
The latest Cape Town figures come against a broader extortion economy that The National reported in August was increasingly being treated by businesses as a cost of operating in South Africa, with some developers factoring protection and security demands into project feasibility calculations.
Deon van Zyl, chair of the Western Cape Property Development Forum, said the problem was organised criminal extortion rather than simply a dispute between developers and communities.
He said extortion and intimidation delayed or stopped projects, increased security and construction costs and created uncertainty for investors.
The problem had evolved from large public infrastructure projects into a broader threat to private development, Van Zyl said.
The construction industry's concerns come as the Construction Industry Development Board moves to strengthen how public projects deal with disruption and conflict.
A draft second edition of its Standard for Uniformity in Construction Procurement, published for public comment this month, calls for projects facing potential site-based disruption or community conflict to consider measures including stakeholder mapping, community engagement, site-security plans, incident reporting and escalation pathways to law enforcement.
The draft does not specifically refer to construction extortion, but its proposed provisions show that site disruption and security are increasingly being incorporated into the formal management of public construction projects.
Cape Town developments were increasingly facing intimidation, demands for work and attempts to disrupt projects.
“Community needs cannot be ignored, but neither can criminality be allowed to become an alternative procurement system,” Van Zyl said.
The Cape Town figures stand in contrast to the broader national picture provided by Cachalia earlier this year.
In May, the minister said police had investigated 44 extortion cases nationally over the preceding three years. Thirty-six involved construction sites, six involved transport routes, one involved a school and one involved a municipal project.
There had been 73 arrests in those cases, including 56 linked to construction-site cases.
Cachalia said extortion at construction sites was handled by Organised Crime Investigations within Detective Services, with dedicated prosecutors in each province.
The police have also established a National Priority Committee on Extortion and a National Extortion Hotline, with provincial hotlines in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape.
The figures have raised questions about the gap between the scale of disruption in Cape Town and the criminal justice response.
SAPOA has warned that the consequences extend beyond individual projects, affecting investment, employment and the country's ability to retain skilled technical professionals.
DPWI had not provided a substantive response by publication time. Its communications team said it was still awaiting information from the regional office and would revert.
