How the Eastern Cape became the new Mexico

LIKE thousands of tourists, Alize van der Merwe landed at King Phalo airport in East London with one thought: to relax at one of the many idyllic small family-owned and run holiday resorts dotted along the pristine Wild Coast.

On 20 September, Alize collected her baggage and headed to the car rental area outside the airport building. She picked up a Toyota Fortuner from Hertz, snaked through the city and then turned off onto the N2 north. Her destination, a tangle of cottages and rondavels at the mouth of the Umngazi River near Port St. Johns.

At around 11:30, she messaged her family that she planned to stop at the Shell Ultra City near Mthatha. (CCTV footage later confirmed that she had stopped there.)

It would be the last time her family heard from her.

At around 15:14, they received a call from unknown persons that Alize had been kidnapped. They demanded a ransom for her release.  Tracking data indicates that the vehicle was abandoned not far from the Umngazi River Lodge.

Alize was released yesterday afternoon, six days after she was kidnapped. She and another 34-year-old woman who was also kidnapped in September were dropped off by a white bakkie at the Sulenkama police station, about 30 km from Qumbu, just after noon yesterday.

At this stage, it is not known who the other woman is, but according to the Hawks, both women were traumatised and taken to a hospital for treatment.

Alize was just the latest victim of a brutal crime wave crashing over the province, terrorising communities and threatening to kill tourism in the Wild Coast, the central economic driver in a part of the world that desperately needs every job it can create.

The day after Alize was abducted, a vehicle with four tourists and a local guide was stopped by armed men on the Mthatha River Bridge. The guide was tied up. During the robbery, the tourist managed to drive away. The gunmen shot several shots into the vehicle, but miraculously, no one was harmed.

Two days later, a man was kidnapped in Mankosi village. He was later released on the Mdumbi River bridge. 

Deep roots

While the spate of recent kidnappings — from Gqebehra to Maclear — have made headlines, crime and lawlessness run deep in the province.

The latest crime statistics for the fourth quarter of 2023/24 and the first of 2024/25 show that the province is a war zone. And violent crime continues to rise.

In just six months, the Eastern Cape has experienced the loss of 2328 lives due to violent crime, leaving shattered families across the province.

Carjackings and truck hijackings have surged — 513 cars in the first quarter of this year and 117 trucks in the past six months.

The province is under siege from organised crime, and the latest wave of criminality has now hit the Wild Coast.

Anti-crime activist Ian Cameron is the new chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio committee on safety and security.

“Kidnapping for ransom was initially happening to mainly Somali and Pakistani businessmen, but the network for kidnapping and extortion has developed to such an extent that they're now going for higher, more expensive targets."

Cameron suspects that part of the rise in kidnappings in the Eastern Cape has to do with criminals colluding with law enforcement.

“Regarding the Eastern Cape, the police minister has acknowledged a substantial challenge with criminality. I have no doubt that there's significant involvement at the local level, which is why they're now trying to use the national intervention unit to stabilise it."

Crime pays

Like in many kidnapping cases, Alize's family approached a private investigator to help return their loved one — in this case, Mike Bolhuis, who runs the Pretoria-based company Specialised Security Services.

He confirms that Alize was held captive somewhere in the remote, untraversable hinterlands around Port St. Johns. The area has terrible roads and even worse cellphone signal, which complicates any potential recovery operation.

About the kidnapper's ransom, he says he cannot divulge whether a ransom was paid and, if so, how much. “But, a deduction can be made — ransom is usually the case when a kidnapping occurs. They only take humans for one reason: they are merchandise. They sell them back." 

Bolhuis says the Alize case has been characterised by “intense, intense, in-depth investigations" that include forensic and cybercrime units, the Hawks, police units and other safety and security agencies.

Information from the public has also been hugely helpful: “We are inundated with leads, which is incredible. Public cooperation is critical to flushing these kinds of criminals out."

He says the escalation in kidnappings is because it is a “paying crime". 

“Unfortunately, if a crime is executed and not dealt with severely, it draws in other criminals, who will also do it. There are many kidnappers now. It is easily done. And it is easy money. And it isn't easy to catch them.

“Of late, the authorities have become much better with the special task units, and the public has also gotten involved. Kidnapping has dropped in certain places, but not in the Eastern Cape. There have been about 80 of this type in the past year alone." 

Alize's kidnapping is what Bolhuis terms a “mid-level" kidnapping. There has been a spate of “high-level" kidnappings of businessmen, mainly in Gqebehra (formerly Port Elizabeth). The last such kidnapping was in July when five balaclava-wearing criminals rammed 51-year-old businessman Kelvin Naidoo's Mercedes-Benz on his way to work and forced him into their vehicle in a brazen abduction on a Friday morning. 

A ransom demand of R10 million was made. He was released after six days.

“In high-profile kidnappings, criminals will identify a wealthy businessman or woman and conduct extensive investigations beforehand. They will know your banking details, how much you have, where you work, your movements, absolutely everything. They will sometimes also have other contacts, like people in the banks or cellphone companies, even within the authority structures. And they deal in millions of rand. 

“This was not the case with Alize. She was not a wealthy person. She was just a single woman going on holiday. They target people on the roads. They identify expensive vehicles and lone travellers, especially women. They usually mistake them for an overseas traveller and then take them. They were after money. "

Two centres of crime

The province seems to have two epicentres from which organised crime emanates — Nelson Mandela Bay (Gqeberha) to the West and Mthatha to the East.

The Wild Coast crime wave is linked to the ever-deepening crime crisis in Mthatha.

“The word is a cesspool," says Cameron. “There is total lawlessness. The extortion hotline in Mthatha was launched a month ago and has already received in the region of 1,500 calls. It is an environment of total anarchy."

Not only are businesses being squeezed to pay protection fees to organised gangs, but I recently spoke to a man from the town who said men are being targeted to pay protection fees for their wives and girlfriends, with gangs threatening to rape the women if the men don't pay up.

Cameron says he recently got a call from a prosecutor complaining that the police have withdrawn protection because the National Prosecuting Authority doesn't have money to protect the prosecutors. “Without protection, these cases are too dangerous to prosecute. We are talking about the Eastern Cape now, but it happens everywhere. In the Western Cape, in Mfuleni, armed guys ride around on the back of pickup trucks, stopping at shops, taking what they want, and then moving on to the next target.

“We are in a Mexico scenario where you end up having kidnappings from, [the] poor to [the] rich. In fact, as far as I am concerned, we are beyond a Mexico scenario. A little while back, I had a case of a woman in Khayelitsha who lived in a shack. They kidnapped her little boy, who was two or three. They wanted ransom.

“What are they going to get from that woman? How is it worth the effort? It has become so easy to extort people with violence in South Africa because there are no consequences, and so people do it even for small amounts of money."

Modus operandi

“Kidnappers know that as long as they have a human being, it's human merchandise," Bolhuis says.

“They bargain. They will, for instance, start with an amount of R500,000, and eventually, a family will pay R200,000 or R300,000. But often, they have to prove that's all they have. So there are negotiations. The success rate of getting people back via the expert negotiators in the police is good. Very few people are killed."

While the success rate of getting people back is high, the record of catching and prosecuting these criminals is poor.

Bolhuis says this is slowly changing. “In the last year, the authorities have put out specialised units and have made hijackings, kidnappings, and serious and violent crimes priority crimes, especially kidnappings. So when a kidnapping goes down, all authorities, including the specialised units, become involved.

There seems also to be a change in attitude towards working with private sector security companies.

“We are always number two. We do nothing on our own. We share all the information we get. Proper tracking, tracing, and in-depth forensic investigations are the only ways to catch these guys. In the past, it hasn't been that successful. But the authorities are taking no nonsense anymore. If they have to shoot to kill, they will. And I appreciate this because these criminals have to know that crime does not pay."

Wild Coast crimewave

This crime wave on the Wild Coast has two hotspots.

Most recently, a gang has been responsible for at least six very violent armed robberies on the scenic coastal strip between Bulungula and Coffee Bay. They break into homes, tie up residents, steal valuables, and often vehicles. 

The nearby Mankosi/Mdumbi region has been terrorised for the past two years by a gang of four to five heavily armed men (including some with R4 rifles). There have been a string of violent attacks targeting both tourists and residents for the past two years. 

In 2022, a doctor from East London was shot in the arm and tied to a tree near the Mdumbi River Bridge. The criminals stole his vehicle.

In the same year, a tourist’s car was shot at numerous times at the Mdumbi River bridge, but they managed to escape. An elderly couple was held hostage and severely beaten at the Mthatha Mouth holiday cottages before their car was stolen. A year later, a family was again held at gunpoint here and had their car stolen. Two department of health employees were held hostage and shot near Mdumbi River bridge by men armed with R4 rifles and handguns.

This year,  an Australian tourist was held at gunpoint and tied up before his car was stolen, once again at the Mdumbi River bridge. In April, gunmen attacked several cars carrying families and children near the bridge. They escaped with their lives. In May, the headman of Mankosi admin area was robbed and beaten by five armed men with R4 rifles and handguns. In June, the manager of Mdumbi Backpackers was robbed, shot at, and beaten by five gunmen wielding handguns and R4 rifles. 

The list goes on. Just the other day, three elderly people were abducted, on the road between Kei Mouth and Trenery's (A road I have often travelled alone).

Tourism shattered

David Martin, founder of Bulungula Lodge, and his wife were recently abducted from their home by an armed gang. They survived their terrifying ordeal and are now back home in Bulungula. 

Just like the attack at Mdumbi, the abduction sent shockwaves through the community. Dave and Rojaan have lived in the community for two decades, building up a lodge owned and managed by the community of the local Nqileni village.

Martin says: “The attacks have created an environment of fear and uncertainty. The lack of policing in these remote areas and the delays in investigative efforts have allowed these criminal activities to persist and escalate. We fear that we will soon have multiple copycat gangs doing the same thing and destroying the local economy completely."

He says the tourism industry is on the brink of collapse, putting thousands of jobs at risk, and that a dedicated task team is necessary to restore safety to the area. 

Cameron says the national intervention unit, which has been deployed to the Eastern Cape, is like a special task force. While not quite at the same level as the elite Tier 1 police tactical unit, the unit comprises very well-trained, uniformed members, and their focus is mainly on the extortion rackets in the province.

“Extortion and the kidnapping go hand in hand. It's often the same people. Kidnapping for ransom is essentially extortion."

What the future holds

On August 20, the South African Police Service deployed three senior officers from organised crime, specialised operations, and intelligence from the national headquarters to the province. 

They are working with a team of detectives from organised crime, serious and violent crime units, operatives from the National Intervention Unit, and Crime Intelligence Officers to augment the province's existing capacity in dealing decisively with extortion and what is labelled as “protection-fee gangs”.

Cameron welcomes this move but says measurable outcomes are needed to determine whether they are achieving success.

“It doesn't help to send 600 additional members to an area, and they stabilise it for three months, but when they leave, everything returns to the old ways. We need an integrated effort to push back. We need to, for example, deploy X number of specialist investigators to the area for two years and X number of prosecutors. And they must work together to fast-track these cases with the department of justice. 

How did we get to the point where we are under siege from criminals? 

“If you look at the Global Initiative for Transnational Organised Crime's latest report on the Western Cape, it's terrifying to see how extensive the network has become," Cameron explains.

“And there's been no integrated effort to push back against organised crime. One reason is that the command structure of the police is very, very sick. We also have a lack of disciplinary consequences — a general lack of discipline, but also unions holding the police hostage, as well as considerable problems in the leadership.

“One example is the Hawks trying to push through the appointment of Gen. Patrick Mbotho in North West to make him Divisional Commissioner in the Hawks of Priority Crimes in that province. This man sent pornographic material to his detective command and is known for hanging out with the notorious gangster Nafiz Modack. Now, they want to promote him to Lt-Gen. If this is the type of lack of integrity in your highest ranks, how do you expect to fight it at the ground level?"

But it's not all doom and gloom. Cameron is full of praise for the new police minister, Senzo Mchunu. 

“The new minister is applying the pressure. He is asking the questions that have not been asked for years. And he is getting resistance, but you can see something broadly seeping through.

“And he is moving away from the old hostility between the police and the private sector towards cooperation. He believes in sharing resources. In quite a few recent kidnapping cases, there has been excellent co-operation between private and state role players. Alize's is a case in point.

“The new minister has also ushered in a change in morale. There is a definite improvement in the morale of the police, which is critical.

“We can turn things around if we focus on three things. We need a skills audit of the top leadership of the police because I am convinced that more than 50% of them do not deserve to be in the ranks where they are. We need to bring discipline and consequence management back to the service. And then, we need to look at the state of training colleges and in-service training to ensure these are up to standard.

“I believe, with the right decisions and the courage to do the right thing, we can win the war against organised crime in South Africa."

♦ VWB ♦

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