DURBAN - The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC), in its Risk Bulletin issue 23, Observatory of Illicit Economies in Eastern and Southern Africa, had provided insight into what the year held for organised crime in eastern and southern Africa.
The GI-TOC said the Enact Organised Crime Index – developed by the GI-TOC, the Institute for Security Studies and Interpol – was the first tool of its kind designed to assess levels of organised crime and state’ resilience to organised-criminal activity, in a holistic manner.
The index is modelled on three constituent elements, two of which combine to provide a “criminality score”: the scale and impact of criminal markets (10 in total, ranging from environmental crime to drugs markets and human trafficking) and the influence of criminal actors (comprising four types, from mafia-style groups to criminal actors embedded within government). The third element is “resilience”, which is defined as a country’s ability to withstand and disrupt organised-criminal activity through political, economic, legal and social measures. The indicators in the “resilience score” includes witness protection and anti-money laundering measures. Both scores are measured on a scale from 1 to 10.
In the southern African context, the GI-TOC said at first glance, criminality in southern Africa appeared moderate, as the region has an average score of 4.67 – the lowest in Africa. In fact, most countries in the region do not feature markets that are beyond a moderate influence when it comes to criminality. Yet high levels of criminality are concentrated in four southern African countries: South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.
It said the most pervasive criminal market in southern Africa is fauna crimes, which affect more than half of the countries in the region. Criminal groups target keystone fauna species, such as elephants and rhinos, of which the largest remaining populations are found in southern Africa.
“South Africa remains the region’s highest-scoring country in terms of criminality. The high crime levels are stoked by endemic gang violence, with groups particularly active in the drug trade and extortion, and with an illicit arms market that is at least partly fuelled by weapons diverted from police stockpiles,” the GI-TOC said.
“In addition to recording high levels of heroin consumption, South Africa is home to the most deep-rooted consumption market for methamphetamines, meaning that the country’s score for synthetic-drugs market is the highest in the region, at 8.0. This market is supplied by domestic production as well as meth imports from West Africa. In addition, recent GI-TOC research has tracked how Afghanistan-produced meth is being trafficked into southern Africa along maritime routes typically used to transport heroin.”
It said southern Africa tends to outperform the rest of Africa on most resilience indicators, including international cooperation on counter-crime strategies. The regional resilience scores have, however, decreased since the 2019 Index, owing to the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It also said the 2021 Index points to “law enforcement” (3.73) being the factor behind resilience with one of the worst overall scores in southern Africa, as was the case with East Africa. Almost half of the countries in the region have severely limited law-enforcement agencies, which are crippled by flagrant corruption. Severe lack of resources and capacity, as well as the poor treatment of people by security forces and subsequent lack of popular trust in the police, are among the factors inhibiting anti-organised-crime efforts throughout the region.
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