A senior prosecutor with the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) in Durban has spoken out about the difficulty facing the authority to prosecute crimes committed by the “construction mafia” groups which are notorious for invading construction sites to demand work.
Speaking at the Fraud Awareness Seminar at the Durban ICC on Wednesday, advocate Roshiela Benimadho revealed that only one case was being dealt with in Durban despite several incidents.
The seminar was organised by business and the eThekwini Municipality to interrogate the impact of crime and fraud on business, government and the community.
Benimadho said despite the devastating impact of the criminal syndicates on construction businesses, the NPA was unable to bring cases of those involved to court because witnesses were reluctant to testify.
She said generally the NPA was doing well in putting those involved in crime behind bars but it was “struggling” when it came to dealing with fraud and corruption.
During her presentation, the prosecutor zeroed in on business forums and their impact on the construction sector.
She first addressed the issue of the 30% which was often demanded by business forums from construction companies.
She noted that this demand was based on a misunderstanding of the procurement regulations which specified that a government entity that had obtained a contract above R30 million must subcontract to locals, “if” possible.
The business forums ignored this, she said, and just focused on the 30%.
As such, many private businesses that were not subject to these procurement regulations had been targeted, often pushing them to fail in implementing projects or to close down as a result of extortion.
She said the forums’ activities were of serious concern. In one incident a group had invaded a construction site at a Durban court, resulting in days of delays.
“They are now holding up essential infrastructure. If you look at the criminal landscape of the offences that have been committed by the construction mafia you can see that we have really gone into a gangster state,” Benimadho said.
“These perpetrators believe it is not a big deal (to engage in this behaviour), big companies get the contracts and who is going to miss the 30%? It is assumed that here again, there is no victim,“ she said, adding that the list of victims and consequences was endless.
Many reasons have been put forward for failure “to nip this behaviour in the bud”, ranging from lack of enforcement of the law as the attacks were seen as a labour matter that should be “talked out” and witnesses being reluctant to testify against the criminal syndicate, she said.
“A few years ago, my colleague had done a complete blitz on a number of construction mafia dockets, but we could not find one matter that we could take to trial because (no one) was prepared to come to court and testify,” said Benimadho.
Out of the many incidents, only one case was standing in Durban, she said.
In this one case, the perpetrators had targeted a car manufacturer plant where “they were not after the plant but after the construction site inside the plant”.
She pleaded with construction companies to see through the finalisation of these cases, saying “we want them to hold the line, we do not want them to withdraw and not proceed with the matter. We want them to come forward, make a statement and take the matter to finality”.
Speaking on the issue of the construction mafias earlier this month in Parliament, President Cyril Ramaphosa said a task team had been set up to crack down on these operations.
“We are going to go after them, those who want to disrupt our infrastructure projects. We will deal with them toe-to-toe. Infrastructure is now going to be one of the key areas of focus,” said Ramaphosa.
Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure Sihle Zikalala has previously said the construction mafias were costing the country R68 billion.
Melanie Veness, chairperson of the Association of South African Chambers, has previously told “The Mercury”, the failure to deal decisively with the elements of the construction mafias placed businesses, employees and the economy at risk.
The Mercury