Henriette Abrahams
International cartels, political elites, and business profiteers join forces, leaving our children, elders, and workers to bleed.
This week, at the Madlanga Commission, Dumisani Khumalo pulled back the curtain on the “Big Five Mafia” – the crime cartels that dominate South Africa’s underworld. His testimony confirmed what our communities on the Cape Flats have known all along: organised crime is not separate from politics and business. It is stitched into the fabric of the state.
Global Cartels Linked to Local Violence
The Big Five are not just street thugs. They are sophisticated networks operating across cocaine trafficking, heroin smuggling, illegal firearms, extortion rackets, money laundering, and human trafficking. Their reach is international, tied into Colombian cocaine routes, Nigerian heroin pipelines, and global cartels that move billions across borders. From hijacking syndicates to trafficking women across borders, their operations are part of a global shadow economy.
And yet, the violence they unleash is local. It is our children shot outside schools in Delft, our minibus drivers killed in Nyanga, our traders forced to pay “protection fees” in Khayelitsha. The international flows of drugs, weapons, and cash wash up as blood on our pavements.
Khumalo also exposed the other side of this network: political and business elites who collude with, protect, and profit from these syndicates. State officials tip them off about raids. Cases are withdrawn. Evidence disappears. At the very same time, councillors, contractors, and developers are seen fraternising with the Number gangs, cutting deals for “protection” and access to tenders.
Political and Business Elites in Collusion
The raids on 26 homes in Cape Town this week, linked to R1.6 billion in tender fraud, make one thing clear: corruption is not confined to Pretoria, nor is it the preserve of the ANC. It thrives in the DA-run City of Cape Town, in the provincial government,in Saps and among the same “respectable” businesses that donate to election campaigns.
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We must also be clear: not every official is corrupt. There are whistleblowers, investigators, and honest servants of the people who try to stand against this tide. Some have paid with their jobs, reputations, and even their lives. But the system itself is designed to protect the corrupt and silence the brave. This is why communities cannot wait for rescue from above.
The DA’s “swart gevaar” tactic, blaming corruption on black officials alone, is a political lie. It deflects attention from the white-owned companies, banks, and consultancies that facilitate the laundering of dirty money. It hides the fact that political elites across party lines are married to the mafia, whether in Tshwane or in Cape Town.
Corruption Thrives While the Cape Flats Suffers
For those of us on the Cape Flats, this is not abstract. This collusion is why extortion gangs bleed our small businesses dry. It is why housing projects are stalled while contractors and politicians pocket millions. It is why our kids face death at the corner while the real bosses sip wine in Constantia.
Meanwhile, our elders suffer in silence. We see grandparents robbed and assaulted by their own children who are hooked on drugs, a cycle of despair that started with dispossession and continues with each generation left without hope. At the same time, the provincial government continues to return unspent housing budgets to Treasury while families are crammed into backyards and informal settlements. This is not incompetence, it is structural neglect that deepens poverty and leaves our people more vulnerable to the drug economy and the violence it sustains.
WATCH: Crime & Community Safety with Steve Ross, Kaylin Palm & Zuko Mndayi
Crime & Community Safety with Steve Ross, Kaylin Palm & Zuko Mndayi
The truth is brutal: while billions disappear into the pockets of cartels, politicians, and companies, poor people are forced into a fight for scraps. Families compete for one RDP house, one EPWP job, one food parcel. Divide and rule sets us against each other while elites across colour lines loot together. Our poverty is not an accident. It is profitable, and it is designed to keep us in fear and survival mode.
Cape Flats Communities – From Survival to Resistance
During the pandemic, Cape Flats communities already realised that government was not coming to save us. We mobilised to feed our neighbours, patrol our streets, and expose corruption at every level. Today, with the Big Five mafia bleeding us through extortion, trafficking, hijackings, and smash-and-grabs, our women and youth testify daily to the trauma that filters down from these global cartels. With limited resources, we can only do so much to support families, but still we rise.
We must reject the lie that corruption is the problem of a few black officials. We must name the system for what it is: a cross-racial, cross-party economy of crime and collusion that keeps our communities in poverty, joblessness, and despair.
And we must insist that safety will not be delivered from above. When government is in bed with the mafia, communities must rise from below. We already do this through neighbourhood watches, patrols, WhatsApp crime alerts, feeding schemes, and healing circles. But the time has come to link our struggles across the Cape Flats, to demand accountability at every level, and to expose every politician, official, and businessman who profits while we bleed.
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Because the truth is this: gangsterism is not a failure of the state. It is the strategy of the state. And the only way it will end is when we, the people, break the marriage between politics and the mafia, and reclaim both our streets and our future.
CAPE FLATS COMMUNITY SAFETY DIALOGUE
The Cape Flats Community Safety Dialogue, a collaboration between WAM, the Institute for Healing of Memories and Bertha House, will be held on Tuesday 7 Oct 2025 09h30-03h30 At Bertha House in Mowbray.
This community dialogue brings residents, leaders, and allies together to confront the realities of violence and poverty on the Cape Flats. The aim is to map the crisis, share strategies for safety, and build solidarity towards a safer Cape Town.
