The 14 member countries states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) cover virtually the whole southern half of the African continent.1 They spread over more than 9 million square kilometres, an area into which France, Europe’s biggest country, would fit comfortably 16 times.2 The large geographical areas and long national boundaries and coastlines that many of the SADC countries have to police, are factors that have to be taken into account when considering the challenges faced by law enforcement agencies. Table 1 provides additional information about the 14 SADC countries which may assist in illustrating the enormity of the region, its relative underdeveloped state, as well as some socio-economic indicators relating to the population.3

According to the 2001 Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which measures countries’ achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income, eight of the 14 SADC member countries were categorised as ‘medium human development’ or developing countries in 2001. The remaining five included in the index were placed into the category of ‘low human development’, or regarded as constituting part of the group of ‘least developed countries’.4 Five of the SADC member countries — Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia — are part of the 20 least developed and poorest countries of the 162 that listed in the index.

Although South Africa has a relatively well-developed infrastructure and economy, it falls significantly short of being ranked as a developed country. However, it is regarded as the powerhouse of the region and is the one country with reasonable resources available to assist neighbouring states in matters such as energy supply, infrastructure development or law enforcement initiatives.

The SADC region as a whole is therefore poor and underdeveloped, with meagre resources available to develop effective programmes relating to education, health or law enforcement. The region is vulnerable to organised crime. It contains some countries which are caught up in a process of political and economic transition, and of which the state structures are fragile. These countries lack the necessary resources to counter organised crime effectively. An additional debilitating factor in some of the countries has been ongoing conflict and wars, particularly in Angola and the DRC. In the DRC, there is no functioning national government in charge and, in Angola, significant parts of the country are still ungovernable and controlled by rebel forces.

In an environment of poor and sometimes weak states in which conflict and political turmoil are widespread, organised crime tends to exploit the low-risk opportunities that present themselves.

"Pressures resulting from poverty often motivate the development of local criminal gangs, while opportunities for enrichment motivate not only political leaders whose conception of civic responsibility and obligation to the citizens is lacking, but also transnational criminal organisations which move in to develop new markets and new trafficking activities. Similarly, desire for military success motivates warlords to use drug trafficking or any other criminal activity that provides contributions to the war chest and contributes to the attainment of political power. Incentives to engage in criminal activity are powerful, and there are few countervailing restraints. Opportunities are provided by state weaknesses that include: lack of legislation against organised crime and money laundering; a lack of legitimacy that results in widespread disaffection and conflict; and a propensity for corruption among elites susceptible to new forms of bribery in the face of a double bind — traditional sources of financial support are in the process of drying up at the very same time that the move to electoral politics imposes new financing requirements."5

Given that the prevailing political, economic and social conditions on the sub-continent of Africa are conducive to the expansion of organised criminal groups, it should be a matter of concern that very little reliable information is available about the extent and nature of organised crime in the region. This is mainly due to the lack of research into its origins and growth and, more importantly, into its present manifestations.

It is difficult to construct a picture of the development of organised crime in the region over the past two decades and this monograph will not attempt to do so. However, the assessment of a police undercover agent who undertook operations in subequatorial Africa for many years, provides a perspective which, although superficial and incomplete, may throw some light on the growth of indigenous organised crime during the past two decades.

In his view, organised criminal groups in the Southern African countries to the north of South Africa were in their infancy at the beginning of the 1980s. By the mid-1980s, increasing numbers of ‘fortune hunters’ and ‘adventurers’ had arrived in countries such as the Congo, Zambia, Angola and Zimbabwe. They originated from France, Portugal and Britain, the erstwhile colonial powers, but also from Greece, Lebanon, India, Israel and some Central European states. Many of them set up small trading or import and export businesses that were often used as a guise for illegal business activities. These businesses were easy to establish with a minimum of capital. Most of these individuals were bent on seeking opportunities to make money quickly, although some appeared to have links with criminal elements abroad. Once established, they soon made contact with local African entrepreneurs, smugglers and criminals to explore legal and illegal business opportunities. The locals had contacts through which they could illegally obtain goods such as cobalt and other metals, ivory, diamonds, or drugs such as mandrax.

A marriage of convenience often followed between the foreign fortune hunters and local operators, an arrangement that served to their mutual benefit. The indigenous operators were the suppliers of the goods for which the foreigners could pay and then smuggle to the ‘rich’ markets of South Africa and abroad. The relatively tightly controlled South African borders and airports and the harsh discriminatory laws in place in South Africa at the time, made it very risky for Africans from countries to the north to enter the country in order to dispose of their goods or to make contact with local criminal groups. For white foreigners from Zaïre or Zambia, or for Portuguese nationals living in Angola or Mozambique, it was less difficult to visit South Africa for the same purpose.

According to this perspective of the development of organised crime in Southern Africa, the co-operation during the mid-1980s between African smugglers who supplied illegally obtained goods, and the foreigners who acted as buyers and sellers, represented the start of what later became far more sophisticated organised criminal groups in many of South Africa’s neighbouring countries. According to police sources, these syndicates, which engaged in crossborder crimes with South Africans, had no particular structures or hierarchies. They varied in size, but tended to be small. Criminal groups often consisted of friends and acquaintances. Apart from family bonds, these groups would also sometimes constitute themselves in a manner similar to partnerships where different members came from different parts of the country to co-operate on specific ventures. Networks were established through which illegal goods could be acquired and marketed. Hierarchical structures with one boss in charge were not common.

During the 1980s, the most popular route used to smuggle illegal goods into and from South Africa was the heavy transport road from Zambia to South Africa used by large trucks and trailers. Ivory, copper, cobalt and large quantities of mandrax were transported in this way by these newly formed criminal networks. Occasional cash flow problems and the frequent inability of South African purchasers to pay in hard currency, led to barter transactions becoming common practice. Motor vehicles stolen in South Africa soon became key items in the barter trade. They were driven across the borders in payment for illegal goods supplied from the north and sometimes shipped in containers to countries along the African coast and beyond. Police officers who followed these developments, maintain that the rapid expansion of crossborder criminal transactions in the second half of the 1980s, led to an ever-growing demand for stolen cars to enable South African criminal groups to pay for the goods received. As a result, vehicle-hijackings dramatically increased in South Africa and became a common method of speeding up payment. By the late-1980s, transnational organised crime in the entire Southern African region had become a lucrative enterprise, only marginally hampered by police activities on both sides of the borders. The relaxation of border control and the repeal of discriminatory laws in South Africa during the early 1990s were in line with the democratisation process that was taking place in the country. It contributed to an even faster expansion of organised crime in the Southern African region than during the 1980s.

Organised crime is therefore a phenomenon that appears to have manifested itself in the Southern African region as a significant threat at a relatively late stage. The absence of a legal framework in Southern African countries within which organised crime can be dealt with had not been a major problem, as organised crime, with few exceptions, had not been as pervasive in Africa as it has been in many other regions.6 Governments were therefore unprepared, there was no adequate legislation in place to deal with this growing threat, and police agencies were not trained or equipped to counter it effectively.

From the early 1990s onwards, police agencies and their governments became increasingly aware of the inroads that organised crime had made and of its contribution to the general crime statistics in their countries.7

The late response to organised crime by Southern African countries was partly also as a result of the delay by the international community to focus on organised crime in sub-Saharan Africa. For example, at the time when Interpol established its Subregional Bureau in Harare in 1997, there was still considerable ignorance about the extent of organised crime in Southern Africa. Until then, Interpol’s drug-trafficking analysis indicated that hard drugs such as heroin and hashish were being smuggled to Europe from Asia mainly through North African and Eastern European countries.8 In a report prepared by the US Drug Enforcement Administration in October 1996, South Africa was depicted as the only African country south of the equator that was used as a transit route by Nigerian criminals for heroin and cocaine and a source country of marijuana.9 There were indications that a number of Southern African countries, including Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe, were already being used as transit areas at that stage.10 However, international attention was not yet focused on organised crime in these countries. It must be assumed that indigenous criminal networks, as well as the increasing number of international criminal elements, were very much aware of the fact that countermeasures to stem their activities were not a priority in large parts of the Southern African region, leaving many countries wide open for criminal exploitation.

By the mid-1990s, the virtually unchecked crossborder crime in the Southern African region had reached proportions that galvanised the region’s governments to develop a joint response. It led to the formation of the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO). Individual national police agencies in the region had realised that they were not adequately equipped to combat crossborder crime on their own and that a co-operative approach had become essential in the region.

SARPCCO was established in 1995 at the initiative of the chiefs of police of 11 Southern African countries. These were Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. A twelfth country, Mauritius, has since joined. The formation of SARPCCO was primarily motivated by the escalation in crossborder criminal activity in the region. The 11 police chiefs met on 1 August 1995 at the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, and agreed on future co-operation through SARPCCO. On the next day, the ministers responsible for policing in each of the 11 states adopted the police chiefs’ recommendations. A permanent SARPCCO Secretariat was established, which is located in Harare, Zimbabwe. The agreement has since been ratified by parliaments of all member countries, a mutual legal assistance agreement was signed in 1997, and a number of successful joint operations were conducted in several member countries of SARPCCO.

The objectives of SARPCCO, as set out in its constitution, include the following:

the promotion, strengthening and perpetuation of co-operation and the fostering of joint strategies for the management of all forms of cross-border and related crimes with regional implications;



the preparation and dissemination of relevant information on criminal activities when necessary to benefit members in their attempts to contain crime in the region;



the regular reviewing of joint crime management strategies with the purpose of accommodating changing national and regional needs and priorities;



the efficient operation and management of criminal records and the efficient joint monitoring of crossborder crime by taking full advantage of the appropriate facilities available from Interpol;



the making of relevant recommendations to governments of member countries in relation to matters affecting effective policing in the Southern African region; and



the execution of any relevant and appropriate acts and strategies for purposes of promoting regional police co-operation and collaboration as dictated by regional circumstances.

SARPCCO has therefore become the primary vehicle for any regional initiatives relating to law enforcement and crime combating. In 1997, Interpol reinforced SARPCCO by establishing an Interpol Subregional Bureau for Southern Africa in Harare. The Interpol office also serves as the secretariat of SARPCCO and assists regional police agencies with, among others, the evaluation of crime trends and the facilitation of co-operation between police agencies.

The activities of SARPCCO and the regional office of Interpol have focused mainly on what is referred to in Southern Africa as ‘crossborder crime’ or transnational organised crime. Some of the SARPCCO initiatives will be mentioned later in this monograph.

In March 2000, with the support of SARPCCO, the Institute for Security Studies embarked on a two-year study of organised crime in the SADC region. Some research had already been undertaken into organised crime in South Africa, but very little was known about the phenomenon of organised crime in the remaining member countries of SADC. It was common cause that organised crossborder crime was expanding rapidly. The smuggling of illicit firearms, stolen motor vehicles, narcotics, diamonds and precious metals across national borders was a well-known fact. National and regional initiatives by law enforcement agencies were mainly aimed at stemming the flow of these illicit activities. The first few joint operations undertaken through SARPCCO focused mainly on the smuggling of stolen motor vehicles and on the illicit weapons flow in the region.11 Initiatives to curb crossborder crime were reactive in nature. It appeared that more information about the nature and impact of organised crime in the region was necessary in order to enable decision and policy makers to formulate and adopt proactive strategies to combat organised crime in the region.

One of the objectives of the ISS study into organised crime in the region was therefore to contribute towards developing a better understanding of organised crime in the region. It is essential for policy makers in Southern Africa to be informed by a regional perspective when formulating policies and strategies to counter organised crime within their own countries. As is the case elsewhere in the world, transnational organised groups in the Southern African region pay little attention to national boundaries and jurisdictions. They exploit weaknesses in one country to launch their criminal activities in a neighbouring country. It has become obvious that, in order for any Southern African country to counter organised crime effectively within its own jurisdiction, the regional criminal networks have to be identified and their activities curbed both regionally and nationally. Regional strategies should therefore constitute an important element of any national strategy to combat organised crime. Such a regional approach is particularly important in SADC where some of the very poor countries do not have the resources to identify and combat organised crime effectively on their own.

The ISS study adopted a two-pronged approach in obtaining information about organised crime in the SADC region. Police authorities were approached for information and primary research was undertaken in each of the SADC countries, with the exception of the DRC and the Seychelles. Information was obtained from the national police agencies by way of a survey questionnaire, while researchers from SADC countries were commissioned and study trips undertaken to SADC countries in order to obtain information from civil society sources as well.

This monograph focuses almost entirely on the information obtained from police authorities. This is done with the full knowledge that information obtained solely from state sources is likely to present an incomplete picture of organised crime in the region, particularly as some countries have thus far not addressed organised crime as a separate phenomenon. The perspectives of civil society, including journalists, lawyers, academics, non- governmental organisations (NGOs), community-based organisations and independent researchers will have to be added to the official information if the attempt to develop a regional perspective is to be realised. The process of collecting this information is currently under way, and the results will be published as soon as this part of the project is completed.

However, the information obtained in the survey appeared to be of sufficient interest and relevance to warrant a separate publication. It seems as if it is the first time that police agencies in the SADC region have completed a standard questionnaire on organised crime for non-operational purposes. The importance of their willingness to assist in this project and the fact that the information supplied by them contributes towards the construction of a regional picture of organised crime, provided sufficient justification for this separate monograph on the ‘official’ perceptions of organised crime in the region. However, it must be made clear at the outset that the questionnaire contained many imperfections and therefore resulted in some of the responses being too general to justify comparisons or the making of reliable inferences from the information supplied. The objective of the questionnaire was to make a start in obtaining standardised information on organised crime in the region and it had to be based on the co-operation of the police agencies. The very positive response from police agencies suggests that future questionnaires could build on this one by being more specific and by providing clear criteria and guidelines for the respondents. It is therefore hoped that a gradual process of upgrading questionnaires will be possible in future.