Occasional Paper

Organised Crime in Post Apartheid South Africa

“The lack of understanding of the growth of organised crime in South Africa has been the
result of a general failure to properly analyse the phenomenon. There is little, if any, substantial work on the development of organised crime in the country and the growth, size and shape of criminal groups are poorly understood. Organised criminal operations have benefited: lack of analysis has meant that attempts to police the problem have often been poorly co-ordinated and the attention of policy-makers, until recently, has been diverted to other seemingly more urgent police transformation issues. This paper constitutes the first
comprehensive attempt to record the growth of organised crime in the country and assess the capacity of the state to counter it.”