Democracy and Crime: The Cases of Colombia and South Africa

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of democracy and organized crime in Colombia and South Africa, two countries that, despite their geographical distance, share significant socio-political similarities. Both nations fully democratized during the Third Wave and have since experienced high levels of criminal violence. In Colombia, the rise of the illicit narcotics economy since the late 1970s has deeply influenced its political landscape, while South Africa’s high organized crime rates emerged post-apartheid. The study categorizes both countries as defective democracies, characterized by limited electoral competition and significant corruption, which have allowed criminal governance to infiltrate state structures. The paper examines the historical context that has shaped the organized crime-politics nexus in both countries, highlighting the role of regional elites and the impact of socioeconomic inequalities. It argues that the criminalization of representative institutions and the intertwining of licit and illicit actors have undermined democratic legitimacy.

Keywords

Organized crime criminal violence criminal governance defective democracy democratic legitimacy

Introduction

A continent apart, it is not readily apparent that Colombia and South Africa share some socio-political features that put them into a similar category of cases. After all, South Africa only exited ethno-racial dictatorship in the early 1990s, while Colombia has not had extensive experiences with dictatorship at all. In terms of the profundity of criminal violence, developments in that direction are decades apart in each case. Since the late 1970s, Colombia has become synonymous with the havoc that a large illicit narcotics economy can wreck over a country. In South Africa, high crime rates are a post-apartheid phenomenon. Despite a notable drop in violent crime in early 2025, an average of 64 murders per day was still recorded in the first quarter of that year. The country’s highest murder rates occurred in 1993, during the turbulent final years of Apartheid. After the 1994 democratic transition, crime levels declined significantly, reaching a low in 2011, partly due to national unity around the 2010 World Cup. However, crime surged again after 2011, linked to institutional decay and corruption during the presidency of Jacob Zuma (Lancaster and Gould, 2025).

Yet, if we dig a little deeper, ostensible similarities appear that place Colombia and South Africa in consonant types of defective democracies: fully democratized in the course of the Third Wave (Boesten, 2022a; Huntington, 1991), and without serious threat of authoritarian backsliding (Boesten, 2022b), they experience high levels of criminal violence. Colombia is considered the second most criminal country in the world, while South Africa achieves the 7^th place in that unfathomable index of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (2023). Another think tank, the Fragile State Index, also sees little difference between both states, placing them both in the category of ‘high warnings’ concerning the fragility of the state. Thus, even though the Colombian and South African cases do not overlap chronologically, and the profundity of the Colombian crime-politics connection is much deeper as it has developed for a longer period of time, in both cases, criminal governance is finding its way into state structures.

The proposition is that the Colombian case suggests an ‘ideal type’ path towards a specific type of democracy with a (negative) adjective: the criminalization of representative institutions in the context of electoral competition within a democracy with an adjective. The result of that trajectory is that Colombia today is qualified as a democracy with oligarchic enclaves with citizenship defects at the subnational level (Boesten, 2022b). This trajectory commenced during the National Front regime, which was a consociational power-sharing deal between the Liberal and Conservative Parties (1957–1974). The power-sharing deal had ultimately depoliticized Colombia’s democracy, created policy inertia and contradictions and, most importantly, empowered regional party barons vis-à-vis the centre. Those regional power holders, equipped with more transformative capacities by the power-sharing deal, created opportunity structures for illicit elements that were quickly increasing their material resources. This in turn led to limited political competition within a liberal constitutional democracy, empowered regional power brokers and accelerated illicit resources. All of these trends mirror those in post-Apartheid South Africa, such as limited political competition and a significant growth in both corruption and the illicit economy. The legacies of the Apartheid system, such as persistent inequality, combined with ineffective state institutions have resulted in low levels of trust in democratic foundations. Ungoverned spaces are occupied by criminal groups, and these criminal groups are increasingly interwoven with political structures. In both cases, citizenship defects¹ are themselves embedded in illicit structures and as such undermine core democratic features such as the electoral element (see Table 1 for the different parts of the electoral element).² Rather, the ill-effects of legal politicians and illicit armed actors collaborating with each other, precedes the electoral process itself: illicit non-state actors, who exercise some form of territorial control, mobilize voters for political candidates of their choosing, who are ultimately responsive to those armed actors and not the citizens (in Colombia, this is referred to as ‘armed campaigning’; Peñate, 1999). Consequently, democratic legitimacy suffers from that nexus that informally conjoins licit with illicit actors and not from formal institutional defects associated with the regime – in fact, formally, Colombia has an exemplary democracy. The implication is that not regime type institutions, but state structures have perpetuated democracies with a negative adjective such as ‘illiberal’ or ‘criminal’ democracy. The associated hypothesis arising from that verdict is that limited electoral competition and truncated public politics provide illegal actors with opportunity structures to exploit – they can associate with legal politicians with impunity. Over time, this further undermines the effective monopolization of the legal means of violence, as politicians have no incentives to battle those armed actors that provide them with votes.

Table 1.

Democratic deficit in Colombia.

Democratic component		Score	Evidence
Electoral component	- Officials acquiring the right through periodic election	2	All elections since 1986 were held without restrictions and results have been respected.
	- Electoral processes are not fraudulent	−1	The processes themselves are not fraudulent, but coercion and vote buying prior to casting votes fundamentally damages the accuracy of the process with consequences at the national level (particularly if elections are close).
	- Active right to vote	2	Since 1958, the active right to votes is not restricted.
	- Passive right to vote	2	Since 1958, the passive right to vote is not restricted.
Citizenship capacities	Citizens are agents and participate in choices that affect their lives	0	Inequality, particularly acute in rural areas, provides opportunity structures for a flourishing illicit economy, armed actors and clientele relations.
Citizenship capacities	Citizens are free from violence, intimidation and discrimination	−2	Endemic violence; armed actors and associated political and business elites have systematically undercut collective action at the local level.

Source: Compiled by Boesten.

Colombia: incomplete statehood and the contagion of its democracy’s electoral component

Any type of armed non-state governance in Colombia is closely associated with the flourishing cocaine economy that produced gigantic resources for armed actors, but it cannot be reduced to those illicit resources alone. In fact, the trajectory of armed groups associated with the cocaine economy over the last five decade shows the indeterminacy of resources ( ‘greed’; cf. Collier and Hoeffler, 2004) in the behaviour of armed non-state actors. The evidence clearly suggests that, if anything, it requires a more complex matrix involving political variables at the same level of importance as strictly economic variables. Organized crime in South Africa, too, has a complex history intertwined with the country’s socio-political landscape. Its evolution can be traced to colonial times through the apartheid era to the present day, reflecting one of the greatest disappointments of the country’s democracy, in which marginalized communities, just like those in Colombia, feel the negative consequences of criminal governance most.

In Colombia, the cocaine economy emerged in the wake of a political crisis caused by the consociational deal of the 1950s (National Front). The deal had led to political inertia and lack of responsiveness to citizens, on the one hand, and to a further empowerment of regional elites on the other, because, although elections were held, results were essentially pre-ordained.

The trajectory of the cocaine trade in Colombia, through to the current situation in the aftermath of the ‘counter/insurgency war’ in Colombia (Gutiérrez Sanín, 2022), has retained the linkages between armed non-state actors and regional politicians in what has been termed ‘armed clientelism’ (Peñate, 1999), armed campaigning for electoral entrepreneurs (Pizarro Leongómez, 2002) and, ultimately, citizenship defects in oligarchic enclaves at the subnational level that incorporate warring and civil oligarchs (Boesten and Llanos, 2025). Disaggregating this defect in Colombia’s liberal democracy by exploring the trajectory of the state-paramilitary nexus shows how this relationship undermines the Colombian political regime’s legitimacy, even though it remains a democracy without the immediate threat of sliding towards autocracy (Boesten, 2022b).

The Colombian state from its inception in the aftermath of the Wars of Independence has been plagued by incompleteness, ineffectiveness, lawlessness and bureaucratic inadequacies that have hindered its financial development (Boesten, 2016, 2022a; Bushnell, 1993; Safford and Palacios, 2002; Valencia Villa, 2012). For analytical clarity, it is prudent to focus on the period after the external shock of the international narcotics trade affected the entirety of the Colombian polity. Arguably, the arrival of the cocaine economy with its enormous illicit resources functioned as a historical juncture that not only perpetuated ineffective statehood but also placed the institutional trajectory on an even more negative path, one that ultimately compromised the ability to hold free and fair elections (Bejarano and Segura, 1996; they are competitive!).

It is important to note, however, that it was not providence! A combination of strategic choices in the counterinsurgency war and the political context of governance crisis caused by the consociational National Front Agreements further empowered regional elites, creating ample opportunities for various illicit actors to take root, evolve into true ‘parasites of the state’ and blur the distinction between legality and illegality, as well as the private and public exercise of power.³

Once Colombia’s democracy disaggregated into the various democratic components according to the template proposed by Cameron and Jaramillo (2022; see Table 2), its electoral component emerges as a contradictory outlier. While Colombia is exemplary in facilitating the active and private rights to vote in competitive and periodic elections, which are generally fairly counted, electoral contests remain marred by fraud that precedes the vote itself. Namely, coercion and vote buying undermine the freedom and fairness of these competitions. This is directly linked to armed actors and associated political/business elites who systematically prevent citizens from engaging in collective action and the root of Colombia’s citizenship defects.⁴

Table 2.

Periodisation of paramilitary structures in Colombia.

Period	Characterisation of paramilitary groups	Socio-political traits
1968–1975	Legalization of vigilante groups against guerrilla activities	Counterinsurgency strategy of Cold War
1975–1995	Formation of private armies of assassins (sicarios) by cartels	Contract enforcement in narcotics trade
1995–2006/2017	Armed Non-State Actor	Territorial control (including control of voting behaviour), and facilitation of political networks
2006/2017–present	Criminal Bands (BACRIMs) in post-counterinsurgency conflict	Combination of some territorial control, contract enforcement and politics

Source: Created by Boesten.

At the subnational level, Colombia’s democracy combines highly authoritarian elements (where armed non-state actors exercise local coercive control with few constraints) with democratic elements (such as competitive elections and a functioning liberal constitution). It is this contradictory combination that affects the legitimacy of the entire constitutional/democratic edifice, as it ties in regional political and business elites (often identical actors), whose exercise of power blurs not only private and public interest, but also the boundaries between legality and illegality. They benefit from the armed campaigning of non-state actors. It is important to note, though, that this was not a foregone conclusion, but at least partly contingent on specific policy choices – some made solely inside of Colombia, others by external actors (notably the United States). To understand the current situation in the counter/insurgency war (Gutiérrez Sanín, 2022), it is prudent to dissect the interplay of domestic and international factors that produced a muddle of counterinsurgency and narcotics strategies, with often elusive goals. Not only were the aims of these strategies ambiguous, but their outcomes were at best mixed and frequently counterproductive as stateness was undermined from within.

The fact that the illicit narcotics trade took root in Colombia was not due to functional specifics such as geography or business acumen. Instead, it has been most convincingly connected to a crisis of governance stemming from the so-called National Front agreements (Thoumi, 2003, 2005). The National Front was the (consociational) pact that ended bi-partisan violence in Colombia (La Violencía or The Violence; 1949–1953) by institutionalizing the alternating of power in all representative institutions and the bureaucracy, essentially depoliticizing the electoral process (in effect from 1957–1974, with the last vestiges of the deal eliminated in the presidential elections of 1984). Like many consociational pacts, it resulted in political immobilism, a lack of responsiveness to popular demands and policy incoherence. Parity and alternation in power disincentivized popular political engagement while deepening existing patronage networks operating from the periphery of the country to the centre (Hartlyn, 1988: 148). This socio-political, even institutional, context was crucial for narcotics entrepreneurs, who, by the late 1960s/early 1970s, were generating enormous resources. Illegal merchants needed political connections to protect their business ‘when the independence of electoral barons from the centre boomed’ (Gutiérrez Sanín et al., 2007: 22). It is therefore true that ‘illegal drug production and trafficking are associated with institutional and behavioural factors of the societies where they ﬂourish’ (Thoumi, 2003: 10). In Colombia, two key factors were the disenfranchisement of the popular classes as a consequence of the National Front and the resultant empowerment of regional political barons. Illicit merchants sought and secured alliances with these regional power brokers (Gutiérrez Sanín et al., 2007: 22; Thoumi, 2005; see also Duncan, 2006: 237). This informal connection between illicit merchants/armed actors, and legal politicians has not disappeared but has continuously adapted to shifts in the institutional landscape – even after Colombia became an exemplary formal democracy with the implementation of the 1991 Constitution.

The Cold War allowed these structures to thrive under the guise of counterinsurgency, which became the primary policy focus of the United States after the Cuban Revolution. The National Security Strategy in Colombia, as outlined by Lieutenant General William Pelham Yarborough in a secret supplement of a report after a visit to Colombia in 1962, recommended that civilian armed structures should ‘perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents’.⁵ The Colombian state followed the advice and legalized the formation of vigilante groups in 1968 under Law 64 of that year. At the time, the Colombian conflict was relatively calm with skirmishes limited to remote areas of the country. However, the legalization of vigilante groups provided an institutional pathway for narcos to evolve into formidable non-state armed actors, often flying beneath the radar of the counterinsurgency efforts directed against the FARC-EP (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army). During the counterinsurgency effort, narco-traffickers were increasingly able to finance their own coercive apparatuses to enforce contracts in the illicit economy and assist landlords and ranchers to counter guerrilla attacks. It was here, in the periphery of the country, where the next important transformation of illicit actors occurred.

The transformation of actors in the drug economy, from cartels with their hired sicarios to armed non-state actors exercising territorial control, transpired alongside evolutions in the social fabric of rural Colombia: large landowners who had faced guerrilla attacks converged with mid-ranking narcos, who were laundering their profits by buying land. These narcos were the enforcers who worked for the cartels enforcing contracts and eliminating rivals (Duncan, 2006; Gutiérrez Sanín et al., 2007). Their expertise in organizing violence provided them with a competitive advantage in a changing political economy of the narcotics trade. This process is known as the traquetización of cocaine economy.⁶

Both cartels, from Medellín and Calí, faced the conundrum that they could finance campaigns, influence decisions and elections and co-opt the bureaucracy in their favour only as long as it did not attempt to replace the traditional social structure of power in rural Colombia. There was not yet ‘an unconditional subordination by national politicians to those illegal merchants’ (Duncan, 2006: 236–237; Gutiérrez Sanín et al., 2007: 497). The paramilitary groups that were forming, however, could now utilize structures that conveyed the aura of legitimacy, which in turn helped them to become the ‘bastard child’ of the state, rather than its opponent. Traquetización refers to the process whereby the use of violence becomes the central competitive advantage in the drug business, not only to enforce its rules, but also to protect it politically by exercising territorial control.

The second caveat of the transformation into the third wave of paramilitaries was their ability to create political networks that were superior to those of the cartels precisely because they exercised territorial control, and the cartels ‘merely’ enforced contracts: this gave them the ability to link legal politics with their existence as extra-legal actors by delegating votes to candidates in Congress. Presidents Gaviria (1990–1994) and Samper (1994–1998) utilized a known means to counter FARC attacks in rural Colombia: legalizing vigilante groups through the CONVIVIR programme (Cooperativas de Vigilancia y Seguridad Privada; Vigilante Cooperatives and Private Security). It was the perfect vehicle by which to systematically expand into Córdoba, Antioquia and the South of Santander and push back the FARC from important drug trafficking zones in Colombia. This big offensive, which lasted until 1997, was marked by massacres, displacements and other gross human rights violations.⁷

By the late 1990s, when CONVIVIR was outlawed again and peace negotiations were ongoing with the FARC, regional political elites wanted to continue the counterinsurgency policy and looked for a new vehicle. Heads of paramilitary groups in the country had begun the process of uniting the various paramilitary groups under an umbrella organization. This was the beginning of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). Significantly, they positioned themselves on the side of the state and democracy, and in 2001, together with their political allies, sat down in Santa Fe de Ralito, signing contracts to ‘refound the nation’ (López Hernández, 2010). These contracts are synonymous with the parainstitutionalization of Colombia’s representative institutions: the co-optation of Congress and municipal offices by groups operating at the margins of legality (Boesten, 2014, 2016, 2022a). They constituted the preliminary conclusion of the paramilitary project.

In the end, the peace processes with armed non-state actors (ANSAs) in Colombia have not resulted in the ultimate demobilization of the groups governing the narcotics trade, but rather in their transformation into something sui generis. Following the talks with the AUC paramilitaries in 2006 and the FARC guerrilla in 2017, the state did not succeed in replacing those armed actors by the coercive structures of the state (Boesten and Idler, 2021). Instead, both processes produced post-demobilization actors, often referred to as Criminal Bands (by the Spanish acronym BACRIMs) and FARC dissident groups (Gutiérrez Sanín, 2022). Despite their respective substantial differences, the successor groups of paramilitaries and guerrillas have more in common (cf. reports by the GIFK).⁸ Both processes resulted in a diversification of illegal armed groups as opposed to an appeasement of territories ravaged by decades of conflict. Importantly, the political support networks surrounding those armed actors have not disappeared. On the contrary, after parapolítica had imprisoned dozens of members of Congress (Boesten, 2016), with many jailed politicians simply passing the baton to other family members to take over the political network. The result: in every Congressional election since 2010, parapolíticos herederos (hereditary parapolíticos) won seats in one of the two chambers (Boesten, 2022a). Thus, the political context for armed governance involved in the drug trade has not fundamentally changed. On the contrary, the governance provided by armed actors in key corridors of the international narcotics trade has deepened (Boesten and Llanos, 2025).

To sum up this short review of criminal governance in Colombia, this article argues that the culmination occurred with the modern paramilitary project, which ‘united a good sector of Colombian society: ganaderos (agro industrialists), industrialists, narco-traffickers, militaries, some national politicians, and the entire regions and locales where they had dominated before’ (Ávila Martínez, 2010: 120). Each side followed its own interests in this concoction of actors: legal political elites received help in the form of ‘armed political campaigning’ (coercing voters to vote for certain candidate), thereby protecting their regionally clustered power bases against policy alternatives. Paramilitaries, essentially warlords, were involved in the production and regulation of the social norms that governed the interaction and administration of ‘justice’ in the life of ‘their groups and citizens’ (Duncan, 2006: 40–46). They wanted protection of their illicit gains and the legalization of the accompanying counter-agrarian reform project through which they laundered those gains: they had systematically displaced large populations from frontier lands and wanted an official title for those lands (López Hernández, 2010).

Organized crime in South Africa: pre- and post-Apartheid

In either instance, whether in Columbia or South Africa, the arrival of the illicit economy was not merely the result of a functionally economic causal mechanism chain. During the apartheid regime in South Africa (1948–1994), there was a relatively low level of organized crime due to the country’s international isolation. But the government’s strict racial segregation regulations led to enormous socioeconomic gaps, which in turn generated an atmosphere conducive to the growth of organized crime. Due to the lack of legitimate opportunities resulting from socioeconomic exclusion, gangs were able to thrive in informal settlements and other marginalized communities in peripheral areas and disenfranchised racial groups (Shaw, 2002). In addition, as explained by Shaw and Haysom (2016): ‘. . . several other criminal networks grew in the 1980s, most prominently around mine hostels, within the burgeoning taxi industry, mutating out of self-defence units in townships, and the consolidation of long-standing gangs around Cape Town (p. 580)’. In accordance with the corporatisation process of street gangs, criminal groups matured from generally small-scale local operations to international syndicates (Standing, 2003: 46–47). For example, gangs in the Western Cape province established links with criminal groups from East Asia dealing in drugs, such as mandrax. Other forms of organized crime during apartheid included the operations of Chinese Triads in the smuggling of wildlife and gambling ventures, and a Boer Mafia: a racially constructed group implicated in weapon smuggling and participating in the interference with anti-apartheid activities (Mothibi et al., 2015). During the transition period, the focus of the South African Police Service (SAPS) was to maintain law and order, with policing organized crime not high on the agenda (Mothibi et al., 2015).

After democratization, and the first free and fair elections in 1994, transnational organized crime syndicates, especially those from Nigeria and Eastern Europe, increased their presence in South Africa. This was mainly due to the opening of borders for international trade and movement of people, as well as the relaxation of strict apartheid-era laws. In addition, at this time, there was an increase in the number of local crime lords who were involved in everything from drug trafficking to racketeering (Goredema, 2001; Mothibi et al., 2015). Given South Africa’s geographical position within the African continent and its shared borders with multiple countries, the operations of international and transnational crime organizations had great potential to flourish. To measure the expansion of organized criminal groups in South Africa, Shaw (1998) identified four indicators: the degree to which organized criminal groups have consolidated either through merger or structured co-operation; the role of former members of the apartheid security forces in organized crime; the extent to which organized criminal groups have been successful in the penetration of the state and corrupting officials and the degree to which foreign organized crime groups operate within the country and have created connections with local crime syndicates. All these four elements were present in South Africa after 1994 and continue to exist, facilitating the growth of criminal groups.

With specific reference to criminal gangs, their development can be traced back to the 1800s, when they were formed to protect black mineworkers from exploitation and harsh conditions. The gangs were structured with strict hierarchies and codes, largely influenced by the legendary figure Nongoloza Mathebula. These gangs transformed into the Numbers Gang, with its three divisions: the 26s, 27s and 28s. As members of the gangs frequented correctional facilities, the membership of the gangs rapidly increased. Today, the Numbers Gang are operational in arguably all of South Africa’s correctional facilities; adapting their practices and expanding their influence both within and outside prison walls (Veloen, 2022).

Prison gangs have strong relationships with gangs outside of correctional facilities. Due to the rapid expansion of gangs, the lines between the traditional number gangs (mentioned earlier) and undocumented youth and street gangs have blurred. Accordingly, South Africa’s organized crime problem has grown more complex and varied as groups extend from highly organized to loosely structured street connections. In addition, criminal activities are highly ambitious and fluid, seizing opportunities in a variety of illicit markets.

Criminal networks now operate in several spheres, including politics, business and law enforcement. Some evidence of this emerged in the early days of the new South African dispensation:

. . . Prominent ANC⁹ leaders met with and engaged with senior gangsters in the first months of the new democracy, and a major justification for doing so was the alliance that some of the gangs had formed with the police against the liberation movements. Another reason was that communities which had voted for the ANC had implored the leadership to do something about the gangs . . . (Shaw, 2019).

The roots of corruption in South Africa are historical, tracing back to colonial and apartheid-era governance structures (Friedman, 2020). However, the post-apartheid period has seen the institutionalization of corruption, and as the South African democracy developed, so did organized crime. High-profile instances involving state officials and businessmen reveal the profound ingraining of criminal elements in the fabric of society, with corruption emerging as a major enabler of organized crime, to the detriment of democratic principles. South Africa scored 41 out of 100 on the 2024 Transparency International Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The index measures perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0–100, with scores closer to 0 indicating very high levels of corruption. This indicates that South Africa’s CPI score has declined during the last 5 years (Transparency International, 2024). Increased levels of corruption come as a disappointment, especially as the country celebrated 30 years of democracy in 2024. Indeed, numerous scandals concerning fraud and bribery involving the incumbent and the former president and cabinet ministers have significantly tainted the image of the biggest political party, the ANC.

Between 1994 and 2019, the national elections in South Africa resulted in only one winner: the former liberation movement and the dominant party, the ANC. Years of one-party dominance of the ANC enhanced levels of corruption, especially during the administration of former President Jacob Zuma. His presidency was ruined by two prominent corruption cases namely Nkandla-gate and the State Capture report (Isike and Onapajo, 2017). In the first instance more than ZAR 246 million was spend on alleged security upgrades at the then president’s private estate, Nkandla (Campbell, 2016). State Capture in South Africa refers to the systemic manipulation of state institutions, policies and resources by private interests, most notably the Gupta family, during the presidency of Jacob Zuma. According to Pillay et al. (2023), this phenomenon became deeply embedded in the political and economic fabric of the country, undermining democratic governance and ethical public administration. The State Capture report revealed how public procurement processes, ministerial appointments and the operations of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were compromised (Pillay et al., 2023).

Pervasive corruption has led to institutional flaws, hampering basic service delivery, such as water and electricity, and increased crime. Before the national elections in 2024 the electorate was reminded of the role of the ANC in state capture by opposition parties (Bruwer, 2024). After the release of part of the State Capture report in 2022, the official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA) called the ANC ‘. . . little more than an organized crime syndicate masquerading as a political party . . . ’ (Bruwer, 2024; Democratic Alliance, 2022). An organized crime risk assessment of South Africa states that ‘. . . the growth of organized crime, rise of elite corruption and erosion of state institutions – have often overlapped and intersected in South Africa’s past, but now have converged to form a self-sustaining, self-protecting and self-expanding criminal economy . . . ’ (Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, 2022). During the 2024 national elections, the ANC lost its outright majority and only achieved 40% of the national vote. The party was forced to enter into a Government of National Unity (GNU) with 10 political parties, including the DA, that obtained more than 21% of the national vote. It is yet to be determined if the GNU will have a noticeable impact on state level criminal activities.

For the interim, a plethora of organized criminal activities continue to stain the South African democratic landscape. It is acutely felt at the local level of governance, where constitutional arrangements are neglected by local government structures. Taking a deeper look at local government exposes a situation where it is difficult to determine which of a series of events is the cause and which is the effect of organized crime: marginalized communities suffered from weak state capacity, creating functional holes in governance and generating conditions conducive to organized criminal groups to thrive.

In some cases, criminality fills institutional voids. At the same time, communities are held hostage by extortion networks, demanding regular payments for protection and resulting in a significant increase in violence in communities. Contributing to the problem is embedded corruption in the SAPS: police officers are often on the payroll of gangs, and it is common for court dockets and evidence to go missing (Lambrechts, 2012). This clearly indicates an institutional void with regards to the provision of safety and security by the state, which neglects to cover the entirety of its legitimate territory. The loss of state legitimacy is indicative of democratic backsliding.

In addition, due to global demand and the assistance of local and international criminal networks, human trafficking and poaching of wild animals, particularly rhinoceroses and elephants, have grown to be very serious concerns. There has also been a significant increase in the drug trade. There have been several multimillion-rand confiscations of Mandrax, with some consignments found hidden in trucks, in the Western Cape (one of South Africa’s nine provinces) in 2024. Several high-value drug busts occurred, including one in March 2024, ZAR7 million worth of mandrax found in sealed boxes in a delivery truck stopped along the main highway, and another in April, when mandrax worth about ZAR2 million was found in a vehicle heading to Cape Town. It was reported that the gangs involved in transporting and trading in the drugs, including the 28 gang, often collude with corrupt police officers (Dolley, 2024). In another example, South African authorities seized cocaine worth ZAR15 million aboard a vessel at the Port of Richards Bay (located in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal). The ship, travelling from Colombia, was primarily importing iron but was found to be carrying blocks of cocaine upon its arrival in April 2024. The seizure followed a tip-off about the vessel’s illicit cargo (Solomons, 2024).

The expansion of the drug trade has caused serious social repercussions, especially in the Western Cape region, particularly methamphetamine, locally referred to as tik. As the name suggests, the Western Cape is located at the western corner of the country. The province is the only one run by the official opposition political party, the DA, and is regarded as one of the top administrative regions in the country. However, the province suffers from an acute gang problem. A recent study reported that at least two people are killed in gang violence in the Western Cape daily and that more than 80% of all gang-related murders in South Africa occur in this province. Between April and September 2023 gangs were responsible for the deaths of 404 people. Gang-related murders contribute significantly to the overall murder rate in the province, which continues to be the highest in the country (Allen, 2024). Although gang activities are spread throughout the province, a significant proportion of gang violence occurs in an area known as the Cape Flats.

Coloured communities, that is, communities of mixed race, were relocated forcibly from many parts of Cape Town under Apartheid’s Group Areas Act during the 1960s and 1970s. This led to the creation of the Cape Flats. In many cases, families were torn apart, and the move directly resulted in high levels of unemployment. The fabric of extended families and working-class culture that existed before the forced removals was gradually destroyed. The area suffered from lack of housing due to population increase and migration to urban areas by the rural poor. Improving the infrastructure and erecting sports and recreation facilities were not a priority and unemployment levels among the Coloured communities continued to increase. As a result of the breakdown of the core social institutions of civil order (e.g. families, the workplace and interest groups), loosely structured gangs formed to occupy this empty social space, and these groups expanded rapidly (Gastrow, 1998; Pinnock, 1984; Standing, 2006). There is no accurate figure of the number of gangs or gang membership, but previous studies have estimated gangs to be 130 and membership between 80,000 and 100,000 (Van der Linde, 2018).

According to Lambrechts (2012), a criminal economy is embedded in areas of the Cape Flats because of unemployment and lack of development, which is the main reason why young people join gangs and why gangs persist. The same study found that members of the local communities were familiar with who are the local drug merchants and that residents of the Cape Flats were also consumers of the drugs sold by the dealers. Accordingly, there exists a strong relationship between sections of the community and the gangs. Perceptions of gangs as providers for the community were also confirmed: gangs employing members of the community; gangs investing in the community; and gangs providing goods to the community. This relates back to the lack of socioeconomic opportunities in the area. Territorial control on the Cape Flats is arranged by the gangs, and during periods of gang fights, many areas cannot be accessed by security forces, and residents are kept as prisoners in their houses.

In general, the provision of political goods and services in the marginalized communities of the Cape Flats is poor due to both the failure of the formal state systems of local governance to deliver services and the presence of a myriad of informal authorities in the form of criminal gangs. A study on the provision of political goods and governance in the Cape Flats during the lockdown periods (due to the COVID-19 pandemic) found that communities relied mostly on themselves for the provision of goods, and that the provision of security remains a critical political good (Lambrechts, 2024).

The aforementioned analysis paints a picture of two parallel systems of development in South Africa: that of democracy and organized crime. As the regime stepped out of decades of isolation, true to the opportunistic nature of organized crime, every avenue was seized to expand criminal operations. The legacies of marginalization during the Apartheid system manifested in a deeply unequal society, with high levels of poverty and unemployment. Political dominance by the ANC has resulted in poor checks and balances and widespread corruption. These conditions are ideal for organized crime to flourish, to the detriment of democratic principles.

Conclusion

As summarized in Table 3, albeit somewhat counterintuitively, Colombia and South Africa share several similar contextual conditions: both countries fully democratized in the course of the Third Wave, neither faces a threat of autocratic backsliding, both operate as constitutional democracies with exemplary judicial institutions and both are plagued by high levels of inequality and criminal violence. Importantly, in both cases, institutional voids are filled by armed non-state actors and criminal governance – to be sure, this process has progressed much more substantially in Colombia, but the South African case also suggests some deeply entrenched systems of criminal governance, especially in marginalized areas as documented earlier.

Table 3.

Comparison between Colombia and South Africa.

Variable	Colombia	South Africa
Democratic Development	Democratized during the Third Wave; no threat of autocratic backsliding	Same as Colombia
Judicial Institutions	Strong constitutional democracy with exemplary judicial institutions	Same as Colombia
Inequality and Violence	High levels of inequality and criminal violence	Same as Colombia
Criminal Governance	Advanced presence of armed non-state actors and criminal governance	Similar patterns in marginalized areas, though less developed. High level state corruption.
Democratic Typology	Democracy with oligarchic enclaves and citizenship defects	Defective democracy
Historical Roots	National Front regime (1957–1974/86) enabled regional power barons	Apartheid legacy created inequality and weak institutions
Political Competition	Limited electoral competition within a liberal democracy	Increased competition and a move away from one-party dominance
Illicit Economy	Regional elites enabled illicit networks through political structures	Corruption and the illicit economy are growing and politically embedded
Impact on Citizenship	Armed actors undermine collective action and democratic legitimacy	Persistent corruption and criminal groups erode trust and mobilize for political gain

We argue that the Colombian case constitutes an ‘ideal type’ path towards a specific type of democracy with a (negative) adjective:¹⁰ the criminalization of representative institutions in the context of electoral competition within a democracy characterized by an adjective. The result of that trajectory is that today Colombia is classified as a democracy with oligarchic enclaves at the subnational level accompanied by citizenship defects: armed non-state actors undermine citizens’ ability to engage in collective action (Boesten, 2022b). This trajectory commenced during the National Front regime – a consociational power-sharing deal between the Liberal and Conservative Parties (1957–1974/86) – that ultimately depoliticized Colombia’s democracy, created policy inertia and contradictions, and (importantly) empowered regional party barons vis-à-vis the centre. Those regional power holders, equipped with more transformative capacities by the power-sharing deal, constituted the opportunity structures for illicit elements that were rapidly increasing their material resources.

Limited political competition within a liberal (constitutional) democracy, empowered regional power brokers and fast-growing illicit resources share some traits with post-Apartheid South Africa where restricted political competition, albeit for different, even more legitimate, reasons, is accompanied by a significant growth in corruption and the expansion of the illicit economy. The legacies of the Apartheid system, such as persistent inequality, combined with ineffective state institutions, have resulted in low levels of trust in democratic foundations. Ungoverned spaces have become occupied by criminal groups that are increasingly interwoven with political structures, suggesting elements of a defective democracy. In the case of South Africa, the impact of the decline in the dominance from the ANC will have to be longitudinally assessed. In either instance, citizenship defects (ability to engage in collective action) are themselves embedded in illicit structures. This need not necessarily undermine core democratic features such as the electoral element (active and passive right to vote; free, fair and competitive elections), but it does enable illicit non-state actors with governance functions to mobilize for their preferred political candidates, with negative consequences, for democratic legitimacy.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Jan Boesten has received generous funding for his position at the Freie Universität from the German Science Foundation (DFG).

ORCID iDs

Jan Boesten

Derica Lambrechts

Notes

Author biographies

Jan Boesten is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies (LAI) at the Freie Universität Berlin. His work has appeared in the Latin American Research Review (LARR) and Colombia Internacional, Precedente, and several edited volumes. The book, Constitutional Origin and Norm Creation in Colombia: Discursive Institutionalism and the Empowerment of the Constitutional Court has been published with Routledge.

Derica Lambrechts has a PhD in political science. She is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and a research associate at the Centre for Research on Democracy at Stellenbosch University. She is an experienced political risk analyst and organised crime expert.

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