Regular readers of Sowetan will be familiar with the name Vusi Mathibela, or even more so, his moniker Khekhe. The man is behind bars at the moment, awaiting trial for among others the murder of businessman Wandile Bozwana, who was shot dead in his car on a busy highway in Pretoria a few years ago.
Khekhe is otherwise infamous for allegedly running an extortion ring in Mamelodi, a township east of Pretoria, where taxi associations or operators were made to pay some sort of fee to be allowed to run the routes of the township. The man had build himself a reputation of a man-about-town, hobnobbing with the likes of former world boxing champion Floyd Mayweather.
Mathibela's reputation certainly preceeds him so much so that it was alleged in one of our previous reports on him that he continued to run his alleged criminal empire from his prison cell.
The jury is still very much out on Khekhe and his alleged business of making a living out of terrorising not just ordinary residents and informal traders of Mamelodi but also taxi operators regardless of the usual fearsome reputation of the industry.
Now, yesterday we published more stories of the sort of activity synonymous with Mathibela. Residents and spaza shop owners told Sowetan of the continued reign of terror of a gang menacingly named Boko Harram, with connections to none but Khekhe.
The thugs are said to demand that tuck shop owners, mostly of foreign origin, pay what is euphemistically referred to as a "protection fee". The amounts of up to R400 a month are seemingly the standard.
The whole scenario paints a vivid picture of the actual collapse of the rule of law often experienced to varying degrees in this country.
A foreign shop owner told Sowetan that he felt much safer paying the extortion gang because he's no longer bothered by hoodlums who often robbed him because Boko Haram responds swiftly to his distress calls. He said while the cops drag their feet, the Boko Haram thugs are quick to save him from robbers.
Labels such as failed state may sound grandiose when bandied about, but we can imagine it would manifest itself on the local level the way it is unfolding in Mamelodi East. The situation there calls for authorities to act and do so decisively. We welcome the arrest of some members of the gang and hope their cases will be concluded to a logical end.
What must follow is that those entrusted to uphold the rule of law, namely the police, of course with the help of civil society, do so and bring back respect for the law on both sides of the blue line.
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