Procurement corruption at heart of high-profile killings

On a quiet November night in 2022, DJ Sumbody – a rising star in the country's music scene – was gunned down in a hail of bullets while heading home.

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Then in April 2024, engineer Armand Swart was executed in a similar shooting after his company flagged a suspicious government tender in which prices had been inflated by more than 4,500%.

Dramatic arrests last week are tying those murders and many more together, exposing a murky underworld in which criminals consort with political bigwigs for lucrative state contracts.

The arrests came after allegations by KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, who accused the force and police minister of a cover-up.

Deep-rooted procurement corruption has seeped through every level of government for decades, security researcher David Bruce said.

“The whole issue of killings of whistle-blowers and assassinations generally is massively interlinked with that issue,” said Bruce, a consultant with the Institute for Security Studies.