Getting rid of an insufferable husband comes relatively cheap in South Africa, while political hits are more expensive.
Crime studies say hiring a contract killer costs anywhere between US$145 and US$8,700 in South Africa, where assassinations have come under renewed spotlight after the murder of a popular rapper.
One of South Africa’s hottest artists, Kiernan Forbes, known as AKA, was shot dead outside a restaurant in Durban earlier this month. Forbes, 35, was gunned down on a Friday night alongside his friend Tebello Motsoane, or “Tibz,” 41, as the two were walking toward their car along one of the most popular roads in the south eastern coastal city.
Photo: AFP
The incident shocked the nation, which has grown accustomed to crime and violence. South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates.
AKA’s murder was captured on security camera footage that went viral online.
In it a man wearing a white hat is seen crossing a road and walking at pace past a parked car. He approaches the singer from behind on the sidewalk and opens fire at close range, before running away.
Police said they were following multiple leads, but everything points to a targeted assassination. No arrests had been made.
Only about one in five murder cases are solved in the nation, according to the latest annual police report.
With data released this month showing that there were an average of 82 murders a day across South Africa between October and December last year, many killers remain unnamed and at large.
“Few murders involving hit men end up in court and when they do hit men are often killed,” said Mary de Haas, an academic focusing on political violence in Durban’s KwaZulu-Natal Province.
That makes eliminating someone seem “pretty easy,” she said.
It is not known how much AKA’s murder cost, but the more prominent a target, the higher the cost of their assassination, according to a 2021 report by Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Swiss think tank.
Hit men in South Africa billed little more than US$3,000 on average for murders motivated by personal reasons, according to the study — although figures varied also depending on eventual insurance payouts.
Politically motivated and organized crime-related hits cost more.
Earlier this month, a city employee in Cape Town was shot dead in her car. Her body was found at the entrance of the construction site of a real-estate project worth more than 500 million rand (US$27 million).
Prior to the killing, people working on the project had suffered from intimidation and extortion attempts, a source at city hall said.
The city, run by the nation’s leading opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, offered a 100,000 rand reward for information leading to the successful prosecution of those responsible.
South African Minister of Police Bheki Cele, who every three months presents nationwide crime statistics in a live broadcast, has long been under pressure to improve the situation.
As he unveiled the latest figures this month, Cele said police continued “to arrest hit men and those who order assassinations.”
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
RSS