Some 13 insolvency practitioners, tax consultants and other professionals were assassinated in 2022 and 2023.
Last month, two assassins made an appointment to see bankruptcy lawyer. After he identified himself, they shot him dead in the boardroom of his firm’s offices on a sunny morning in leafy northern Johannesburg.
Van Niekerk’s brazen murder is part of a growing trend in South Africa, a country long dogged by violent crime — the targeting of professionals instrumental in fighting corruption by hit-men. The names of slain lawyers adorn a Wall of Remembrance that the National Prosecuting Authority erected in 2023 in the capital, Pretoria, an hour’s drive north of Van Niekerk’s office.
Some 13 insolvency practitioners, tax consultants and other professionals were assassinated in 2022 and 2023, the latest years for which data is available, research by the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime shows. Judges, lawyers and forensic accountants who fear they could be next are having their cars armor-plated.
“In the 40 years I’ve worked in the field, I’ve felt prosecutors in this country could be safe,” Shamila Batohi, the national director of prosecutions at the NPA, told a briefing last month. “That’s no longer the case. This is a very serious concern for the country.”
While South Africa is notorious for car hijackings, home invasions and random violence, the assassinations of those trying to combat graft illustrates just how deeply it has been infiltrated by organized crime rings. The number of contract killings is beginning to put the country in the same basket as Mexico and Colombia.
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Law-enforcement agencies rendered inept by political interference during former President Jacob Zuma’s almost nine scandal-marred years in office have made little headway in tackling the problem, despite incumbent leader Cyril Ramaphosa’s repeated pledges to institute a crackdown.
The threat faced by professionals is eroding investor confidence, imperiling his aim of firing up a stuttering economy.
Assassinations “naturally induce a reluctance to take on these high-profile, complex matters,” said Jo-Anne Mitchell Marais, the chairwoman of the South African Restructuring & Insolvency Practitioners Association, or Saripa, which represents more than 800 professionals in the field. “There is a hesitance. Is it worth the risk?”
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Kurt Knoop, who was helping Van Niekerk investigate a suspected cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme, is among those who consider the danger too great. He received a death threat and stepped away from the probe after his business partner’s murder. No one has been arrested in connection with the killing and the authorities haven’t named any suspects.
“If we lose that confidence that can have a hugely detrimental effect,” Mitchell Marais said. “There’s an impact on the banking system. If we start to see recoveries impacted, that can drive up the cost of credit.”
Other high-profile hits include a March 2023 drive-by shooting that claimed the lives of Cloete Murray and his son Thomas, both insolvency practitioners working on high-profile cases including one linked to state graft. The prime suspect in their murder was himself shot dead in a Johannesburg hospital parking lot this month.
Read: Bouwer van Niekerk: Remembering a lawyer killed for doing his job
South Africa: Murder by appointment: South African lawyers face assassination
