A South African and his two sons, one a police officer, appeared before a Cape Town magistrate last month accused of extorting around 50 convenience stores run by Ethiopians and Somalis.
The trial has highlighted the targeting of foreign owned “spaza” shops in a growing extortion economy that preys on a range of businesses from construction to nightclubs.
Immigrant run shops were also a focus of an explosion of xenophobic unrest earlier this year when scores were looted, torched or forced to shut during protests demanding that undocumented foreign nationals leave the country.
“The foreigners are the easier targets because they are scared, more scared than South Africans,” said Fransina Lukas, head of the community policing forum for the Western Cape province that includes Cape Town. Extortion gangs typically issue letters demanding monthly payments for “protection” services, Lukas said.
“If the person refuses, they send the runners to rob the business, they harass the clients, until it gets to the real brutal part where they go and actually kill people,” she said. In July, at least two foreign nationals were among four people killed in a shooting at a spaza shop in the scenic Western Cape town of Franschhoek.