Project manager says building costs spiral due to paying mafia

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The construction mafia has now become the norm in the construction sector. This is according to a player in the sector, who helps to facilitate the execution of construction projects, particularly for SMEs.

The construction mafia, who present themselves as businesspeople, is known for introducing themselves to project managers at construction sites and demanding anything up to 30 percent of the project’s value or profit.

They require those they approach, big and small, to cooperate with them. Otherwise, there’s a real threat of violence or disruption to ensure the project can’t take off.

While this phenomenon affects all the country’s provinces, it is said to be particularly bad in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, to some extent. According to construction project manager Mzamo Myataza of Mila Azania Holdings, SMEs and big business in the construction sector now generally accommodate the criminal scourge.

“We work mostly with SMEs and also, we work with companies from grade 1 to grade 9, so even big companies are affected by this, they know this is the way of doing business. They know that if you want to do business in any of these provinces, that is what you have to come across, you know, to the point where they budget for this.”

The reality of the construction mafia means that it results in an added layer of cost in doing business. And while many players are now said to factor in the construction mafia cost, other unforeseeable challenges could also raise the cost of executing the project, with the potential for project managers to make a loss and possibly walk away.

“It depends on did you plan for it, are you co-operating? Do you factor in the cost? But the thing with construction is that there are a lot of variables. You might have factored in the cost and then the project actually costs you more than you anticipated. Now it makes it difficult for you to complete the project because there is this additional cost that is non-negotiable that you still have to fork out and obviously in that instant, you’re unable to complete the project,” Myataza added.

Myataza says government is sleeping at the wheel on this very important criminal matter that’s disrupting genuine businesses and ultimately raising the cost of projects for taxpayers, as this trend also happens on public construction projects. He’s calling on government to do far more to arrest this now normalized criminality taking place in the sector.

“I think that this is a very serious matter that we need government to establish a special task force that will focus on this because, remember, your life is threatened if you do not cooperate with these people and these people are very violent, they’re very heavily armed and they’ve got connections, even in the police they’ve got connections. And maybe even in high authority and that’s the biggest problem,” Myataza explains.

Ultimately, the construction mafia trend means that the end users of any given project in the country, be it a road, a bridge or a building, end up having to cough up that much more for its use or access, which impacts on inflation.

This reality also serves as a terrible indictment to the country’s authorities, who have been on record saying that they are dealing with the matter, but the practice continues regardless, with lives threatened when project managers fail to play ball.