How transnational networks exploit maritime crime in Southern Africa

The new report has revealed how maritime crime is perpetrated in Southern African Development countries such as South Africa, Angola, and Namibia, with transnational criminal networks using vessels transporting and sourcing illicit commodities through the South Atlantic Ocean.

The report, Securing Africa’s South Atlantic, compiled by Enact Africa, stated that criminal networks take advantage of existing licit trade and target established trade routes rather than preferring certain ports. 

Enact said this is the reason why illegal trade often passes through ports with high trade volumes, such as Durban and Walvis Bay in Namibia.

The report also stated that although ports form bottlenecks and are often where illicit shipments are seized, the colossal volume of trade complicates the identification of illegality.

Coupled with this are often parallel legal and illegal shipments of the same commodity, which obscures illegal trade, and limited technology and profiling abilities to identify illicit shipments.

Maritime crime in South Africa, Angola, and Namibia primarily involves illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, oil and fuel smuggling, and drug trafficking. 

Angolan and Namibian waters suffer from illegal fishing, while Angola is also plagued by vessel attacks and cross-border fuel smuggling due to its rich oil deposits.

South Africa is a significant hub for cocaine transit and faces issues with poaching. Criminal networks leverage these rich maritime resources, with corruption at various levels of government and industry exacerbating these problems.

The report stated that most cocaine entering South Africa is transported in containers from Brazil.

According to the report, vessels, as instruments of crime, are uniquely difficult to counter. They are often transnational – registered in one country, carrying crew and cargo from across the globe, fishing under licences from multiple countries, and passing through different states’ waters.

“Different vessels facilitate Transnational Organised Crime (TOC) – from container vessels to fishing vessels, small dinghies, pleasure craft, and uncrewed vessels. Vessels’ size, design, and technology dictate how far offshore they can travel, and how much and what kinds of goods they carry,” read the report. 

The report added that this also dictates whether they can access remote shorelines or large commercial ports. 

The choice of vessel is influenced by the commodity being moved, its size, origin, destination, and the criminal networks’ access to vessels. Some vessels engage exclusively in criminal activities, while others participate primarily in legal trade. Some, like fishing vessels, are more susceptible to criminal activity due to the nature of their operation. 

While fast vessels are often preferred for a quick getaway, routes and vessels are also chosen based on the corruptibility of crew members.

Enact said that shipping containers also allow bulk shipments to cross the globe at low cost, with large illicit shipments often concealed by legal trade. 

The options for exploiting containers, according to the report, are bountiful, and without risk profiling, even finding a container exclusively carrying illegal goods is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

“Illegal commodities are routinely hidden among legal goods – they may be placed in hidden container compartments, misdeclared, swapped using the ‘rip on/rip off’ method (original seals are broken, cargo replaced and fraudulent seals applied), commingled with lookalike products, or placed into containers when vessels are already at sea.

“Because containers follow shipping schedules, they often pass through multiple jurisdictions and are transhipped. For example, in 2018, a 400kg cocaine shipment was found in Namibia, hidden among packages of photocopy paper. It left Brazil’s Port of Santos, transited through Cape Town, and was seized in Walvis Bay. Drugs have also been attached to vessels. This parasitic method entails a diver securing a shipment to a vessel’s hull, which is then retrieved by the same or another diver upon reaching its destination.”

“A Brazilian diver responsible for these attachments was arrested on his way to South Africa in 2023,” the report stated.

The author of the report, Carina Bruwer, told Independent Media that all maritime crimes originate from land-based causes and most international trade takes place at sea, regardless of whether the commodities are sourced on land or at sea. She said this includes Africa’s biodiversity and natural resources.

Bruwer said concerning crimes involving crew members, such as forced labour or human trafficking, this can be attributed to the culture of and certain flag states’ vessels and certain industries, like the fishing industry, with crew members remaining at sea for extended periods, possibly allowing human rights violations to remain undetected. These violations are frequently associated with vessels registered in specific countries.

Although the region's law enforcement entities are trying their best, countries struggle with limited resources to protect their maritime domains.

“The challenge of limited resources is not unique to Southern Africa or Africa as a whole. No country in the world can fully monitor their maritime domain and respond to incidents at sea. If you consider the size of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of each of the three countries that the report focuses on, these are huge maritime domains to monitor.

“And even if you do monitor them, such as through the use of technology, you need vessels able to respond to incidents,” she said, adding that identifying illegal trade among masses of legal trade is difficult, and many smaller harbours and vessels are hardly monitored.

The report also added that criminal networks avoid law enforcement by remaining outside coastal state waters or hiding the vessel’s identity and ownership, while crews also disable their automatic identification system (AIS) so that the vessel’s movements cannot be tracked.

Vessels avoid accountability by registering under flags of convenience in countries that are unable or unwilling to enforce regulations. This is facilitated by open registries, allowing vessels to register under a country’s flag without any link to that country.

Enact added that corruption is also rife in the maritime industry, with small-scale bribes paid to port staff and officials to ignore violations, lower penalties, or allow labour law violations, which can result in human trafficking and forced labour practices. 

“Corruption also extends to the highest levels of government, with many illicit activities at sea being facilitated by state actors acting as intermediaries.”

manyane.manyane@inl.co.za