South Africa’s Construction Mafia – Building a Legacy of Corruption

Italy’s mafia evolved from small private armies, or mafie, hired by absentee landlords to protect their estates from the bandits who thrived in Sicily’s largely lawless conditions. They quickly became so big and so powerful they bit the hand that once fed them, turning on the landowners and extorting more and more money from them.

It's not a dissimilar tale to the mafia-style groups plaguing South Africa right now.