Richards Bay Minerals (RBM) pays annual taxes of R1-billion and estimates its economic impact at R8-billion a year, with R1.5-billion going to local businesses in 2021. This huge pot of cash exercises an extraordinary pull on good and bad actors in the surrounding community - as well as their political and criminal overlords - creating a 'resource curse' that has already claimed at least 18 lives. The company has been at the forefront of tackling violence entrepreneurs and organised crime, but the cost is high and the war is far from over.

Ominous sentinels line the long, straight roads to Richards Bay, a city living in fear of assassins.

advertisementDon't want to see this? Remove adsFirst, towering eucalyptus trees stand sentry on either side of the N2, about an hour's drive north from Durban towards Mozambique. Closer to the turnoff to Richards Bay, trees make way for giant pylons and power lines criss-crossing the road leading to Africa's biggest deepwater port.

Industry here is colossal and appears invulnerable.

But the opposite is true; terror stalks resource-rich and economically strategic Richards Bay. People are being watched.

This story is about organised crime, corporate vulnerability, political manipulation and how these all intersect.

It is also the story of three men: gangster Nkululeko Mkhize; Werner Duvenhage, the managing director of Richards Bay Minerals (RBM); and Martin Mbuyazi, a community representative with influential political connections.

Mkhize was shot dead by police in September 2023, but his legacy still looms large in a tale of murder, grand-scale theft, extortion and claims of police corruption - a tale of a "resource curse" centred on Richards Bay that has already claimed at least 18 lives.

When Mkhize died in a shootout in Zimbali Estate, one of South Africa's...