Murder by Appointment: South African Lawyers Face Assassination
Hit men target professionals who are trying to tackle graft
Bouwer van Niekerk, a prominent insolvency lawyer, who was gunned down outside his practice in Johannesburg.
Photographer: Deaan Vivier/Beeld/Gallo Images/Getty Images
Last month, two assassins made an appointment to see bankruptcy lawyer Bouwer van Niekerk. After he identified himself, they shot him dead in the boardroom of his firm’s offices on a sunny morning in leafy northern Johannesburg.
Van Niekerk’s brazen murder is part of a growing trend in South Africa, a country long dogged by violent crime — the targeting of professionals instrumental in fighting corruption by hit-men. The names of slain lawyers adorn a Wall of Remembrance that the National Prosecuting Authority erected in 2023 in the capital, Pretoria, an hour’s drive north of Van Niekerk’s office.