JOHANNESBURG - One of South Africa’s leading business liquidators, Cloete Murray, and his son, Thomas, were gunned down in their car on Saturday in a brazen daylight attack on the busy highway between Johannesburg and Pretoria, writes the Globe and Mail.

The killings sent shock waves through the country’s business and political circles, where Mr. Murray was known for recovering assets in high-profile corruption cases. In January, a bodyguard was killed during an assassination attempt against a senior official who had been fighting corruption at the University of Fort Hare.

In the same month, the chief executive of South Africa’s national electricity utility reported that someone had laced his coffee with cyanide in a murder plot, and another business liquidator quit a high-profile case after receiving death threats.

After the latest assassination on Saturday, many South African political commentators said the country is becoming a mafia state, where criminal networks are deeply embedded in state-owned corporations, government departments and business sectors.

South Africa has endured a series of high-profile corruption scandals involving top politicians over the past 15 years, but violence is increasingly becoming a routine method of settling political battles and winning control of government contracts and business revenue, analysts say.