SAPS in crisis - Analysis

SAPS in crisis - Analysis

Cops and Mobsters — the many murky claims of Western Cape police officers cosying up to gangsters

Daily Maverick - By Caryn Dolley 01 Nov 2022  

There have been suspicions over the years that police in SA’s gangsterism capital, the Western Cape, are colluding with gangs — leaking information, plotting murders and running smear campaigns. A recent high court judgment adds weight to such theories.

In January 2016, Nathaniel Moses, the suspected head of a group of hitmen, was murdered in the Cape Town suburb of Strand.

Strange stories subsequently surfaced in police circles: that the Mobsters, a faction of the 28s gang which Moses allegedly led, had corrupt cops on their side, that some of those officers were involved in running a nightclub with the Mobsters in Strand, and that firearms were being funnelled to the gang’s footsoldiers by way of police officers.

These stories never publicly solidified into anything more than loose suspicions.

Until recently, that is.

Daily Maverick last week reported that a Western Cape High Court judgment by Judge Daniel Thulare, dated 17 October, said that evidence in an organised crime case linked to the Mobsters suggested that the 28s gang had captured low-ranking South African Police Service (SAPS) officers as well as police bosses.

The judgment said: “The senior management of the SAPS in the province has been penetrated to the extent that the 28 gang has access to the table where the Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS in the Western Cape sits with his senior managers.”

According to evidence, the judgment found, gangsters also obtained Crime Intelligence and Anti-Gang Unit reports.

Thulare’s judgment is unprecedented in that it marks the first time suspected links between police officers and gangsters are detailed in depth in a document that is accessible to the public.

Political strategy

Last week, while the Western Cape police said its legal services department was looking at the judgment, the province’s premier, Alan Winde, ordered an ombud investigation into its contents to determine if police officers were working with gangsters. 

It was not the first time a Western Cape premier had tackled the issue. 

Here we unravel an extensive web of cop collusion suspicions — and political matters — that developed in the runup to the judgment. 

Seven years ago, former premier Helen Zille wrote: “Could it be that there is a deliberate political strategy, involving high-ranking police officers and politicians, to ensure that gangs, drugs and crime continue to destabilise the Western Cape?

“It is critical to answer this question for the sake of the people in this province who live under the reign of terror of the gang and drug lords.”

Zille also referenced a (now former) Western Cape Crime Intelligence officer, understood to be Paul Scheepers.

She said: “Three of his informers had provided him with sensational information asserting the involvement of high-ranking police officers in corruption, and of links between the drug trade, gangs, and politics in the Western Cape.”

Arrested Crime Intelligence officer

There were suspicions that the claims Scheepers’ informers made were against former gang-busting cop Jeremy Vearey, who was controversially fired from the police service in May last year. (Further details are documented in Dolley’s book To the Wolves: How Traitor Cops Crafted South Africa’s Underworld.)

Scheepers has an intriguing past.

He was arrested back in 2015 — one of the charges he faced was that he illegally acquired an interception device known as a “grabber”.

Scheepers was also at the centre of a spat in which the DA was accused of spying on the ANC and vice versa.

For his part, Vearey has insisted that Crime Intelligence officers, using gangsters and politicians, were working against him to derail investigations he was conducting.

In the year following Scheepers’ arrest, a series of events resulted in rattling claims emerging about Western Cape police officers.

That year — 2016 — was when Moses was murdered.

An affidavit, which some police officers viewed as questionable, surfaced after his killing, referencing his murder and dubious police activities.

‘Questionable’ affidavit

The affidavit, dated February 2016 and deposed by Sylvano Hendricks, a transgender woman also going by the name Queeny Madikizela-Malema, who had spent time in jail, was leaked to the media.

It made an array of allegations.

Some were against Vearey and were along the lines that he was working with an alleged Western Cape gang boss.

But aspects of the affidavit were brought into question.

A section of a stamp on it stated “Department of Community Safety Western Cape”, implying that it was linked to the office of Dan Plato, who was the Western Cape’s community safety MEC at the time.

But it later emerged the stamp had been discontinued and should never have been used and that the advocate who signed off on the affidavit was a former police officer who had been found guilty of manipulating crime statistics.

Vearey later claimed he believed the allegations against him in the affidavit actually stemmed from Crime Intelligence.

Doubt was therefore cast over the affidavit that seemed to connect the Mobsters and the Moses murder case to politics and police officers.

Guns-to-gangs investigation

Back in December 2013, Vearey and his colleague Peter Jacobs launched Project Impi, which became known as the guns-to-gangs investigation.

This focused on allegations that police officers were involved in creating fraudulent gun licences for, and smuggling firearms that were meant to be destroyed to gangsters (including members of the 28s) in the Western Cape.

Daily Maverick understands Project Impi investigations also focused on some firearms the Mobsters had and whether police officers had channelled the weapons to them. 

In June 2016, roughly six months after Moses was murdered and while conducting the guns-to-gangs investigation, Vearey and Jacobs were suddenly and effectively demoted, and Project Impi lost its clout.

That same month, former police officer Chris Prinsloo was sentenced to an effective 18 years in jail for selling firearms that ended up with gang members in the Western Cape.

This saga takes a more sinister turn.

More smear campaign claims

A few months later, in November 2016, Noorudien Hassan was murdered outside his home in Lansdowne, Cape Town.

He was an attorney who had dealt with several gang-related matters and represented an accused in a court case that resulted from Project Impi investigations.

The following year, Vearey claimed to this journalist that he knew about a Crime Intelligence officer who once visited Hassan about claims to be concocted against him (Vearey).

Vearey believed that there was a plan, involving Crime Intelligence officers in the Western Cape, to discredit him because of critical investigations he was conducting that could expose criminality within the police service.

In 2017, it also emerged that an investigation diary and documents that could expose an informant in Project Impi were possibly leaked, via a Crime Intelligence officer, to Hassan.

News24 reported that the allegedly leaked paperwork was found in Hassan’s office after he was killed.

The defence in the Project Impi case denied getting hold of the documents without the State’s consent, claiming that the documents could have been discreetly handed over by Crime Intelligence. (Further details are documented in Dolley’s book, The Enforcers: Inside Cape Town’s Deadly Nightclub Battles.) 

‘Infiltrated’ Anti-Gang Unit 

Towards the end of 2018, the Anti-Gang Unit (AGU) in the Western Cape was launched. 

This happened roughly six months before a general election, hinting that the unit was a gimmick to woo voters.

Daily Maverick understands that at the time, a sensitive document detailing which police officers were in the AGU was leaked from within police ranks.

This meant that gang suspects could potentially see exactly who would be targeting them.

Andre Lincoln, a now retired major-general, headed the AGU — in the 1990s, he investigated links between suspected crooks and state figures.

Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear was a member of the AGU.

Among those he investigated were criminals and colleagues — in a situation reminiscent of Project Impi, cops were arrested in 2020 for allegedly creating fraudulent gun licences for suspects.

A few months after those arrests, in September 2020, Kinnear was assassinated outside his home in Bishop Lavis, a Cape Town suburb that happens to be a stronghold of the 28s gang.

His murder meant cases involving police officers arrested for getting gun licences to suspects could collapse.

Among those arrested in connection with Kinnear’s killing was Ashley Tabisher, also a member of the AGU.

Another suspect arrested for Kinnear’s murder was Nafiz Modack, who Kinnear had been investigating.

This case also extends to Crime Intelligence and other police corruption claims.

‘Rogue’ unit and underworld  

In December 2018, roughly two years before his assassination, Kinnear wrote a letter of complaint to his bosses, saying that a rogue unit of police officers, with ties to Crime Intelligence, was operating in the Western Cape and working against him and certain colleagues.

This was similar to concerns Vearey had voiced about Crime Intelligence police officers concocting a smear campaign against him.

In his complaint, Kinnear claimed some of the officers were dubiously connected to Modack.

Daily Maverick has published articles about an Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) report relating to Kinnear’s assassination that was subsequently and controversially classified.

The report found that a “rogue” unit of police officers in the Western Cape, linked to Crime Intelligence, indeed existed, which validated Kinenar’s complaint.

Animosity among police bosses

The “rogue” unit, Ipid found, “created further animosity amongst leadership, sowing division” in the Western Cape police.

Ipid’s report further said: “This may have created a perfect opportunity for underworld syndicates and figures such as Nafiz Modack to infiltrate SAPS to monitor the movement of key role players.”

Ipid recommended that four of the unit’s members should face departmental charges.

The fate of those cops could be discussed in Parliament during the second week of November.

Claims of police corruption, linked to the 2015 arrest of ex-Crime Intelligence officer Paul Scheepers, as well as to the Moses murder case and Kinnear, have been bolstered by the October 17 judgment.

It has shone a necessary spotlight on deep-rooted suspicions, which are, infuriatingly, nothing new, of police officers partnering with criminals in the Western Cape, where countless residents find themselves in the path of gangster-held guns.

The judgment simply cannot be ignored. DM

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If gangs have infiltrated the Western Cape SAPS to the highest levels, it is capture of the worst kind

Daily Maverick - 01 Nov 2022  By Alan Winde. Alan Winde is Western Cape Premier.

Judge Daniel Thulare’s judgment in the Western Cape high court that gangs have infiltrated the SA Police Service up to the highest levels confirmed our worst fears. This is toxic corruption.

It has been the source of many rumours: Police in cahoots with gangsters. For years we have heard stories of some police officers working with gangs, for various nefarious reasons, from running drug syndicates to extortion rings.

In my many public engagements across the Western Cape, I would listen to angry and scared community members telling me: “That house over there is a drug den. The man who lives there is a known gangster.”

When I would ask why the police have not taken action, I would get the same answer: “You can’t trust them.”

These street corner whispers could easily have been treated as nothing more than rumours or gossip. That was until a damning ruling recently delivered in the Western Cape high court confirmed our worst fears. This extract from the judgment by Judge Daniel Thulare summed up the long-standing suspicions that have lingered in so many of our communities for so many years:

“The evidence suggests not only a capture of some lower ranking officers in the SAPS. The evidence suggests that the senior management of the SAPS in the province has been penetrated to the extent that the 28 gang has access to the table where the Provincial Commissioner of the SAPS in the Western Cape sits with his senior managers and lead them in the study of crime, develop crime prevention strategies and decide on tactics and approach to the safety and security of inhabitants of the Western cape.

“This includes penetration of and access to the sanctity of the reports by specialised units like the Anti-Gang Unit and Crime Intelligence, to the Provincial Commissioner. The evidence further shows that the 28 gang and the Mobsters [gang] in particular are breathing heavily on the necks of public prosecutors who guide the investigation of organised crime and institute criminal proceedings against its members. Such prosecutors are under a constant and permanent threat to their lives and that of their close families.

“The evidence also shows that the Mobsters have now moved gear upwards and are interfering with the decorum of the courts and the independence of judicial officers, and testing the judicial oath of office, especially the words ‘without fear’.”

I was deeply distressed to read that word which has become all too familiar to South Africans, “capture”. This time in the context of a critical public service, the South African Police Services (SAPS) being taken over by criminals.

“State Capture” has become a devastating addition to our national lexicon, applied to state-run entities like Eskom and Transnet. Now we are seeing disturbing evidence of the SAPS, being captured not by businesspeople with questionable ethics or rotten politicians, but by hardened gangsters. The very same people who terrorise our communities, who think nothing of indiscriminately opening fire in public places often wounding or killing innocent people, among them children.

To my knowledge, this is the first credible, impartial confirmation of what so many people have suspected and told me over the years. Here was not just a piece of investigative journalism detailing the extent of the rot, but a court ruling outlining evidence of some members of the SAPS working hand-in-hand with gangsters.

When I read the Daily Maverick article that has now exposed this apparent “capture” of the police service, I had to act. While Western Cape Police Oversight and Community Safety Minister Reagen Allen raised the contents of the judgment in a discussion with the Executive Director of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate, I felt more needed to be done.

I requested the Provincial Police Ombud Oswald Reddy to investigate whether a commission of inquiry should be established to probe these alleged links between some police officers and gangs. We eagerly await the outcome of this probe before announcing our next steps.

I know the grave concerns this matter raises are shared by honest, hard-working SAPS members. Some might have an idea of who in their ranks have been corrupted, many of whom could be their superiors, as alleged by the judgement.

How demoralising this must be, not just for the honest officers but for the people they serve, who feel abandoned due to this toxic corruption. As Minister Allen put it: “The SAPS officers allegedly implicated do not deserve their blue uniform.”

How disheartening it must be for honest women and men in blue to carry on with this difficult job knowing some of their own are part of the problem.

I was recently on a patrol with community crime fighters in Lentegeur, Mitchell’s Plain. During the patrol, I was taken to the scene where a man was shot dead and then to a house that had been petrol-bombed, apparently in retaliation for the shooting, which is said to be gang-related. Residents told me of their fear of even leaving their homes to go the shop.

I have heard all too often similar stories throughout Cape Town and the province. It was another tragic reminder of how gangsterism continues to run rampant in too many of our communities. And if this judgment is anything to go by, how are we to make these affected communities safer if there are senior police officials being corrupted by gangs?

I have asked the provincial Police Ombud to report back to me within the next two weeks and I will report back to the residents of the Western Cape on his initial findings.

But we also need to put the spotlight on Police Minister Bheki Cele, and possibly his predecessors, to ask what is he doing now and what has been done to tackle this alleged corruption.

The minister’s silence on this judgment is deafening and adds further fuel to our call for the devolution of policing to the provinces, where we are able to respond faster and with greater rigour to the right of our residents to live in peaceful and safe communities. DM