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Cape Town’s cop-gang collusion case is still with police watchdog as mass shootings persist

Cape Town’s cop-gang collusion case is still with police watchdog as mass shootings persist
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
3 Nov 2024
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Two years after a high court judge warned that the 28s gang may have infiltrated police structures in the Western Cape, investigations are yet to be finalised.

Police officers flagged in a Western Cape High Court judgment, which warns that members of the 28s gang may have captured the province’s police and accessed crime-fighting plans, are not off the hook yet.

The Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) is still looking into the assertions made in the judgment. Its spokesperson, Lizzy Suping, told Daily Maverick last week that “Ipid has registered a corruption case and our investigation [is] under way”. It remains unclear at what stage the investigation is.

Mass murder


While it proceeds, gang violence continues to ravage the Western Cape. Last week, 12 people were murdered in two shootings – in Atlantis and in Bishop Lavis. Gangsterism is rife in both areas.

Read more: Gang brutality sparks Western Cape festive season fears after 12 killed in two ‘heinous’ mass shootings

The shootings have led to questions about the quality of the Crime Intelligence unit and what action the South African Police Service (SAPS) will be taking to prevent such slaughter.

Critical questions about collusion between the cops and gangs remain unanswered.

Daily Maverick previously reported on the landmark judgment by Judge Daniel Thulare in the High Court in Cape Town on 17 October 2022, who boldly warned that there was evidence suggesting that gangsters and police officers were colluding in the Western Cape.

Such suspicions have been doing the rounds for decades, but Judge Thulare’s judgment solidified rumour into an official and legal document.

After Daily Maverick broke the news of the judgment in 2022, the SAPS said it was investigating the judge’s findings.

Read more: 28s gang ‘capture’ top Western Cape cops, prosecutors’ lives at risk – judge sounds corruption alarm

In 2023, national police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe told Daily Maverick that SAPS head General Fannie Masemola had studied a report on the judgment.

Despite this, no information has since been released to the public about the SAPS investigation.

Read more: The shameful silence about probes into Judge Thulare’s findings of gangster and police collusion

Daily Maverick asked the SAPS and the Ministry of Police for an update on the case last week, but no response had been received by the time of publication.

So, we do not know what has happened – or may yet happen – to the police officers implicated in Judge Thulare’s judgment.

The Mobsters


The judgment focused on the Mobsters, a faction of the 28s gang. An accused in the case before Judge Thulare was a former police officer, Alfonso Cloete, who was alleged to have been recruited into the ­Mobsters and placed in the taxi industry, where managers “were threatened by the gang to accept him, failing which they would be killed”.

Cloete denied being a gangster.

Judge Thulare said in his judgment that police investigators had monitored Cloete since 2011, which suggests that police bosses had been aware of this matter and the broader situation since then at least.

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

The most scathing section of the judgment reads: “The evidence suggests not only a capture of some lower-ranking officers in the SAPS, [but also] suggests that the senior management of the SAPS in the province has been penetrated to the extent that the 28s gang has access to the table where the provincial commissioner of the SAPS in the Western Cape sits with his senior managers...”

The “table” is a reference to meetings in which the provincial commissioner leads his team in the study of crime, develops crime prevention strategies and decides on tactics and approaches to safety and security.

Judge Thulare continued: “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.”

Political undertones


At the time the judgment was delivered, the SAPS fell under the previous ANC-led national government. When Daily Maverick reported on the judgment, the DA’s premier in the Western Cape, Alan Winde, reacted.

He announced that the province’s ombud for police, retired cop Oswald Reddy, would investigate whether there were links between gangsters and police officers. It is not clear what came of this.

In November 2023, the Western Cape government issued a statement saying it was “deeply worrying” that, more than a year after Judge Thulare’s judgment, Ipid had not provided an update on its investigation.

Read more: ‘Horrific deep-rooted’ links between gangsters and cops will be investigated — Western Cape Premier Alan Winde 

Winde said in the statement: “I am gravely worried that Ipid does not share our sense of urgency… We as the Western Cape government, however, are taking this matter very seriously and have taken steps to help the SAPS eradicate corruption.”

The City of Cape Town and possible collusion


This year the provincial government has not yet issued a statement on the progress of the Ipid investigation. Its silence may be linked to what started developing in Cape Town in September 2023, when Ralph Stanfield, the man accused of heading the 28s gang, was arrested along with his wife, Nicole Johnson, in a case that initially involved car theft and fraud charges. The matter, despite denials of criminality, had grown considerably over the ensuing months.

Read more: City of Collusion — the gang suspects and ex-officials accused of crafting Cape Town’s real ‘construction mafia’

In September 2024, Malusi Booi, the former DA mayoral committee member (MMC) for human settlements in the City of Cape Town, was arrested in a separate case. He is accused of being involved in a tenders-for-cash enterprise involving more than R1-billion, which the State alleges was headed by Stanfield and Johnson.

Speaking outside the Cape Town Magistrates’ court after proceedings in the Stanfield-Johnson case, the City’s MMC for human settlements, Carl Pophaim, told journalists: “Let us make no mistake that… these broader investigations are part of one singular thing – an attempt to capture [the Department of] Human Settlements and construction in Cape Town.”



Judge Thulare also used the word “capture” in his judgment when he referred to the possible connection between junior and senior police officers and the 28s gang.

Together, the sets of accusations suggest the gang was involved in capturing Cape Town’s housing and construction sector, as well as the police.

Arrests have been made in the human settlements matter, and the accused will have a chance to give their version of the events – so the public is likely to be kept in the loop about this.

As for Judge Thulare’s assertions about the potential capture of the Western Cape’s police, it looks as though we will have to wait to hear what has come of the investigations.

In the meantime, unchecked gang shootings will inevitably end more lives. DM

Caryn Dolley’s explosive new book, Man Alone: Mandela’s Top Cop – Exposing South Africa’s Ceaseless Sabotage, is now available to buy. The pre-order phase has officially closed, and the title is now available in bookstores and at the Daily Maverick Shop.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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