‘If ever I encounter a bad guy, I’d want it to be me’ – murdered Mark Lifman

‘If I am the so-called bad guy I’ve been made [out] to be then if I was ever to encounter a bad guy, I would want it to be me.”

This was an informal message from Mark Lifman to this journalist in May 2018 in response to a question about whether he wanted a particular stance of his documented.

On that day, Lifman had also messaged roughly what he had always insisted: “Someone was driving a smear campaign against me… 

“But to be honest all they did was create a name for me which has its pros and cons. I try to focus on making use of the pros.”

Mark Lifman at the Western Cape High Court on 21 October 2022. Lifman and his co-accused faced charges in the murder of ‘Steroid King’ Brian Wainstein. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)

Lifman, well known in areas including Cape Town’s Sea Point, seemed to try to portray himself as a virtuous victim to cover gnarly gangster accusations.

He tried to distance himself from the notion, created via State investigations, that he was a white-collar conduit connecting gritty street-level gangsterism to affluent business interests.

Basically, the notion that he was a thug disguised in a suit.

Lifman’s appearance may actually have worked in his favour.

Strongly built, neatly parted or cropped dull blonde hair, defined jaw, scrutinising eyes – a visual epitome of a “golden boy”.

When in court, he looked very neat and almost lacquered, like the clean-cut character idea he constantly tried to convey.

‘I want the bad guy to be me’

There is now somewhat haunting irony to Lifman’s words, especially these: “If I was ever to encounter a bad guy, I would want it to be me.”

On Sunday, 3 November 2024, he encountered a “bad guy” or “bad guys” – they set him up and Lifman, 57, was gunned down outside a shopping mall in the Western Cape town of George, while out on bail in a murder trial.

He died in the parking lot. 

The Mark Lifman murder scene outside a mall in the Western Cape town of George. Lifman was gunned down on 3 November 2024. (Photo: Supplied)

Two suspects, Johannes Jacobs and Gert Bezuidenhout, were arrested for Lifman’s shooting hours later.

Read more: Mark Lifman murdered — the life and alleged crimes of the controversial Cape businessman

They briefly appeared in the George Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, 5 November, and are expected back again next week.

And so, organised crime produced yet another tragic tongue-twister  – murdered murder accused Mark Lifman’s alleged murderers are expected back in a magistrates’ court.

Eyewitness News reported that Western Cape police commissioner Thembisile Patekile said one of the accused was previously a member of the police’s special task force.

Suspect and a security company

Patekile was also quoted saying “he’s been away from the police for some time and what we believe is that he’s worked for” a prominent security company in Cape Town.

Daily Maverick will not yet divulge the name of the company as it did not emerge during official court proceedings.

Lifman had known about that security company because of his previous involvement in the sector.

Several sources with knowledge about policing and Cape Town’s organised crime circles are surprised at the seeming simplicity of Lifman’s murder – a shooting in which no one else was wounded.

There was no great fight. 

No grandiose exit or rattling display like some other high-profile assassinations and attempts in South Africa. 

Remember the apparent attempt on Czech criminal Radovan Krejcir back in 2013 when remote-controlled gun barrels hidden behind a number plate were triggered?

Read more: Czech mate: Radovan Krejcir finally runs out of luck

For someone with a big, bold personality who could roll out sarcasm thick and fast, adding flourishes of confidence to his persona, the way Lifman died seems muted. 

It was almost as if it backed his insistence that he was not the criminal kingpin he was accused of being, yet it belied the shuddering and reverberating impact his assassination is likely to have on South Africa’s organised crime circles.

In any event, the mere fact that Lifman was fatally shot seems to hint at realities he denied.

No protection

Lifman had been known to move around with bodyguards.

As a journalist, I witnessed some of this several years ago when he was released from custody in another matter that he believed had been orchestrated against him.

Stoic private security officers had been stationed outside the court building awaiting his exit.

https://youtu.be/HGZNDHXBOxE?feature=shared

It seemed strange that Lifman, on Sunday, was walking around without protection less than 24 hours before he was set to appear in the Western Cape High Court where he was on trial for a murder that played out in Cape Town back in August 2017.

A past paved with legal action led to Lifman being central to that trial – and which led to his murder. 

Killings by bullet were like cornerstones in his life.

Taxis, Porsches, pies, and property

Lifman had a long and complicated history of brushing up against the law.

My book The Enforcers – Inside Cape Town’s Deadly Nightclub Battles, details some of his background.

It says: “Mark Roy Lifman … was referred to by close associates as an astute businessman who’d climbed the money-making ladder rung by rung, from owning some taxis and a pie shop at Cape Town’s central train station to becoming a major property mogul.

“He’d also dabbled in the fashion industry.”

Lifman’s endeavours stretched further.

He was involved in a “gentleman’s club” – The Embassy – in Cape Town’s city centre that was slimy with rumours about, well, slimy antics.

There were also constant suspicions that aside from clothes, houses and entertainment, Lifman had a heavy hand in the drug trade. 

Lifman himself, in an April 2017 informal conversational message to me, countered: “I am anti-drugs, always have been. My drug is property… nice clean honest profession.”

Some sources said he helped police in the early 1990s, gaining them access to, for example, taxis when they needed, and this is how Lifman got close to certain cops and government figures.

Others suspect Lifman was an informant and had ties to dodgy aspects of state security.

This was never confirmed. 

Lifman’s take on his relationship with the South African Police Service was: “I’ve only ever been close to one person in the police, and he was never in a powerful enough position to have any influence over the system.”

In 2001, the Jockey Club of South Africa banned him from horseracing over claims involving the intimidation of jockeys.

Four years later, in 2005, Lifman was charged with indecently assaulting seven boys. 

It was these charges that seemed to irritate him the most – once or twice cautioning me as a journalist to avoid that part of his past.

In between, there were killings.

Lifman’s associate Yuri Ulianitski, murdered in 2007. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger)

Lifman’s associate Yuri Ulianitski, also known as The Russian, was murdered in a shooting in Cape Town in 2007.

Read more: REVEALED: A shooting that sparked a decade of underworld murders

Uliantiski was shot in his vehicle. His four-year-old daughter was also killed and his wife was wounded.

Life, meanwhile, continued for Lifman and in 2009 he was acquitted of the indecent assault charges.

There was more murder.

Read more: Hit on a hitman – how the Ernest Solomon murder may affect two ‘unsolved’ underworld killings

Two years later, in 2011, Cyril Beeka, a rumoured apartheid state operative, who had a stronghold over bouncer operations in Cape Town’s city centre, was assassinated.

Murdered underworld boss Cyril Beeka. (Photo: Supplied)

In the 1990s Beeka headed a security outfit in Cape Town, which some police officers maintained was an extortion racket linked to the Italian mafia.

Some police investigators had also said Beeka had used mobs of men to force his “security” services on establishments.

Bouncers

Beeka’s March 2011 assassination was seismic and left a void in nightclub security operations centred on Cape Town.

Enter Lifman and two of his Cape Town associates Andre Naude and Jerome “Donkie” Booysen.

Lifman later told me he never was involved in bouncer operations for financial benefit, implying he became involved out of his compassion and care for security services.

The month after Beeka was murdered a new company, Specialised Protection Services (SPS), was registered. Lifman, Naude and Booysen were connected to it.

But things did not go well.

Three months after its official launch, SPS was shut down in February 2012 because the company had allegedly not been registered with the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority.

https://youtu.be/K0KUeAWtuVY?feature=shared

 

Lifman and Naude were subsequently arrested and faced 313 counts in this saga.

I reported on parts of their trial in the Cape Town Regional Court and recall that Lifman had seemed bored – nonchalant – about the proceedings.

He also seemed a touch smug, almost like a child who knew that even though they had behaved a little badly and got a resultant smack on the hand, they would still get a sweetie.

To counter his apparent boredom, Lifman, his big bulky suit-encased frame folded on to a stark wooden court bench, sometimes played what appeared to be the Candy Crush Saga game on his cellphone.

Read more: Security bosses acquitted on 313 charges

In 2015 he and Naude were cleared of the security-related charges and countered that the State had targeted them for ulterior motives.

Lifman later insisted it had been a “malicious prosecution.”

By this point, it seemed forgotten that the company at the centre of those legal proceedings, SPS, sprang out of a crevice left by one the most pivotal organised crime assassinations in South Africa – Beeka’s – which Lifman’s own may now eclipse.

Picture of philanthropy

Between all that, the idea that Lifman was a do-gooder was publicly peddled.

A 2013 press release-style story on an online business site said that a “fashion retailer” was helping “Western Cape school kids” via donating school trousers worth R250,000.

An accompanying image showed a smiling Lifman and another adult standing behind a group of young children in school uniform. 

Lifman was quoted as saying: “My businesses are committed to supporting economic uplift[t]ment in the Western Cape and I wanted to do something to assist schoolchildren in the area, as I strongly believe that education is the key to reducing social inequality and a major driver in social and economic development.”

Read more: Dual legacies – Peter Jaggers’ death sparks divided opinions on gangsterism in Cape Town

Perhaps this was an attempt on his part to wipe away memories of his indecent assault case that ended in his acquittal, and genuinely do some good.

Or perhaps the motives behind the philanthropic photograph were more aligned with what is contained in a 2022 Western Cape High Court judgment in a gang-related case.

It says: “It is also a known strategy used by gangsters to buy food parcels for the community members and also pay their electricity bills in areas where the gang members are residing. 

“This is done to portray gang members as good people to the community.” 

Money matters and State Capture

Lifman clearly had money.

He had enough petty cash to buy trousers for thousands of needy school children.

And some of his associates spoke of his preferred luxury vehicles (once a black Porsche Cayenne) and how he matured from wearing shorts and T-shirts (an associate once snidely claimed Lifman had to be weaned off wearing specific shorts with a cucumber and tomato print) to premium brand clothing.

That, paired with the multiple properties he owned, meant he had big money.

But as the song goes, “mo money mo problems”.

Lifman had money problems in the form of issues with the South African Revenue Service (SARS).

About a decade ago, SARS launched an inquiry into his tax affairs and he was subsequently hit with a R388-million tax bill.

Lifman had countered that the initial tax inquiry into him had been based on intelligence gathered by what became known, via certain media reports in the Sunday Times, as the SARS rogue unit.

Read more: Don’t hold your breath waiting for State Capture culprits to end up in orange overalls

But it is now known that SARS was a casualty of State Capture, and the “rogue unit” was a narrative concocted to implode it.

SARS was effectively targeted to trip up investigators following money trails leading to crooks and crooked politicians.

So Lifman’s protestations that the SARS rogue unit had been after him seemed to support the State Capture agenda.

It did not help that around the time of his taxman troubles, in 2014, a photograph of him at former president Jacob Zuma’s birthday rally in Athlone, Cape Town appeared in the Sunday Times.

Zuma, of course, was still president of South Africa when State Capture had boomed.

Web of crimes

In 2017, Lifman’s name again surfaced in matters relating to private security.

Nafiz Modack in the Western Cape High Court on 6 May 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)

The State, during court proceedings focused on related matters, had alleged that in March that year, organised crime suspect Nafiz Modack, who had known and been aligned to Beeka, took on Lifman.

Accusations were along the lines that Lifman rocked up at an auction of one of Modack’s properties in Cape Town’s northern suburbs and friction between the duo ignited.

Read more: The Enforcers – Inside Cape Town’s Deadly Nightclub Battles

Of that incident, Lifman once recalled in a message response with two laugh emojis that his associate, Naude, was not even wearing closed shoes during that altercation, “he was in plakkies [flip flops].”

According to police investigators, the skirmish at the auction sparked clashes between the so-called Modack group of men and the so-called Lifman group, which comprised Lifman and alleged associates.

'Steroid King’ Brian Wainstein was murdered in 2017. (Photo: Interpol)

In August 2017, as nightclub security ructions unfolded, international steroid smuggler Brian Wainstein, also known as the Steroid King, was shot dead in his bed in his home in the upmarket Cape Town suburb of Constantia.

Read more: Charges against murdered ‘Steroid King’ reveal a global web of crime cases

At the time of his killing, he had been wanted in the United States.

Lifman was later among those arrested for Wainstein’s murder and it is for this that he was on trial for at the time of his death.

He denied guilt.

The Wainstein case spirals out and tangles with several other accusations, sub-accusations, suspects and suspicions, composing a terrifying picture of the Western Cape.

https://youtu.be/PGJQ2DYAgjw?feature=shared

 

Among Lifman’s co-accused in the case, who also denied guilt, were Naude and Booysen – the duo previously involved in private security with Lifman.

Mark Lifman, Jerome Booysen and Andre Naude appear at Western Cape High Court on 22 April 2024 in Cape Town. The suspects faced a host of charges, including the Brian Wainstein murder, conspiracy to commit murder, money laundering, conspiracy to incite people to public violence, possession of unlicensed firearms and corruption and obstruction of justice. (Photo by Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)

In the Wainstein case, Lifman had also been accused of conspiring to kill, among others, his alleged rival Modack and ex-Springbok rugby player James Dalton.

Read more: Cape Town cop arrested — and ex-Springbok player James Dalton named as murder target in growing ‘underworld’ case

What became of Modack?

He and his alleged associates are on trial in a separate case focused on the September 2020 assassination of policeman Charl Kinnear.

Kinnear was gunned down outside his home in the Cape Town suburb of Bishop Lavis.

Read more: Nafiz ‘Pablo’ Modack et al assumed aliases from Narcos TV series, high court hears

Modack and his co-accused are being held in custody.

That is unlike Wainstein murder plot accused Lifman, Naude and Booysen who were previously released from custody on bail.

All three, meanwhile, have at different times and in different incidents, been shot.

Defamation campaign claims

If Lifman was to be believed, he was the target of a multi-pronged witch-hunt emanating from the State.

According to him, police investigators targeted him with ulterior motives.

And the South African Revenue Service unleashed a “rogue unit” on him to get hold of his money.

He even had a theory about me.

In earlier years he adopted a mocking and teasing tone when dealing with me.

Once he asked that the word “notorious” stop being used to describe him because he had not been convicted of a crime. 

He was fine with “controversial.”

As accusations against Lifman mounted, his tone changed.

After The Enforcers was published in 2019, he sent voice notes to me.

In one, Lifman says: “Couldn’t you at least find a decent picture? I mean, you write shit, and you put shit pictures in your books. Terrible.”

He did not do anything further.

That changed roughly nine days before his murder.

In a letter of demand delivered to me on 25 October 2024, Lifman’s lawyers said he wanted an apology and parts of The Enforcers retracted.

Two of the parts were from a Hawks officer’s affidavit that was read out during another court case – on public record.

A section of the letter of demand claimed Lifman was on the “receiving end of a campaign of defamatory publications, geared towards bringing our Client into disrepute, authored by you” over 10 years.

That period partially coincides with my work as a journalist covering extensive criminality in the Western Cape, South Africa and beyond.

Targeted

As often happens in the wake of high-profile shootings, many rumours and suspicions are now doing the rounds.

In the case of Lifman, this includes that it may not have been him who was killed and that he faked his assassination to get out of the Wainstein murder trial. 

Another is that the hit was an inside job with someone close to him wanting him out of the picture.

For now, this aspect is speculation. 

What is fact is that a man has been murdered.

Read more: ‘Steroid King’ murder trial postponed after Accused No 1, Mark Lifman, is shot dead

Lifman’s death was confirmed in the Western Cape High Court the day after it happened and during the trial in which he was meant to appear as the main accused.

Based on his various stances over the years, different organs of South Africa’s government have had it in for him.

His letter of demand to me suggests he was of the opinion that I did too, to discredit him.

Lifman had ultimately claimed that all the accusations he faced were false. That he was a victim – never the manufacturer of victims.

A target. 

‘Self-destruct missions’

Lifman indeed became a target.

If what he professed throughout his life, that he was unfairly harassed and discredited, ever turns out to be true, then it means there was an expansive web of smear campaigns against him, and that the state and various unrelated others have a lot to answer for.

But the balance of probability is not on his side, simply because of the vast amount, and the variety, of suspicions and accusations that accrued to Lifman over his 57 years.

And he was an individual paying lawyers to counter different figures from all walks of life whom he believed were conspiring against him.

Read more: How Cape Town’s bloody gang scourge creeps into the city amid surge in deadly shootings

If Lifman’s consistent counterclaims that he was not involved in criminality are false, then his murder may be the culmination of his own doings.

And perhaps Lifman’s words – “If I am the so-called bad guy I’ve been made [out] to be then if I was ever to encounter a bad guy, I would want it to be me” – have come true.

In April 2017, when nightclub security skirmishes began heating up in Cape Town, Lifman messaged me (with two laugh emojis and a cat face): “I believe certain elements are on a self-destruct mission.

“This might just play itself out as it does in nature 

“The strongest lion wins and the old lion wanders off into the abyss

“And the cycle continues.”

Indeed, the cycle continues. DM

This Thursday in Cape Town, journalist Caryn Dolley (author of this article) will be speaking alongside former Anti-Gang Unit boss Major General André Lincoln at the in-person book launch for Man Alone: Mandela’s top cop – exposing South Africa’s ceaseless sabotage. The event, hosted by Rebecca Davis, will take place at Workshop 17 Watershed, V&A Waterfront. Tickets are R120 and R60 for Maverick Insiders. Book your seat here and join this behind-the-scenes discussion.