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‘Political hit squads’ and spying — repeat accusations point to dirty tricks gouging into Cape Town’s security

‘Political hit squads’ and spying — repeat accusations point to dirty tricks gouging into Cape Town’s security
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - JANUARY 27: Fadiel Adams leader of the: National Coloured Congress at Cape Town Central Police Station on January 27, 2025 in Cape Town, South Africa. This comes after Safety and Security MMC JP Smith and Energy MMC Zanthea Limberg's offices were raided by police on Friday. (Photo by Gallo Images/Brenton Geach)
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
2 Feb 2025
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DA Cape Town mayoral committee member JP Smith recently said a police raid on his office was the work of a ‘political hit squad’. This term has been used before in DA-ANC spats and exposes the underbelly of the city’s political-policing arenas.

Accusations of spying and character assassination plots have been exchanged between the DA and the ANC in Cape Town for years. Beneath this are unsettling realities – that either the spying and smear campaign accusations are true, or that they are false and those peddling them are lying. Either way, these scenarios are worrying and distract from where focus should be – delivering services to residents.

But now smear campaign claims are back.

Read more: Smear campaign or justice? Behind the police raid on DA’s Xanthea Limberg and JP Smith

There has been recurring friction between the City of Cape Town and the South African Police Service (SAPS), mainly because the DA runs the city, whereas the national police is widely viewed as an ANC remit.

On 24 January, police raided the offices of the DA’s Cape Town mayoral committee members, Xanthea Limberg and JP Smith. Limberg leads the energy portfolio and Smith heads safety and security.

It is understood that the raid was linked to an investigation involving tenders worth about R1-billion, into suspects including the City of Cape Town’s former human settlements mayoral committee member, Malusi Booi.

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

Booi was arrested in 2024 and faces accusations that he allegedly accepted gratifications from 28s gang boss accused Ralph Stanfield, who is facing a string of other criminal charges, and in exchange used his influence over tenders. The Booi and Stanfield court cases are continuing.

In response to the raid, Smith said: “I have been tipped off that some political actors have been working on a smear campaign and have mobilised a political ‘hit squad’ against me. I was alerted to this some months back… I have been reliably informed that senior ANC politicians have been briefed by members in the SAPS.

hit squads Former mayoral committee member Xanthea Limberg during a media briefing in Cape Town on 14 May 2018. (Photo: Gallo Images / Netwerk24 / Jaco Marais)



“In addition, a concerned person has sent me recordings of conversations that, even just at face value, [reveal] a political conspiracy against me by political office bearers, a private security company and possibly… members in the SAPS, yet [it is] undetermined at this stage if these are past employees or still serving in the SAPS… today.”

According to News24, Limberg said rogue police officers and senior politicians were colluding to defame her because of her proximity to Smith.

Several sources have told Daily Maverick the initial investigation that led to the raid on Smith and Limberg was based on sheer crime fighting.

‘Spygate’ and ‘hit squad’


Smith’s stance, meanwhile, of being the target of a political hit squad, fits into a theme that has cropped up before. An example is the so-called spygate saga.

In December 2007, the Western Cape’s premier was the ANC’s Ebrahim Rasool. He set up a commission of inquiry, headed by Western Cape High Court judge Nathan Erasmus, to look into issues including whether the City of Cape Town used public funds to spy on political opponents.

That was known as the first Erasmus Commission and the DA’s Helen Zille, who was Cape Town’s mayor at the time and is now its Federal Council chair, hit back.

Booi Malusi Booi, then mayoral committee member for human settlements, during a media briefing at the Cape Town Civic Centre on 2 March 2023. (Photo: Gallo Images / Misha Jordaan)



“We argue [it] is an illegal and unconstitutional political hit squad,” she said.

A second Erasmus Commission of Inquiry began and this saga landed in the High Court in Cape Town, culminating in a 2008 judgment that sided with Zille’s stance.

A few years after the “spygate” saga, the ANC pushed ahead with accusations in that same vein, targeting Zille, who by then was the premier of the Western Cape. The accusations involved Paul Scheepers, who was a Crime Intelligence policeman in the province.

Daily Maverick previously reported that the DA awarded a tender in 2010 to Scheepers’s private investigations company, Eagle Eye Solutions Technology, to debug cellphones. At the time, the provincial government suspected its members were under surveillance by the State Security Agency. But the ANC claimed Scheepers was spying on its members for Zille, which she denied.

Read more: SAPS and the City (of Cape Town) — turning tables of suspicions and suspension

In a 2015 newsletter Zille said: “[The ANC’s] shenanigans were exposed before, when the Erasmus Commission was revealed for what it was – a political hit squad against a DA-led government. We will expose them again.”

The Scheepers matter bled into accusations of dodgy policing. In an affidavit from 2015, Scheepers claimed that three of his informants “reported to me on various occasions that a high-ranking officer in the SAPS regularly attends meetings with very well-known drug lords and criminal gang bosses… in the Western Cape. The senior officer, on several occasions, received huge amounts of money for the exchange and delivery of drugs.”

Dan Plato at a People’s Movement For Change media briefing at the Waves Theatre Café in Cape Town on 13 February 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / Misha Jordaan)


‘Informants’ and public funds


This is where former head of detectives in the Western Cape Jeremy Vearey seems to fit in. Vearey, who has a deep ANC background, previously said Crime Intelligence officers, along with other police officers, were conspiring with politicians and gangsters to tarnish his name because of investigations he was conducting as a cop.

About a decade ago, Vearey also accused Dan Plato, who was then the Western Cape’s community safety MEC, of running a smear campaign against him.

In the run-up to that, three self-styled informants had made claims against Vearey. This seemed to tie into what Scheepers had alleged about three of his informants reporting on a high-ranking police officer linked to gangsters.

In the case of Vearey, one of the three “informants” was Pierre Wyngaardt, who in 2012 and 2013 made claims, some outlined in an affidavit, including that Vearey was working with 28s gangsters.

Wyngaardt’s credibility later came into question when he told a reporter that he was “guided by angels” and that he had once been a top spy who worked for the National Party and then the ANC.

In 2015, another “informant” emerged – Pierre Theron, known for peddling claims to journalists, made allegations including that Vearey was working with Czech criminal Radovan Krejčíř.

Read more: Murdered in Worcester – ‘gangster informant’ who claimed Madonsela was target of hit

In 2016, Seveno Hendricks, a transgender gangster who went by the name Queeny Madikizela Malema, deposed an affidavit about a murder and in it said Vearey was close to a suspected gang boss.

(Hendricks, previously convicted of crime and whose credibility was questioned, was killed in a shooting in the Western Cape town of Worcester on 13 January.)

Wyngaardt, Theron and Hendricks had also apparently been in contact with Plato.

In a 2016 affidavit, Vearey had stated: “It appeared to me that the MEC’s office was conducting intelligence operations in which informants were being paid from public funds for information gathering…

“I view the false statements as having been made by persons linked to gangs with a view [to] discrediting me.”

Plato denied running a smear campaign against Vearey.

That – the orchestrating of a smear campaign – is what Smith is now claiming he is the victim of, and that ANC politicians and possibly past or current police are involved in it.

Fadiel Adams, leader of the National Coloured Congress, at the Cape Town Central Police Station on 27 January 2025, after the raids on the offices of JP Smith and Zanthea Limberg. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)


Criminal complaints


Accusations of political spy games and character assassination plots have clearly gone in both directions between the DA and the ANC, and other parties have inevitably popped up around these issues.

In the Plato and Vearey saga, the ANC in the Western Cape lodged a criminal complaint against Plato in 2016, alleging that he had defeated the ends of justice. Nothing came of that.

Read more: Zille calls defeating the ends of justice charge against her in JP Smith office raid ‘absurd’

Now, nearly a decade later, in the Limberg and Smith saga, the National Coloured Congress’s Fadiel Adams has lodged a criminal complaint of defeating the ends of justice against Zille, because it appeared she was aware of the investigation into the duo, implying a police officer had leaked this information to her.



Zille, however, in posts on X, labelled the complaint as “absurd” because she said it was “JP Smith who tipped me off”.

This all means that police resources in Cape Town are again – legitimately or not – being directed towards politicians.

And in Smith’s case, he is involved with safety and security in a city where suspicions of gangsters colluding with politicians and police officers are rife. DM

Caryn Dolley’s explosive new book, Man Alone: Mandela’s Top Cop – Exposing South Africa’s Ceaseless Sabotage, 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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