Shake-up in SA’s gang capital — Latest shooting points to broader Cape Town gang ructions

Cape Town’s organised crime facade has drastically changed in less than a month.

Murders, shootings and arrests have caused shifts, and it is anticipated that some of those incidents will spark even more violence.

Based on some of the individuals targeted – and according to various sources with ties to law enforcement – drug trafficking channels and potentially dodgy elements of private security are being shaken up.

The recent shootings and murders also indicate heightened volatility among gangs in the Western Cape, which is already known as South Africa’s gangsterism capital because of the prevalence of related violence.

So, the festive season in the province may be marked with more gang ructions than usual.

Shooting in 28s stronghold

Suhail Mohamed, aka Mr Zulu, was injured in a shooting in Cape Town on 13 November. (Photo: Supplied)

In one of the latest shootings, Cape Town resident Suhail Mohamed was wounded.

He appears to have been an associate of murdered Terrible Josters gang suspect Peter Jaggers, whose body was found in a Free State river last month.

Mohamed was wounded on Monday, 11 November, in Cape Town’s Netreg – this is where Jaggers lived, and parts of it are known as 28s and Terrible Josters gang strongholds. 

Read more: ‘Colombian cocaine kidnapping’ — how two bound and cuffed Cape Town men were found killed in Free State

The Terrible Josters gang is tied to the 28s.

Mohamed is a prolific TikTok user and he used his account, under the name Mr Zulu, to express condolences following Jaggers’ murder.

Based on photographs, he also attended Jaggers’ funeral.

https://www.tiktok.com/@mr_zulu_za/video/7426036863263100166?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7437009033904932407

Without providing Mohamed’s identity, Western Cape police spokesperson Sergeant Wesley Twigg confirmed to Daily Maverick that a man was wounded in a shooting on Monday.

“Bishop Lavis police registered a[n] attempted murder case for investigation following a shooting incident in Netreg,” Twigg said.

“The victim was transported to hospital in a private vehicle. 

“The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation and no arrests have been made yet.”

Murder and kidnapping case

Exactly one month before Mohamed was targeted, Jaggers’ body and that of his associate William Petersen were discovered bound in a Free State river.

That discovery links to other suspected crimes that occurred in the run-up to the duo being found murdered.

Three months before the discovery of the bodies, Jaggers and Petersen, both from Cape Town, were reported as having been kidnapped in Gauteng in July.

In a TikTok video of Mohamed, the date of which is unclear, he warned: “If I don’t make it home, I have been kidnapped.”

https://www.tiktok.com/@love.all053/video/7436606480222129464

Speaking to the camera, he said: “I’ve got my two guys with me, we are all going to go home, you understand; but I can’t give you much information.”

Mohamed added: “If you mother f****ers are watching, I will not go home to my families”.

That video aside, there were suspicions that Jaggers and Petersen were kidnapped in Gauteng because of their links to a major cocaine consignment that was meant to be collected from Colombian traffickers off Cape Town’s coast earlier this year.

The suspicions, which police have not confirmed, were that they were kidnapped because the cocaine could not be accounted for.

Daily Maverick understands that what happened to Jaggers and Petersen sparked some tensions in the Terrible Josters and the 28s gang.

Jaggers’ murder was viewed as leaving a leadership void in the Terrible Josters, and members of the 28s gang were upset that some of his associates were speaking out about issues linked to him.

Steroid King and gang suspicions

After the bodies of Jaggers and Petersen were found in Free State last month and before the shooting of Mohamed in Cape Town this week, one of South Africa’s most high-profile organised crime suspects was murdered.

Cape Town-based Mark Lifman was shot outside a mall in the Western Cape town of George on Sunday, 3 November.

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

At the time of his killing, he was on trial for the assassination of steroid dealer Brian Wainstein, also known as the Steroid King, who was shot in his home in the upmarket Cape Town suburb of Constantia in August 2017.

Adding an international element to this case, Wainstein was wanted in the United States at the time of his murder, and had previously been convicted of steroid-related crime in Ireland.

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

The Wainstein case has also raised suspicions of local gang involvement.

Aside from Lifman, among those previously arrested for Wainstein’s murder was William “Red” Stevens.

Stevens was reputed to have been one of the most seasoned 27s gangsters in the Western Cape.

Read more: Underworld suspect shot dead – one week before scheduled court appearance in Cape Town for murder

He was assassinated in a shooting outside his home in Cape Town’s northern suburbs in early 2021 while facing charges for Wainstein’s killing.

Suspicions relating to the 28s gang also crop up in the Wainstein matter and loop back to Lifman.

In July 2017, the month before Wainstein was murdered, alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield, of Cape Town, was wounded in a shooting in Johannesburg.

According to the State, Wainstein had believed Lifman orchestrated the attempted assassination of Stanfield.

Private ‘security’ resurfaces

Alleged underworld boss Cyril Beeka was assassinated in Cape Town in 2011. (Photo: Supplied)

As for Lifman, he was involved in various industries, notably private security, parts of which have a controversial history in Cape Town.

In the 1990s, ahead of Lifman’s official entry into the sector, nightclub security in the city was dominated by rumoured intelligence agent Cyril Beeka.

He was assassinated in 2011.

After Beeka’s murder, Lifman, together with his associates Andre Naude, and Jerome “Donkie” Booysen (who are now on trial for the Wainstein assassination and who have denied involvement), became prominent names in private security focused on Cape Town’s city centre.

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

It has before been alleged that Lifman had used strongarm tactics to ensure establishment owners used the security – bouncer services - he offered.

Police investigators previously also alleged that in 2017 organised crime accused Nafiz Modack, an associate of Beeka’s, took on Lifman and his allies to grab control of bouncer operations in Cape Town from them.

This all gave rise to various criminal charges – and according to police officers, violence.

Lifman denied all the accusations against him.

With Lifman now murdered, and his alleged rival Modack in custody because he is on trial for crimes (which he has denied) including the 2020 murder of policeman Charl Kinnear, there is an impression that Cape Town’s nightclub security arena is fair game.

This could see figures keen to dominate it move in.

Read more: Mark Lifman’s murder underscores the ‘grip’ of organised crime on police and private security

In any event, Lifman’s murder has again tethered his name to suspicions of dodgy private security because the two suspects so far arrested in connection with the murder, Johannes Jacobs and Gert Bezuidenhout, have ties to the industry.

Daily Maverick reported recently that Jacobs and Bezuidenhout had provided services to the company PPA Security.

The company has a prominent presence in Cape Town’s upmarket Atlantic Seaboard suburbs and was familiar to Lifman.

Jacobs and Bezuidenhout are expected back in the George Magistrates’ Court next month.

Blurred lines

Organised crime connected to Cape Town is exceptionally intricate.

The Wainstein murder trial was set to resume this week, on Wednesday, 13 November.

Lifman, of course, was not in the dock, and on the same day, in another Western Cape court, his two alleged killers appeared.

Meanwhile, the Wainstein murder case in which Lifman was accused has several offshoots, some stretching to the US, as well as to gang suspicions and to the illicit steroid trade.

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

As for the Jaggers matter and related issues, suspicions linked to those also relate to another country, Colombia, as well as to gangs and cocaine trafficking.

Incidents such as Jaggers’ murder and the shooting of his alleged associate Mohamed this week, as well as court cases playing out in – or linked to – the Western Cape, point to how different types of crime bleed into each other in South Africa’s most gang-ravaged province.

And how that volatility produces even more violence. DM