The takedown of a terror group destabilising SA’s new democracy

Few who lived then will forget that mid-winter night of 4 August 1996 when notorious Hard Livings gang leader, Rashaad Staggie, was publicly lynched and set ablaze with petrol by a People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) mob outside his house in Salt River.

The early democratic years and the giddy build-up to 2000 with its expected Y2K bogeys were as dangerous as they were thrilling. In the aftermath of apartheid, malevolent currents still swirled.

Standing in the crowd that night in August was David Africa, his head wrapped in a scarf to conceal his identity, hanging back to watch the heavily armed Pagad crowd rile itself up.

Standing alongside Africa was “Martin”, a cop from the old order. Africa, who had been assigned to the “extremist desk” in Crime Intelligence, had seen this violence coming. On 2 August, two days before the march on Staggie’s house, he had written an intelligence alert.

Pagad and Qibla, a Shi’a and Sunni Islamist political and paramilitary organisation founded by Ahmed Cassim in 1979, had for some time participated in increasingly violent rhetoric accompanied by bloodshed.

Cassim, who died in 2023, had been incarcerated on Robben Island at the age of 17 and spent most of his adult life behind bars. He was an inspiration to many of the militants who rose through the organisation’s ranks.

The Staggie hit and the assassination of 24 drug dealers by Pagad led to the group’s classification as a violent vigilante group with a militia, the G-Force, intent on spreading terror across the city.

Two days before the attack on Staggie (his twin brother, Rashied, was murdered in 2019), Africa made a request to the then Western Cape Crime Intelligence management for police reinforcements. The warning was ignored.

The story in full

A vehicle in flames after an alleged Pagad attack on the home of a suspected gangster, Richard ‘Pot’ Stemmet. (Image: Screenshot of photo by Benny Gool)

Hard Livings gang leader Rashied Staggie (twin brother of the murdered Rashaad) at the Wynberg Magistrates’ Court where he was facing charges of murder in 2007. (Photo: Peter Abrahams / Gallo Images)

Members of Pagad demonstrate outside an alleged drug dealer’s home in Athlone, Cape Town, in 1996. Rashaad Staggie, co-leader of the Hard Livings gang, was killed during a Pagad demonstration in Salt River. (Photo: Anna Zieminski / AFP)

Lives on the Line (African Perspectives Publishing) is Africa’s insider account, an intelligence operative’s coming in from the trenches to excavate an important, overlooked thread in a saga that threatened to destabilise South Africa’s young democracy.

In his 2023 account of the times, Breaking the Bombers, Mark Shaw, director of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Criminology and South African National Research Council chair in security and justice, noted “it seems unthinkable that this story has never been told in full”.

Africa is the executive director of the African Centre for Security and Intelligence Praxis, a “think-and-do-tank” specialising in national security and intelligence. He left government employment in 2001.

In her foreword, former minister of state security Ayanda Dlodlo notes that Africa tells this story from “the inner sanctum” of the state security apparatus. The lessons contained in the book, she writes, “are essential food for thought for anyone interested in the development of capable state institutions and the safety of our communities”.

The failure to predict the July 2021 insurrection after Jacob Zuma’s incarceration indicates, she says, a “lack of foresight and political leadership that ignored the warnings [...] from the security community”.

Dlodlo adds that had the capabilities that had been nurtured in hunting down Pagad been sustained, “the likelihood of such a security and political disaster would have been greatly reduced”.

The war ramps up

Between 1996 and 2001, Pagad and its armed wing, the G-Force, ramped up its cloaked campaign of a “war on drugs and gangs” and began targeting state officials and setting off pipe bombs at high-profile civilian targets and synagogues.

A bomb packed with fertiliser went off outside the US Consulate in central Cape Town and contributed, writes Africa, “to a growing sense of helplessness on the part of Cape Town’s citizens”. Businesses were spooked, as were religious leaders.

With South Africa’s democracy still in the “it’s a miracle” stage, tourists and visitors were flocking to Cape Town.

A series of pipe bombs had been set off at the V&A Waterfront, Sea Point, Green Point, Camps Bay, the City Bowl and Bellville. The war had spilled out from the ganglands and into the streets.

Restaurants and bars were targeted, including the gay Blah Bar in the “pink district” in Greenpoint, injuring several patrons who survived and lived with the aftermath.

Then president Thabo Mbeki grew concerned at the lack of police progress and it was into this lacuna that a team of 20 seasoned ANC intelligence operatives entered.

New blood

A key figure in the end result was Jeremy Veary, who was tasked with integrating the ANC’s Department of Intelligence into Crime Intelligence in the new South Africa.

Veary had served time on Robben Island and returned to head up ANC intelligence in the run-up to the 1994 elections.

“Veary,” writes Africa, “a self-described dialectical cop, had the persona of a spy, dressed the part, and was an excellent transmitter of intelligence knowledge.”

Others in orbit were Anwa Dramat; Peter Jacobs; Yasser Splinters; Arthur Fraser, who was the head of the National Intelligence Agency in the Western Cape at the height of the Pagad campaign; Raymond Lalla; and Mzwandile Petros, also an ex-ANC activist integrated into Crime Intelligence in 1995 – he went on to become commander of the covert unit.

Africa, like many of his comrades, brought more than just his talents learnt in the student movement in the 1980s, the ANC underground and his two years of military training in Uganda.

He was from Manenberg – the Manenberg of Dullah Omar, the Manenberg of the Cape Flats riddled with gangs, a working-class neighbourhood where Muslim and Christian lived and continue to live side by side and intermarry. So he knew the terrain, its customs, its protocols.

Operation Lancer

It was the intervention of then national police commissioner Jackie Selebi that finally got the ball rolling. In a 15-minute private meeting with the commissioner, Africa was given the green light.

“Selebi had two questions and asked that I be frank when responding. His first question was to the point. ‘Can you guys solve the Pagad problem in the next six months?’ ”

Africa writes that his reply was slightly less direct: “Yes, we can, Chief, but we must be allowed to operate unhindered by the rest of the organisation [Crime Intelligence].”

Selebi instantly understood and asked what resources the team needed.

And so Operation Lancer was born, “not just a top-down directive, but a collaborative effort that had evolved through a series of conversations”.

Africa writes it was “the first counterterrorism operation in post-apartheid South Africa conceived [...] and almost entirely commanded by officers from the former ANC intelligence and military structures”.

The operation had been conceived with Tim Williams, Dramat, Petros and Lalla during a bush retreat at Maleoskop in Limpopo. At that point Steve Tshwete, who had spent time on Robben Island with Qibla’s Cassim, was police minister.

Dynamic and complex

Tshwete had been of the opinion that the team should target the Qibla leadership, but Africa knew the relationship between Pagad and the militants was both dynamic and complex. It was this understanding that would crack the campaign of terror.

Operation Lancer was distinguished from previous police operations by the implementation of a single, integrated command of all the SAPS antiterror intelligence teams.

Investigators were now all available to the new covert unit, extending their range and including a mobile unit that kept everything “in perpetual motion”.

“Wherever the G-Force conducted their affairs, literally and figuratively, they could be sure that we’d be making aggressive attempts to hear, watch and track them,” writes Africa.

First the bombers needed to be taken down, followed by the senior G-Force members who facilitated the organisation’s security council decisions. Then individuals could be targeted.

As Africa points out, espionage is the second-oldest profession – after prostitution. Let’s just say a high-up Pagad leader was having multiple affairs and encounters. As a highly religious man, exposure would have shattered his reputation.

The break came after some crafty tagging of this suspected bomber. But we won’t give away any spoilers.

There are also moments of lightness: Africa shares a hilarious account of how he was once forced to report back to Selebi while laying on the carpet of his office because of his aching back.

Although many who served in this unique operation found themselves politically compromised in future years, their contribution at the time should be acknowledged.

The success of the operation came with the arrest of the bombers who had planned another attack in Durbanville, which involved a bomb hidden in a flower pot outside the Keg and Swan.

Members of the covert unit took considerable risks while trying to take down Pagad, enduring disruptions to their lives. Africa’s family was targeted while his wife at the time was pregnant. All made sacrifices for the cause, which, in the end, was successful.

His book, says Africa, is “the story of an intelligence team that whittled away at Pagad until we brought down a seemingly invincible colossus. It is a narrative of six intense and dangerous years spent at the coalface of the struggle to neutralise Pagad, bring its terrorist campaign to a swift end, and bring the perpetrators of murder and mayhem to justice.”

Africa writes, as he says, from the perspective of “a black intelligence officer who grew up in a community ravaged by the very gangs and drugs that Pagad used to legitimise its violence”. DM

Lives on the Line is available in all bookshops.

Pagad leader Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim, who, along with four others, was accused of the murder of gang leader Rashaad Staggie. (Photo: Esa Alexander / Gallo images)

Key figures

Pagad

Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim – central to the formation of Pagad. Jailed from December 1999 to 2000

Ali “Phanton” Parker – part of the early leadership

Abdurazak Ebrahim – spiritual leader

Achmat Cassiem – founder and leader of Qibla and initially active in the vigilante group

Aslam Toefy – public relations face of Pagad

Ebrahim Jeneker – the group’s best assassin, imprisoned in 2002, released in 2020 and imprisoned again in 2022

Moegsien Barendse – Pagad’s Grassy Park cell leader

Law enforcement

Former South African police chief Jackie Selebi. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla / Foto24 / Gallo Images)

Anwa Dramat  (Photo: Theana Calitz / Foto24 / Gallo Images)

Mzwandile Petros. (Photo: Brendan Croft / Foto24 / Gallo Images)

Arthur Fraser. (Photo: Felix Dlangamandla / Netwerk24)

Jackie Selebi – South African Police Service (SAPS) national commissioner

Arno Lamoer – senior SAPS officer

Leonard Knipe – notorious anti-apartheid detective and head of the serious violent crimes unit in Cape Town

Bennie Lategan – detective who worked on Pagad cases

David Africa and Anwa Dramat – members of the undercover operations unit that blew open the organisation

Mzwandile Petros - then head of the undercover operations unit

Frank Gentle – bomb disposal expert who disarmed a device outside the Keg and Swan in Bellville in November 2000

Arthur Fraser – head of the National Intelligence Agency in the Western Cape from 1998 until 2004

Barry Gilder – deputy director-general of the National Intelligence Agency