’Tis the season to be vigilant as Cape Town crime world seethes

22 Oct 2023

It is widely expected that violence will surge during the festive season, as recent arrests and assassinations have created an underworld void that rival gangsters will battle each other to fill.

Cape Town’s criminal landscape is changing, and it could see an upsurge in violence over the festive season. Power shifts in organised crime circles have traditionally happened towards the end of the year.

Reasons for this include thugs trying to cash in on the holidays and the police intensifying crackdowns, which sometimes leads to pivotal arrests being carried out.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Surge in mass shootings in Cape Town – At least 26 people killed in four weeks

This year, the situation in Cape Town stands out, though, with groups of men previously accused of fighting each other to control private security operations in the city centre awaiting trial on a multitude of charges. Some of the accused are in state custody, others are not.

The recent arrests of suspected 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield, along with his wife Nicole Johnson and three other men, could also affect what happens in Cape Town’s underworld.

‘Exiled witnesses’

Gang wars predicted amidst multiple arrests Ralph Stanfield and his wife Nicole Johnson outside a Cape Town court on 16 September 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: Jaco Marais/Gallo Images/Die Burger)

Stanfield and Johnson have denied the accusations against them, which include car theft and fraud.

Earlier this month, speaking about Stanfield’s arrest, Police Minister Bheki Cele said investigations in the case “should … reveal and dismantle [an] organised crime syndicate in the province”.

Cele commended the police for arresting “an individual who has been a subject of numerous police investigations around other crimes that too have brought fear and violence to the people of this province … to such an extent that potential witnesses were forced into exile due to threats and intimidation”.

Read more in Daily Maverick: ‘I want to empty a gun in his head’ – chilling affidavit about alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield’s ‘plans’

Police sources told Daily Maverick that recent shootings and arrests had created space in the organised crime world for new kingpins to emerge. When a group or gang is perceived to be weakening, rivals try to take advantage.

Flashpoints of violence

Gang wars predicted amidst multiple arrests There was a heavy police presence at the Cape Town Magistrates' Court on 2 October 2023 where Ralph Stanfield appeared on extortion charges. (Photo: Shelley Christians)

Recent incidents point to a surge in organised crime tensions in Cape Town. They include:

The assassination of Shafiq Naser on Wednesday, 4 October. He was gunned down while driving in the suburb of Milnerton. Abdel Fattah Nassar, a man identified as his cousin, was killed in October 2022 in a shooting outside the Grand Africa Café & Beach in Granger Bay. The venue has been reported in the news as a target for extortionists;

The shooting and wounding of a 59-year-old man outside the venue on 7 September; and

Gunshots fired at a private security vehicle in Sea Point on 28 August.

Other shootings, as well as allegations the State has made in various court cases, paint a picture of Cape Town’s crime landscape and how it is changing.

In the 1990s, rumoured intelligence operative Cyril Beeka dominated nightclub security in the city. Some police officers viewed these security operations as fronts for apartheid cops and even for the Sicilian Mafia to conceal crimes such as extorting money from venues in exchange for “protection”.

Among the people Beeka was associated with was Jacques Cronje, who has become a serial “arrestee” in Cape Town.

Beeka was assassinated in March 2011, which led to significant shifts in the city’s organised crime landscape.

Men from Cape Town, including Mark Lifman, Andre Naude and Jerome “Donkie” Booysen, once named in court as the alleged leader of the Sexy Boys gang, subsequently surfaced as pivotal figures in private security operations in the city centre.

In 2017, suspected organised crime kingpin Nafiz Modack and others linked to him allegedly tried to muscle out the so-called Lifman group.

This led to the arrests in December 2017 of Modack and four other men: Cronje, Ashley Fields, Carl Lakay and Colin Booysen, Jerome’s brother.

They faced accusations that they had used intimidatory tactics and extortion to secure a security contract at the very same Grand Africa Café & Beach.

The investigating officer in the extortion case against Modack and his co-accused was Lieutenant Colonel Charl Kinnear.

During the bail application phase of the Modack-focused extortion case, Kinnear described Modack’s alleged activities as mirroring Beeka’s.

In 2018, Lakay was murdered.

About two years later, Modack and his surviving co-accused – Cronje, Fields and Colin Booysen – were acquitted in the extortion case involving the Grand.

Seven months later, in September 2020, Kinnear was assassinated outside his Bishop Lavis home in Cape Town.

Modack and Cronje are now among a group facing charges in connection with Kinnear’s murder.

Gang wars predicted amidst multiple arrests Andre Naude at the Western Cape High Court on 21 October 2022. (Photo: Jaco Marais/Gallo Images/Die Burger)

Widespread legal crackdowns

Modack was arrested in the Kinnear assassination case in April 2021 and remains behind bars.

Lifman, Naude and Jerome Booysen also face criminal charges, but are not in custody.

They were arrested in a crackdown that started in December 2020 and face charges in connection with the August 2017 murder of international drug smuggler Brian Wainstein, also known as “the Steroid King”.

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

Gang wars predicted amidst multiple arrests Mark Lifman outside the Western Cape High Court on 21 October 2022. Lifman and his co-accused face charges in the murder of Steroid Kingpin Brian Wainstein. (Photo: Gallo Images/Die Burger/Jaco Marais)

This loops back to Ralph Stanfield.

He was wounded in a shooting in Johannesburg in July 2017, a month before Wainstein’s assassination. The State suspected that Lifman had financed the attempt on Stanfield’s life and the murder of Wainstein.

Lifman and his co-accused are expected to go on trial for the Wainstein killing. Modack and his co-accused are likely to be tried for alleged crimes that include Kinnear’s assassination.

The recently instituted case against Stanfield and his co-accused is still developing.

So, all individuals linked to nightclub security rackets in Cape Town are in the courts’ sights. Stanfield’s case looks like it will unfold in parallel.

With several suspects behind bars or out on bail while facing active court cases, other figures wanting to muscle in on criminal arenas they perceive those individuals to control could now move in.

Such manoeuvres almost certainly will spark more violence in Cape Town. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.

DM168 21 October 2023

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