DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS

The trail of murders and diabol­ical plots behind claims of cop col­lu­sion with
gang­sters

Daily Maverick · 10 Dec 2022 · By Caryn Dol­ley

For more than a dec­ade there have been claims that cops in South Africa’s gang cap­ital, the
West­ern Cape, are col­lud­ing with gang­sters. Now a recent court judg­ment out­lines some of
the rat­tling accus­a­tions and sug­gests police bosses have known about the prob­lem for years.

This is curi­ous, though, because the South African Police Ser­vice (SAPS) only recently
announced it is act­ing on the inform­a­tion.
At the end of Octo­ber it said it was busy study­ing the “ser­i­ous and con­cern­ing” con­tents of
Judge Daniel Thu­lare’s unpre­ced­en­ted judg­ment delivered in the West­ern Cape High Court on
17 Octo­ber.
On Fri­day national police com­mis­sioner Lieu­ten­ant-Gen­eral Fan­nie Mase­mola said a senior
officer was invest­ig­at­ing the mat­ter and “only very few” indi­vidu­als, who were being iden­ti­-
fied, may have been involved in crimin­al­ity.
The judg­ment warns of alleged cop cor­rup­tion linked to hit­men, the taxi industry and drug
deal­ing, issues that police invest­ig­at­ors had already flagged years ago.
It also warns that the lives of pro­sec­utors and state fig­ures who clamp down on gang­sters are
at risk.
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The case focuses on the Mob­sters, a fac­tion of the 28s gang. One of the accused in the case is a
former police­man, Alf­onso Clo­ete, who Thu­lare’s judg­ment alleged was recruited into the
Mob­sters and placed in the taxi industry where man­agers “were threatened by the gang to
accept him, fail­ing which they would be killed”.
Clo­ete denied being a gang­ster. Thu­lare’s judg­ment said police invest­ig­at­ors mon­itored him
from 2011, which sug­gests that cop bosses have been aware of this mat­ter, and the broader
situ­ation, since at least then. That year, 2011, is con­tro­ver­sial in terms of the West­ern Cape’s
gang scene. AmaB­hun­gane repor­ted that back in May 2011 former pres­id­ent Jacob Zuma met
with gang­sters in Cape Town to try to garner sup­port for upcom­ing elec­tions. The ANC in the
West­ern Cape denied it, yet sus­pi­cions to the con­trary per­sisted in police circles.
Based on inform­a­tion, a series of assas­sin­a­tions is linked to the Mob­sters mat­ter that now
forms the basis of Thu­lare’s judg­ment. In May 2010 a sus­pec­ted Mob­sters boss, McNo­lan
Koor­dom, was murdered in Bishop Lavis, a sub­urb in Cape Town known as a 28s gang hot
spot. After­wards there was fight­ing about who would head the Mob­sters. This cre­ated ten­sion,
espe­cially among two men, Mario Snell and Nath­aniel Moses. And so, it was decided that
Snell needed to be elim­in­ated – drugs would be planted on him so that he could be arres­ted,
jailed, then murdered behind bars. Moses allegedly col­luded with a cop to see this plan
through. Thu­lare’s judg­ment, without nam­ing Snell, referred to this: “The police­man arres­-
ted the per­son at the spe­cified date and place for drugs…
“The per­son could not be killed in prison because of secur­ity chal­lenges. It was decided that
the per­son should be bailed out and killed after he was released on bail.”
After his release, Snell’s pur­por­ted allies took him to a she­been in Cape Town where they
killed him – Thu­lare’s judg­ment alleged this was on the over­all instruc­tion of a jailed 28s
gang boss, George “Geweld” Thomas, who wiel­ded influ­ence over the Mob­sters. This was
appar­ently how Snell came to be murdered in August 2011. After Snell’s killing, Moses was
sus­pec­ted of head­ing the Mob­sters. But not for long – he was shot dead in the Cape Town
sub­urb of Strand in Janu­ary 2016.
Later that year reports sur­faced in the media that cops may have been involved in his killing –
an affi­davit sug­ges­ted this – and were work­ing with 28s gang­sters. This is another sign that
police bosses were aware of what was hap­pen­ing.
The saga becomes even mur­kier because former West­ern Cape police­man Jeremy
Vearey, who cracked down on gangs, once claimed that cop col­leagues were col­lud­ing with a
28s gang­ster to dis­credit him and were ped­dling rumours that he was involved in the Moses
murder. Another cop, Charl Kin­near, later told a Cape Town court that Vearey was not among
those flagged for arrest in the case – Kin­near him­self was assas­sin­ated in Septem­ber 2020.
Mean­while, about a year after Moses was killed, Rus­sel Jac­obs, a sus­pec­ted per­lemoen poach­-
ing king­pin who some sources believed was a police inform­ant and chan­nel­ling guns to
Moses, was shot in the Cape Town sub­urb of Blue Downs in early 2017. He died the next day.
Unset­tling stor­ies sur­faced after the Moses and Jac­obs murders: that the Mob­sters and 28s
had cor­rupt cops – pos­sibly even pro­sec­utors – on their side and that some police were fun­-
nel­ling fire­arms to the gangs.
Thu­lare’s judg­ment now adds weight to those the­or­ies. It is unpre­ced­en­ted because it is the
first time a judge has detailed cop and gang col­lu­sion accus­a­tions in-depth in a pub­lic doc­u­-
ment.
Among the many alleg­a­tions is that “mem­bers of the army” were involved “in selling arms
and ammuni­tion to the [Mob­sters] gang … used in … killings, rape and rob­bery”. It also warns
of gang­sters “inter­fer­ing with … the inde­pend­ence of judi­cial officers”. Another damning sec­-
tion says: “The evid­ence sug­gests that the senior man­age­ment of the SAPS in the province
has been pen­et­rated to the extent that the [28s] gang has access to the table where the Pro­-
vin­cial Com­mis­sioner of the SAPS in the West­ern Cape sits with his senior man­agers and
lead[s] them in the study of crime, [and] develop[s] crime pre­ven­tion strategies…
“This includes … access to … reports by spe­cial­ised units like the Anti-Gang Unit [AGU] and
Crime Intel­li­gence, to the Pro­vin­cial Com­mis­sioner.”
Thu­lare’s judg­ment explained that AGU and Crime Intel­li­gence officers repor­ted cases and
projects to the pro­vin­cial com­mis­sioner in the pres­ence of sta­tion, sec­tion and sec­tor com­-
mand­ers.
“Every­one in that meet­ing then came to know which projects the Spe­cial­ised Units were
invest­ig­at­ing against which gangs,” the judg­ment alleged.
“Some in the gangs were agents for Crime Intel­li­gence, the AGU and the gangs. They would
sup­ply inform­a­tion to the gangs about the police activ­it­ies and also sup­ply the police with
inform­a­tion about gang activ­ity.”
The AGU was launched in the West­ern Cape in 2018. pre­vi­ously repor­ted that it was under­-
stood that a sens­it­ive doc­u­ment detail­ing which cops were in the AGU was leaked from within
police ranks. This meant that gang sus­pects could poten­tially see exactly who would be tar­-
get­ing them.
Thu­lare’s judg­ment, mean­while, has sparked two invest­ig­a­tions – one within the SAPS and
another that West­ern Cape Premier Alan Winde ordered the province’s police ombud to con­-
duct. This week Winde announced that the ombud’s invest­ig­a­tion revealed that the con­tents
of the judg­ment were prob­ably true and a frag­ment of a much broader prob­lem.
“What is clear is that this infilt­ra­tion likely extends far bey­ond this par­tic­u­lar case, and also
that dan­ger­ous forces are at play here,” he said.
DM168 sent a query about this to the West­ern Cape police but did not receive a response in
time for pub­lic­a­tion. Thu­lare’s judg­ment was against the former cop Alf­onso Clo­ete and
another accused, Elcardo Adams, who knew each other via the taxi industry. They were
accused of vari­ous crimes includ­ing murder, but denied and dis­puted vari­ous alleg­a­tions
against them. They unsuc­cess­fully tried to get a decision, that they should not be released on
bail, over­turned, res­ult­ing in Thu­lare’s judg­ment. Adams was accused of being the head of the
Mob­sters, which he denied.
Accord­ing to Thu­lare’s judg­ment, Clo­ete was a cop who (it was not spe­cified when) was “dis­-
missed … for bring­ing the police into dis­rep­ute after he was arres­ted for … intim­id­a­tion
charges” relat­ing to the taxi industry. Thu­lare’s judg­ment alleged: “As a known police offi­cial
it was not easy for people to sus­pect him. [Clo­ete] and his vehicle were also used to trans­port
drugs.
“[His] wife had five vehicles registered under her name. Three were her vehicles and the other
two belonged to [his] rel­at­ives who could not register the vehicles in their names as they
worked for gov­ern­ment and could not run taxi busi­nesses.”
Another part of the judg­ment alleged the Mob­sters forced “the taxi busi­ness to admit its
mem­bers into … routes at [gun­point]”.
An ini­tial police project was run against the Mob­sters when Moses was still alive – this would
have been prior to 2016. Dur­ing that project already, cer­tain cops were flagged as work­ing
with the gang. Those cops were not named in court because they were yet to be charged.
Thu­lare’s judg­ment alleged “[they] were work­ing at [the Cape Town sub­urb of] Klein­vlei and
were on the payroll of the Mob­ster gang”. Three of nine Sec­tion 204 wit­nesses (who became
wit­nesses for the State, thereby pos­sibly indem­ni­fy­ing them­selves from pro­sec­u­tion) were
killed while the first police project was run­ning.
“The Mob­ster gang came to know that the [three] made state­ments to the police,” Thu­lare’s
judg­ment said.
“The gang called them trait­ors and scav­engers. They were killed even before the cases were
enrolled.”
Thu­lare’s judg­ment provided some clues as to who the other implic­ated police officers in the
case were. It said Adams denied alleg­a­tions, stem­ming from another sus­pect simply referred
to as V, “that he had mem­bers of the SAPS help­ing the Mob­sters with inform­a­tion”.
The judg­ment alleged: “V men­tioned Van Schalk­wyk at Mfu­leni, Geduld at Blue Downs, who
even used to trans­port drugs with the police truck to prison, and a Cap­tain at Beaufort West,
known as Baard.”
It was not clear what had happened to those officers.
DM168