Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

Gangs, Pagad & the State:
Vigilantism and Revenge Violence in the Western Cape

by
Bill Dixon & Lisa-Marie Johns

Violence and Transition Series, Vol. 2, May 2001.

Bill Dixon is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Criminal Justice, University of Cape Town, and a researcher at the Institute of Criminology.

Lisa-Marie Johns is a former Researcher at the Institute of Criminology.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the people we spoke to during the course of our research for making the project possible. We are also indebted to Brandon Hamber and Piers Pigou for their editorial support, to Elrena van der Spuy for her comments on the report in draft form and to Wendy Meyer for making the contacts that needed to be made. Also, thank you to Wardie Leppan, Project Officer, International Development Research Centre (IDRC), for his ongoing support of, and insight into, the Violence and Transition Project.

This booklet was funded by International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

The Violence and Transition Series is a product of an extensive research project conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) into the nature and extent of violence during South Africa's transition from apartheid rule to democracy. This series comprises a set of self-contained, but interrelated reports, which explore violence across the period 1980 to 2000 within key social loci and areas, including:

While each report grapples with the dynamics of violence and transition in relation to its particular constituency all are underpinned by the broad objectives of the series, namely:

Through these objectives, the Violence and Transition Series aims to inform and benefit policy analysts, government officials and departments, non-governmental and civic organisations, and researchers working in the fields of:

As a country emerging from a past characterised by violence and repression South Africa faces new challenges with the slow maturation of democracy. Violence today is complex, dynamic and creative in form shaped by both apartheid and the mechanisms of transition itself. In order to understand - and prevent - violence during transition in South Africa and abroad an ongoing action-research agenda is required. Through this series the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation offers an initial and exploratory, yet detailed, contribution to this process.

The Violence and Transition Series is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

Work on the project focusing on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was supported by the Embassy of Ireland, the Charles Stewart-Mott Foundation and the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF).

Series Editors
Brandon Hamber
Piers Pigou
Bronwyn Harris

Contents:

Executive Summary

The report begins by setting popular activism against gangsterism and drugs in the historical and social context of the Western Cape. It goes on to provide a short history of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) - as seen through the eyes of the media - since its formation in December 1995. The main body of the report is devoted to the accounts of Pagad's origins, development and current status provided by the nine people interviewed for the research: two senior police intelligence officials, two former gangsters, a prominent member of Pagad, two seasoned observers of the organisation and two anti-crime activists with an intimate knowledge of Pagad and recent developments in the Western Cape.

What emerges from these competing narratives is an extremely complex picture. Defining moments - the death of Hard Livings gang leader Rashaad Staggie in August 1996, the failure of successive rounds of peace negotiations between representatives of Pagad and the security services, a 'shoot-out' in the Tafelsig area of Mitchells Plain in May last year between police and armed 'vigilantes'- are subject to vastly different interpretations.

The concluding sections of the report try to make some sense of the events of the last five years. They trace the origins of gang and vigilante violence in the Western Cape and provide an analysis of Pagad's formation, its development and the evolution of the state's response to it, first as a popular movement, then as a 'vigilante group' and now as an 'urban terror' organisation. The report ends with an assessment of the prospects for reconciliation between Pagad, the State and the gangs and an end to organised violence in the Western Cape.

Origins of violence

The origins of gangsterism, drug dealing and violence on the Cape Flats lie deep in the unique social structure of the Western Cape. Forced removals and other apartheid policies provide a partial but by no means complete explanation for the violence. The history of the people expelled from the inner city and Cape Town's southern suburbs to Manenberg, Hanover Park and Mitchells Plain did not begin or end with the removals. On the contrary, the removals and the creation of new 'coloured' ghettos on the Cape Flats has to be seen in the context of the 'skollie' (young hooligan or law-breaker) tradition of areas such as District Six and the impact, post-apartheid, of globalisation and neo-liberalism on the economy, culture and social structure of the Western Cape.

Many people believe that South Africa's transition to constitutional democracy coincided with a massive upsurge in crime. Whether this is true or not, Pagad's formation in 1995 offered a solution to crime with wide popular appeal. Instead of depending on the uncertain efforts of the state, Pagad called for the empowerment of communities and the mobilisation of popular opposition to gangsterism and drugs.

Pagad's formation

Pagad originated in a network of hitherto disparate and isolated anti-drug, anti-crime groups and neighbourhood watches frustrated by their inability to tackle problems whose roots extended far beyond their individual localities. Predominantly, but by no means exclusively Muslim, Pagad began with a loose organisational structure and an informal, collective style of leadership. It was open to approaches from other anti-crime groups and prepared at least to consider working with the police. Many of the more violent actions taken against drug dealers, such as the attack on Rashaad Staggie in August 1996, were neither planned nor formally sanctioned by the organisation as a whole.

Pagad's development

Pagad's development since these early days cannot be seen simply as the unfolding of a master plan conceived and executed by a small group of Islamic radicals. Rather it has to be viewed as the outcome of the interplay between many internal and external forces - of action by Pagad and its constituent elements and reaction by the State and its agencies in the specific political, social and economic context of the Western Cape.

The state's view of Pagad has changed dramatically over the last four years. From a popular anti-crime movement it has become first a violent, and therefore illegitimate, vigilante organisation and then, since 1998, an urban terror group threatening not just the State's monopoly on the use of coercive force but the very foundations of constitutional democracy. In line with these altered perceptions, the State's response to Pagad has changed from constructive engagement with it to demonisation and repression.

Inside Pagad, the first two years of its existence were critical. Dissatisfaction with the potentially dangerous spontaneity and political incoherence of the organisation's early days grew rapidly in the second half of 1996. So too did concern at the increasingly violent resistance of drug dealers to Pagad's established tactic of marching on their homes and holding mass public demonstrations. Disillusionment with the State's apparent inability to respond to repeated demands for action against the gangsters was also becoming more obvious. These changes coincided with (and may well have contributed to) the burgeoning influence within Pagad of more highly politicised and organisationally experienced elements associated with Qibla and other radical Islamic groups. Together with growing pressure from the State, this in turn seems to have led to a series of changes in Pagad including the emergence of a new leadership, the development of a tighter organisational structure and the adoption of more robust tactics.

Pagad today

Combined with organic changes inside the organisation, the security forces' twin track strategy of rigorous enforcement and demonisation by association (with global Islamic 'fundamentalism'), has succeeded in transforming Pagad from a popular mass movement extending beyond the boundaries of Islam into a smaller, tighter, better organised, but also more homogenous, isolated and defensive group.

When the interviews on which this report is based were conducted in the first half of 2000, security officials and anti-crime activists alike tended to believe that Pagad's days as a mass movement were over. It might continue to have a small, mainly middle class, base in the Muslim community, but its back had been broken by the detention of more than a hundred activists, most of whom would eventually find themselves permanently behind bars.

If, as is widely believed, Pagad also exists as an underground organisation structured into autonomous cells for the purposes of military operations this is as likely to be the consequence of increased State repression as the realisation of some sinister, fundamentalist master plan.

Pagad and urban terror

It remains unclear whether Pagad is responsible (and if so, to what degree) either for the assassination of more than a dozen leading gangsters in 1998, or for the wave of bombings that has hit the Western Cape since the beginning of that year. Certainly the organisation's attitude towards the two kinds of violence differs markedly. Studiously indifferent to the elimination of gang leaders, Pagad has repeatedly and publicly condemned attacks on what may be termed civilian targets.

Bombings and shootings have continued since this research was completed in the late autumn of 2000. Government ministers have been quick to blame Pagad - and Pagad alone - for attacks that include the shooting of Wynberg magistrate, Pieter Theron, and the bombing of targets in Constantia, Gatesville, Observatory and central Cape Town. It is impossible either to prove or disprove such claims on the basis of this research.

All that can be said is that, in the course of the interviews for this research, respondents offered many different explanations for the continuing violence (ranging from the assassination of leading gangsters to the bombing of the Planet Hollywood and St Elmo's restaurants), who was behind it and what the motivation of the perpetrators might be. Among those held responsible were gangsters settling old scores or fighting for new turf, rogue elements connected to the security forces seeking to undermine the credibility of national or provincial government, and anti-gang militants whose methods Pagad either condones or condemns depending on the softness of the target.

Cycles of violence and the prospects for reconciliation

The current cycle of violence in the Western Cape is closely if sometimes indistinctly related to earlier cycles. Contemporary events can only be fully understood in the historical context of (for example):

The prospects for breaking the current cycle of violence to prevent it spiralling out of control seem bleak. Mutual distrust and antipathy sour relations between (even former) gangsters, the State, Pagad and other anti-crime activists. Yet the alternative to some form of reconciliation process - still more rigorous enforcement action - is equally unpromising.

Preventing violence: the way ahead?

Reducing levels of violence in the Western Cape cannot be achieved by winning any 'war' against crime. In the short term, there is no practical alternative to constructive engagement between all those stuck in the current impasse of attack and counter-attack, crime and reaction - gangs, police and anti-crime groups. Over the longer term, something must also be done to tackle the roots of violence in the political economy of gangsterism and drug dealing and their devastating effects on economic and social life in neighbourhoods across the Cape Flats.

Introduction

Background

The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) commissioned this research from the Institute of Criminology (IoC) at the University of Cape Town. It forms part of a larger programme of research by CSVR on transition, violence and reconciliation in South Africa. The focus of this study is vigilantism and revenge violence in the Western Cape and its association - real or assumed - with the activities of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad).1

In drafting this report we have sought to concentrate on CSVR's interests reflected in the funding proposal (Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 1998) for the broader project of which this research forms part. As we understand them, and as they seem to apply to this particular piece of research, these concerns can be summarised as follows:

Following on from this, CSVR also wishes to test three general hypotheses in relation to transition, violence and reconciliation in South African. These propositions can be summed up thus:

  1. Although the nature and form of violence changes during periods of transition from authoritarian to democratic rule, the legacy of past political violence means that its extent does not.
  2. The impact of reconciliation strategies such as truth commissions will be limited unless the changing nature of violence is recognised.
  3. There is a significant relationship in historically violent societies between victimisation and violent offending - many violent offenders are themselves the victims of violence, and many victims are also perpetrators.

Against this background the Institute of Criminology undertook to:

The research

Our approach was to concentrate on Pagad and its various manifestations as a popular movement against gangsterism and drugs, a vigilante group and an urban terrorist organisation. Our aim was to go behind the often lazy generalisations and glib superficialities of the (now extensive) media coverage of the organisation to get a sense of how Pagad sees itself, and is seen by others who have had dealings with it.

In accomplishing this we faced the usual constraints of limited funds and a limited timeframe of 18 weeks within which to finish the project. Moreover, we were also confronted with the extremely delicate task of negotiating access to organisations - gangs, the police and intelligence services and Pagad itself - that are not naturally open to the researcher's critical gaze, and discussing with them matters, literally, of life and death. Our integrity as researchers and the confidentiality of the research process was therefore of the essence throughout.

Inevitably perhaps the somewhat ambitious targets we set ourselves at the outset proved hard to achieve. Arranging interviews with Pagad and the gangs was more difficult and took far longer than we had anticipated. Nor were we able to talk to the range of people we had initially hoped to interview. Pagad, for instance, were prepared to arrange for us to talk to an official spokesperson, but it soon became obvious that we would not be able to canvass a range of views about the organisation from the inside.

In the time available to us we had to identify interviewees and arrange interviews either through our own contacts or those of colleagues at the Institute to whom we (as ever) are extremely grateful for their help. We therefore make no claims that our sample of 9 respondents is representative of the population of security officials, Pagad members, reformed gangsters or anti-crime activists in any strict sense. However we do believe that the stories they told and the views they expressed are not atypical of the particular constituencies from which they are drawn.

Methods

A total of 8 interviews involving 9 individual respondents were conducted for the research. Respondents included a spokesperson for Pagad, two anti-crime activists (one broadly sympathetic to Pagad, the other more critical of it), two reformed gang members (interviewed jointly at their own request), two police officials, and two independent observers.2 In an ideal world we would have liked to have spoken to a much wider range of people directly involved in Pagad and in the gangs but - as many have found before us - real life rarely lives up to the expectations of eager researchers.

Interviews were conducted by Lisa-Marie Johns (Bill Dixon was also present on three occasions) and varied in length from three-quarters of an hour to twice that. All but one of the interviews was in English (the other was mainly but not exclusively in Afrikaans) and took place either at the Institute of Criminology or at the respondent's workplace. Again with one exception (where a contemporaneous note was kept) all the interviews were tape recorded with the consent of the interviewee and have been transcribed in full.

The report

This report reflects CSVR's concerns and our constraints in some important ways. Firstly - though we use media reporting of events as the basis for the chronology with which the report begins - we have tended to rely for the most part on the primary interview data collected specifically for this research rather than secondary material accessible to anyone with access to a library and an internet connection. In referring to this material we have sought to maintain respondents' confidentiality by attributing direct quotations to individuals in the following way '[Quotation … (Rn, date of interview)]'.

A second point is that the data we collected does not reveal a single truth about the events of the last 5 years in the Western Cape, how they relate to earlier cycles of violence, and how attempts at what may broadly be termed reconciliation have failed. On the contrary it reflects multiple truths - truths that may be easy to dismiss as partial and subjective but which appear substantial and convincing to those who believe in them.3 As observers with not much more than eight interviews, a large pile of newspaper clippings and (in L-MJ's case) a long-term research interest in the subject to go on it would be arrogant of us to seek to arbitrate between these truths. Thus our aim here is to do no more than present these multiple truths as honestly as possible and then to use these narratives as we will call them as a basis for some necessarily tentative answers to the questions about violence, prevention and reconciliation with which CSVR is concerned.

This report begins with an attempt to set vigilantism and revenge violence in the Western Cape in its historical context. We then present a short chronology of events since Pagad's launch in 1995. This chronology is intended as an anchor for the narratives and analysis that follow. In an area where even the most apparently trivial happening can become invested with massive significance and subjected to numerous incompatible interpretations, we try to distinguish between fact, speculation and opinion in a section based mainly on media reports that tend to be an unhelpful mixture of all three. Some of the disparate threads in the competing narratives offered by Pagad, the reformed gangsters and the State are pulled together in the next section of the report where we deal more directly with the formation and development of Pagad, its current status, the connection between present and past cycles of violence, the impact of and prospects for reconciliation, and the lessons to be learnt for the development of violence prevention strategies and the reform of policing and criminal justice. A concluding section then sets out to summarise the evidence we have collected in so far as it relates to CSVR's three hypotheses and ends with some suggestions about the future direction that the process of reconciliation might take in the Western Cape.

Context And Origins

A research report of this nature is not the place to attempt to unravel the complex and controversial aetiology of violence, gangsterism and the drug trade in the Western Cape. A wide variety of explanations is already on offer. From the point of view of criminological theory most consist of an eclectic mix of ideas with neo-Mertonian notions of anomie and Chicago School social disorganisation theories particularly prominent. All are leavened with ritual references to the pernicious legacy of apartheid and some hand-wringing about the shortcomings of States in transition.4

Criminologically unsatisfactory though these accounts may be as explanations for the extent and persistence of violence and gangsterism, it is hard to improve upon them within the confines of this study. At the risk of muddying the waters still further what we present in this section is a distillation of the main contextual factors lying behind the all too familiar problems of gangsterism, drugs and vigilante action as identified by the people we spoke to in the course of this research.

Demographic difference: what is to become of 'die bruinmense'?

Even if they did not make the point explicitly, all our respondents were clear about one thing: they, and we, were talking about gangsterism, drugs and vigilantism in a very specific demographic context: the so-called coloured population of the Cape Flats. The Western Cape is, of course, one of only two provinces with a coloured majority (the other is the Northern Cape). According to the 1996 census 54% of the province's 3.9 million inhabitants are coloured and around a third of these are Muslim (Haffajee, 2000). As we shall see, the distinctive demographic profile of the Western Cape with its substantial white minority (20.8%) and relatively small black/African population (20.9%) looms large in the minds of those who, like the reformed gangsters we spoke to, see 'die bruinmense' (the brown people) as doomed by their origins to a marginal existence - not white enough in the eyes of the old apartheid government, not black enough for the new.

Ghettos built on sand: the legacy of grand apartheid

That the Western Cape is so demographically distinctive is no historical accident but the deliberate consequence of the social policies of grand apartheid. The lower middle and working class coloured ghettos of the Cape Flats that extend from Mitchells Plain on the shores of False Bay through Lavender Hill, Manenberg, Hanover Park, Heideveld, Bonteheuwel and Elsies River to Kensington and Brooklyn in the north are a product of the Cape's long-standing status as a coloured labour preference area combined with the waves of forced removals that saw non-white people bulldozed out of their homes in District Six and ejected from the southern suburbs of Newlands, Claremont and Wynberg.5 The social dislocation of forced - often repeated - removals to purpose built ghettos lacking both basic communal amenities and local sources of employment took its toll on people whose existence on the social and economic margins of white South Africa had always been precarious. Accounting for the initial popularity of Pagad as the 'saviours' of many a gang-ridden township neighbourhood, one observer had this to say:

One needs to understand that the people involved here really [are] mostly the coloured community, and these were the people removed from District Six who have been dumped in Bonteheuwel and these places which were really grounds for the growth of social evils, particularly gangsterism and drugs. So one would expect … that these people would welcome [a group like Pagad] and I think they had tremendous support amongst the ordinary people (R5, 10 April 2000).

Another respondent also talked at some length about the impact of the removals on the informal networks of communal welfare and social control, built around the mosque and the Imam, that had operated in District Six and elsewhere.

That infrastructure was, I think, dramatically broken during the apartheid removal. I don't think people actually ever got together. A lot of Muslims still think nostalgically of 'this is how we used to do things' but in actual fact that is not the reality. [O]ne can speak about the apartheid removals and you know that … as the people moved out into the townships they still paid allegiance [to] where they moved out from, like Muir Street or mosques in Woodstock. So they would still go there on Eid or on a special occasion, but there is no community left there - only the memory of the community that used to be (R6, 4 April 2000).

Traumatic though the removals were, all the blame for the gradual collapse of traditional mechanisms of social control cannot be laid at the door of the apartheid planners. Asked about the role of Imams in providing counselling and support for drug users in the immediate pre-Pagad years, this observer also pointed to other, more recent, challenges to traditional ways of dealing with deviance.

I don't think that [the traditional, mosque-based system] was working throughout. It wasn't working sufficiently. It's based on very small types of societies. You basically have a community, a mosque, the Imam at the head of the mosque and everybody being loyal and obedient or least paying allegiance to the mosque. That model actually goes back to the nineteenth century … and I think the problem we … faced at the end of the 1980s [was] that the mosque system was not sufficient, partly because of the fact that the community [was] growing very big and we have a much larger society than the small little communities living next door.
In many cases Muslims continue to speak about their … counselling systems around Imams but in reality they don't often work, partly because their techniques are outdated - they haven't kept up with the times as it were, they haven't kept up with the different socialisation of the person. … [F]or example if a woman [has] problems - drug problems or other social problems … the kinds of solutions they offer … people might not reject them but in principle they don't think they're sufficient. So often the kind of solution they would say is, 'You always have to be around Muslims. You must pray regularly'. Or 'Women must accept the leadership of their husbands or the authority of the husband'. But [people] are not prepared to take these kinds of solutions … they used to work before, but nowadays they don't work (R6, 4 April 2000).
Islam: a faith divided?6

As these extracts suggest, the Muslim communities of the Western Cape are not - and probably never have been - bastions of religious orthodoxy and political unanimity. Indeed one respondent saw the 'Pagad phenomenon' as a skirmish in a larger battle for the very soul of South African Islam dating back well over thirty years between those for whom the distinction between religion and politics was meaningless and others whose commitment to the liberation struggle owed little to their religious faith. When the struggle against apartheid reached its height in the 1980s these differences became obvious:

Then there was the big start with deliberations - in the 1980s - [about] the formation of the United Democratic Front as to whether Muslims should now actively participate in the liberation struggle on the basis of the religion as they understand it comprehensively now [as a way of life, with its own political agenda]. And it was a very, very intense debate and that is where the [Muslim Youth] Movement split, for instance. [O]ne view was that no, they should not [participate] - they should first of all 'islamise' the community, get their understanding right, their thoughts right. Then there were others [names himself and two well-known public figures] who said 'No. We are South African. We need to get involved in things like that'. And we parted ways there … we parted ways (R5, 10 April 2000).

In effect he argued that the 'Pagad phenomenon' had to be seen in the historical context of a long-drawn out struggle within the Cape Muslim communities between the traditionally conservative, and studiously apolitical, leadership of the Muslim Judicial Council, individual charterists who took up the politics of liberation and radical Islamic groups inspired by the revolution in Iran who, though active on the margins of the anti-apartheid struggle, preferred political Islam to constitutional democracy as their ultimate goal.7

The politics of nationalism

Intertwined with these tensions within Islam is the uniquely fractured political tradition of the Cape. Though rarely referred to directly by our respondents, competing strains of nationalism - the racial nationalisms fostered under apartheid and writ large in the policies of the (old) National Party and the new (somewhat ambiguous) African nationalism of the mainstream liberation movements - are reflected in fault lines running through the coloured population of the Cape.8 In the ebb and flow of democratic politics individuals have found it relatively easy to make the transition from one tradition to the other. Committed tricameralists have become leading lights in the ANC. Yet, for the most part, the urban working class coloured vote has remained stubbornly loyal to the (now New) National Party/Democratic Alliance (NNP/DA) as its most dependable bulwark against the dangers of black majority rule. As a result the Western Cape remains - two general elections into South Africa's new democracy - the only province where provincial government provides an institutional base for the politics of opposition. Thus, tension between the two traditions - between an NNP/DA-led provincial administration and a national government firmly in the hands of the ANC - remains built into the political architecture of the Western Cape.

The catalyst: crime, gangsters and drugs

It is against this infinitely complex and dynamic demographic, social, and political background that Pagad emerged in 1995. But - and here again this seemed so obvious to our respondents as to be almost unworthy of comment - the catalyst for its emergence was crime or, to be more specific, the widespread popular perception that, along with liberation, had come licence and lawlessness. Whether either crime in general or the particular kinds of crime - violence, drug dealing and so on - associated with gangsterism really did increase during the transition of the early 1990s is a question that will probably never be answered to the satisfaction of criminologists with a professional distaste for official statistics and a nose for a moral panic.9 Nor is there overwhelming evidence that levels of fear of crime took off over this period.

Yet, whatever the criminological sceptics might say, crime was clearly regarded by enough people as a big enough problem for the simple message of the group's name - People Against Gangsterism and Drugs - to resonate with large numbers of people across the Cape Flats. As one cautious observer of Pagad's sudden rise to prominence put it, popular support for a group prepared to 'beat the drum' against gangsterism and drugs was 'massive'. With the family, the mosques and the other institutions of civil society apparently incapable of resisting the gangsters and the drug dealers, and the State unable (or unwilling) to act against them, the time was ripe for an organisation prepared to confront the problem head on, without compromise, and without fear of the consequences of confrontation. How Pagad emerged and what happened to it is controversial and forms the subject matter of the next two sections.

Chronology

Any chronology of an organisation that has attracted widespread media interest from the day it was established, must be selective. What we have tried to do here is not just to pick out the main events of the last four and a half years, but to give some sense of the controversies, allegations and counter-allegations that have swirled around Pagad, the gangs, the State, and the interaction between them, since the end of 1995.

1995
1996
1997

Increasing violence on the Cape Flats is attributed to inter-gang conflicts, as well as attacks and counter-attacks involving both the gangs and Pagad. The media report further divisions in Pagad.

Many religious leaders move to distance themselves from Pagad.

Community radio station 786 is found guilty of biased reporting and accused of inciting people to violence. An article in a British newspaper alleges that the Islamic Unity Convention (IUC) is behind the formation of Radio 786 and is using it to promote Qibla's radical political agenda (Financial Times Online, 16.8.1996).

Late in the year the police launch Operation Recoil to curb the escalating violence involving gangs, drug dealers and anti-crime groups.

1998

A string of prominent gang members are killed in drive-by shootings in the first quarter of 1998. Among the dead are Moeneeb Abrahams, Leonard Achilles and Ivan Oliver of the Hard Livings, as well as Katy-Ann Arendse and Faried Davids of The Firm.

1999
1999 is the year of South Africa's second democratic elections.
2000
You can only fight crime if you have a willing, able and unselfish community together with a willing, able, unselfish and non-corrupt police. The two in isolation can't do [it]. We believe it needs to be a combination of the two. But if you have the individual, the one or the other, it's not going to work (R4, 6 June 2000).

As a statement of a community-based organisation's commitment to partnership with the police this is hard to fault. Yet the person who made it represents a group that has come to be associated - not least in the minds of their potential partners, the police - with bombings, assassinations, armed vigilantism and urban terrorism. The question is, how did this happen?

Pagad's story

Like it or not - and Pagad itself certainly does not - the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs have become the focus for any discussion of revenge violence and vigilantism in the Western Cape. It makes sense then for us to start with the organisation's own account of its formation and development using, wherever possible, its own words drawn either from the detailed interviews undertaken for this project or from the Pagad website.11

Formation

Pagad's organisational autobiography begins with its formation out of a network of hitherto disparate and isolated anti-drug, anti-crime organisations and neighbourhood watches operating in the coloured communities of Kensington, Salt River, Wynberg, and Surrey Estate. The initial nucleus of Pagad consisted of no more than a dozen or so activists from small local groups frustrated by their inability to tackle problems that had roots extending far beyond their individual neighbourhoods.

[G]angsterism and drugs is such a big problem … it doesn't stop in the Western Cape, it goes South Africa-wide, it goes Africa-wide, and it goes world-wide. You have a snowball's chance of opposing … you've got no chance of opposing drug dealing [at neighbourhood level]. And that was exactly what the neighbourhood watches were up to. Yes we can say they were doing a reasonable job in terms of stopping petty criminals - and they themselves identified drug dealing was the reason for the petty criminals' existence - but they didn't have the capacity to do anything about it. Because … the localised neighbourhood watch would have the localised gangsters that would attack them if that was all they were.

The impetus behind the formation of Pagad was thus the realisation that drug dealing was not a problem that could be fought street by street or neighbourhood by neighbourhood by isolated local organisations. By coming together as Pagad, these local groups and individuals sought to empower individual citizens, families and communities by creating and mobilising a critical mass of popular support for action against gangsters.

[T]he comfort zone that the individual drug dealer had … was because they were actually made to feel comfortable by their immediate neighbours and simply because, even if the neighbour rejected - or in their hearts rejected - the drug dealer, the neighbour would … during a passage of time, be cowered into apathy because they know that this is a drug dealer - he's doing bad things - but I can't do anything about it. And that was what existed. [N]ow Pagad's aim at the beginning, and Pagad's first step, was to say to those individuals, 'Let us draw the line between drug dealers and the community who do not want drugs and gangsterism'. Now, believe it or not, that was the most important first mind-shift that needed to happen in communities … that no longer [are] we going to co-exist with drug dealers and say the drug dealers are part of our community and we've got to accept it. The attitude was going to be that we draw the line, 'You are the drug dealer and we are the community and we don't want you'.

In essence Pagad set out to reaffirm and police communal boundaries by empowering the good and excluding the bad. Its aim was to ensure that there was no place, no 'comfort zone', for the drug dealer or the gangster in the good community.12 But to achieve this people had to be prepared to make a public stand against drug dealing in their neighbourhoods.

[T]he only thing you needed to do was to take the initiative to let other people know that there are more people feeling the same way. And that was essentially the reason why Pagad would take to the street, go and announce to the drug dealers that we the community want you to stop with your drug dealing so that the drug dealer can't say that he has the blessing of the community. And the aim of this rolling action which actually happened … twice a week, sometimes thrice a week, was to go to all these [different] areas and say, 'All these people reject you the drug dealer. What say you?' And that was what Pagad believed was the most important part of the campaign, to empower people to say you are the drug dealer and we are the community. But if you didn't have that it doesn't matter what else you do, you're not going to be able to solve the problem of drug dealing.

Marching in numbers on a drug dealer's house was intended to affirm the so-called right-thinking majority's rejection of drugs and convey in symbolic terms their desire to expel the dealer from their community. Dealers and their families were confronted with stark - often painful - choices: stop dealing, stop associating with dealers, rejoin the community, or get out.

[T]his drawing of the line [between the community and the drug dealers] resulted in people having to take a decision. Am I with the community or am I with my family? [I]f … a person in my family is a drug dealer, I have to make a choice: I have to either be a drug dealer or I have to be part of the community. And the second aspect on that same score is that the drug dealer was given his choice: Do I want to be a drug dealer, or a destroyer of the community, or do I want to be a builder of the community?'

Development
Early days: 1995/6

Throughout much of its first year of operation Pagad marched against a succession of drug dealers across the Cape Flats from Hanover Park to Lentegeur (Mitchells Plain), and in Athlone, Wynberg and the Walmer Estate in Woodstock.13 At the end of August they marched on drug dealers in Paarl while the organisation's Gauteng branch took to the streets in Lenasia. At this early stage the structure of the organisation seemed rudimentary.

[W]e had the situation where … 30 000 people crammed into a stadium [for a meeting] and the next day people decided no more Pagad - [if] the leadership decided they're not going to organise another mass meeting - everybody would … grumble, 'When is Pagad going to have [another] meeting?' But … there was no infrastructure to make it happen, to continue anything, because it was ad hoc, it was loose. There were thousands of people, but there was no structure.

Three figures, Ali 'Phantom' Parker, Farouk Jaffer and Nadthmie Edries, were particularly prominent in Pagad in the early part of 1996 and are referred to on the group's website as having served as Chief Commander, Chief Co-ordinator, and Head of Security respectively.14 However, it seems as though their position as leaders was relatively informal and their hold over Pagad's membership considerably less secure than their titles might suggest. As a local anti-crime activist close to Pagad at the time remarked, the high media profile enjoyed by these figures did not necessarily reflect their status inside an organisation anxious to avoid the development of anything resembling a cult of personality.

[T]he one thing about the way they operated was there was no particular leadership because they felt that Pagad - and this is what they stated openly and they [said] this over and over - … that the individual was not important, the organisation was important … . So … you couldn't say that one [was] the leader … (R1, 15 May 2000).15

Nor, despite some inflammatory comments by Chief Commander Ali Parker about declaring jihad or holy war on the gangsters, did Pagad have any political agenda beyond the elimination of gangsterism and drugs.16 Although some of its activists were also members of radical Islamic groups such as Qibla, Pagad was - and remains - a broad-based group with no political programme beyond the 'eradication of drugs and gangsterism from society'.17

Defining moments: death of a gangster

To the national and international media the defining moment of these early days was the death of Rashaad Staggie. A leading member (along with his brother Rashied) of the powerful Hard Livings gang, Staggie was brutally lynched in London Road, Salt River on the night of 4 August 1996. The incident was reminiscent of the 'necklacings' of the apartheid years and was widely presented in the media as symbolising the escalating violence that threatened to engulf South Africa's new democracy.

For Pagad, however, other events appeared at least as important as the gangster's death: the breakdown in negotiations with the then Justice Minister, Dullah Omar, and the delayed but hysterical media coverage that followed a march on his Rylands home on 6 March; the government's failure to respond to Pagad's repeated requests for firmer action to be taken against drugs and gangsterism; the shooting on 7 August of a Pagad marcher by gangsters who had identified him at a protest meeting in Bridgetown the previous evening; the first signs of State enforcement action against Pagad as Parker, Jaffer and Edries were charged with sedition; the erection of road blocks on the freeway to prevent Pagad members in cars getting on to the Walmer Estate to deliver an ultimatum to a well-known drug merchant, Nazier Kapdi, on 22 August; and the meeting at Habibia mosque on 29 September which signalled a final parting of the ways between Pagad and its three most prominent members.

Pagad matures: 1996/7

How Pagad see events unfolding in the years that followed is less clear. The historical record on the group's website ends with an account of the meeting in the Habibia mosque and we were not able to look at its subsequent development in any detail during our interviews. What we offer here and in the next two sub-sections is therefore a necessarily somewhat impressionistic account of the general trajectory of Pagad's development based on its spokesman's reaction to the issues we were able to cover in the course of our conversation.

The causes of the Parker-Jaffer-Edries triumvirate's demise are complicated. Parker's repeated and very public complaints that Pagad had been taken over by Qibla, which was committed to overthrowing the government in furtherance of some hidden, fundamentalist political agenda, were one obvious cause of the split. To those who stayed with Pagad after 29 September, Jaffer had also become something of a loose canon, flying around the world on unknown missions and issuing statements to the media without consulting the organisation he claimed to represent.18 Underlying these grievances - and implicit in much of what we were told by our interviewee - seems to have been the feeling that Pagad had outgrown the pragmatic populism of the triumvirate. At the same time these so-called leaders had begun to see themselves as bigger than the organisation and self-promotion as more important than the fight against gangsterism and drugs. Flouting the principles of collective leadership could not and would not be tolerated.

Another significant development - also implicit in our discussion with Pagad - was a growing defensiveness in the organisation's outlook during this period. In the first few months of Pagad's existence marches were mainly peaceful affairs. But it was not long before the gangsters fought back.

The community knew who [the drug] traders were. So [Pagad] would march to a guy's house and then just give him a warning - stop with your nonsense or the people will judge you. Obviously that became a problem — they went to people, they gave warnings, but of course some people retaliated … some drug dealers, whoever, retaliated. That is where the first confrontations … took place (R1, 15 May 2000).

The fatal attack on Faizel Ryklief following a protest march against the Americans gang in Bridgetown is an obvious example of the dangers that went with Pagad's original tactics of march-and-confront. Pressure from the State also mounted during this period as the government's attitude hardened from one of cautious engagement (evident in the abortive talks between Pagad representatives and Minister Omar in the early months of 1996) to public opposition in the form of police accusations that Pagad had become 'just another gang' (Cape Argus, 20.12.1996). Marching on well-armed drug dealers and taking part in mass meetings suddenly became less attractive. With gangsters and the State respectively targeting members of Pagad for assassination or incarceration, carrying a weapon and wearing a mask began to look like elementary precautions.

[W]hen you [look] at the marches in the beginning, people were walking the streets … 5 000 at a time. The stadium was filled with people.19 But everybody could cover their faces.20 And there [were] a whole load of pros and cons to it. But the one big thing was that people wanted to do something. But the reality is that you're not going to a soccer match. You're going to a place where you are rejecting gangsterism and drugs. You can close your face and show your numbers. But if you open your face your picture is going to be in the newspaper.

Defining moment: Cape Town International, December 1996
One critical incident during this period was a Pagad-organised protest outside Cape Town International Airport which led to the charge - endorsed by the President's Office - that the people against gangsterism and drugs had themselves become gangsters. Pagad's account of the events leading up to this demonstration and the State's reaction to it illustrates the extent to which relations between the two had deteriorated within the 12 months following the organisation's foundation in December 1995. The background to the demonstration was a meeting between representatives from Pagad and various criminal justice agencies at which the chairperson, Western Cape Attorney-General Frank Kahn, had suggested that if Pagad wanted to do something about drugs it should focus its attention on entry points such as Cape Town International. Taking Kahn at his word, Pagad promptly arranged a demonstration outside the airport only to be told not to go near the place by then Minister of Transport, Mac Maharaj, and President Nelson Mandela. Pagad's spokesperson captures their perspective on the issue:

Would we be doing justice to the community by listening to Mr Nelson Mandela or Mac Maharaj when in fact it is proven that these drugs come in here? We said, 'No - even at the risk of the profile of the organisation - we need to do what is right because if we succumb to pressures from individuals on one aspect, then we might as well pack up'. And that was where Pagad decided we are going to go ahead with out protest. It was legal … and we [were] going ahead. The fact that we were labelled anti-State or whatever was basically one of the things that they used against Pagad in order to tell people this is bad news for you. And many people turned away from Pagad. But in essence the record speaks for itself again.

Seen from Pagad's perspective the whole thing had been little more than an elaborate set up. One moment a senior government official was advising them how to target their protests more accurately, but moments later a senior minister, and the President himself, condemned them as a threat to national security. By portraying them as gangsters and 'anti-State', and as dangerous people to be associated with, the government set out on the road to confrontation with Pagad amidst an atmosphere of mutual distrust and suspicion that poisons the relationship to this day.

The Terror: 1997/8

The years 1997 and 1998 were bloody ones. In a sombre review of the year's events on the Cape Flats the New Year's Eve, 1998, edition of the Cape Times reported that a total of 202 people had died in the violence of the previous 12 months (Damon and Davids, 1998a; 1998b).21 Just below the masthead on the 'Insight' page that carried the report a montage of gravestones recorded the violent deaths of 11 gang leaders. Among them were Katy-Ann Arendse and Ernie 'Lapepa' Peters of The Firm, Ian Oliver of the Hard Livings and, the grandfather of them all, Ismail 'Bobby Mongrel' April. Another report on the same page recorded the recent 'crossfire deaths' of four year old Sedicka Hendricks of Surrey Estate and Chrystal Abrahams, aged seven, of Ocean View.22 How did Pagad see such events? What is their view of the terror that swept across the ganglands during these years?

The answer is that their response is largely determined by the nature of the target. Asked for the organisation's reaction to the violent deaths of so many leading gangsters Pagad's spokesperson was unwilling either to confirm or deny the involvement of the organisation or its members. However, he did express something approaching grim satisfaction at the fact that the gangsters had been killed and some considerable confidence that, as a result, fewer innocent people would die too.

[D]uring one year [1998] when, I think, thirteen drug dealers and major gangsters died [everyone] was saying, 'Terror. It's a major disaster for police. Do something about it. These people are dying.' But you know who died and how many? Thirteen. And who? The people who were killing other people.
Now [who] killed them we can probably debate until, you know, the end of the world. But the reality is that, take any year from 1992 upwards and I challenge you if there's less than 15 000 people that died violently in South Africa, then you know it would be a miracle. But nobody says 'Terror, problems, do something about it' when 15 000 people, innocent people, or people who are not spearheading violence. They die, they die like flies, they die everyday. Nobody raises a murmur. But because it is a person that is known to be a terrorist, it is now … . But it is not the type of terrorist that we dislike you see. It's a terrorist that we have come to accept in our community and they don't come with a stereotype that they are terrorising the community. But they in fact are. And when they die it's not because it's a problem, it's because we make it to be a problem. Had anybody asked the other 14 985 people that died during that year, what are they doing, who killed them, what happened? Nobody cares. It's only the fifteen that's important and we want to know who did this. We don't have to. The only important thing is they died. And the chances are because they died, that the next year it will be 12 000 people that die and not 15 000.23

Then - elaborating on his point that the growing popularity of the term 'terror' in official pronouncements and media reporting on the violence reflected a profoundly cynical disregard for the experiences of ordinary people - the Pagad spokesperson went on to question popular definitions of 'terror' and prevailing assumptions about what counts as 'terrorism'.

And I think that again that is the mind shift that Pagad wants in the community - that … people start asking the question of terror. Terror is not what you see on the front page. Terror is when a mother sends her child to the neighbour to say, 'Come help me, because the gangster is fetching my daughter for prostitution and I can't do anything about it'. In fact terror is actually when the mother doesn't even know she can go to the neighbour to go and ask for help because that gangster will just come and fetch her. And this is not abstract, this is a reality. It happens. And that is the terror … . The question doesn't deserve an answer, 'Who killed the gangsters?' The issue is what happens to the 14 985 other people. And essentially when we ask ourselves that question in terms of conflict resolution, finding the solution to violence or whatever. That is the question that needs to be answered. How do we solve that problem?

This attitude contrasts sharply with Pagad's official condemnation of attacks on softer targets, and the death of people unconnected with drug dealing and gangsterism:

We, the people against Gangsterism and Drugs strongly condemn actions that lead to death and injury of innocent people, likewise we condemn the recent terror attacks in Cape Town.24

Defining moment: talks with the police, 1998
The other main feature of this period was the continuing deterioration in relations between Pagad and the State reflected in the acrimonious failure of yet another round of talks with the police. Once again Pagad felt that the process was manipulated by the authorities and used not as a forum for devising solutions to the problem of gangsterism, but as a way of obstructing, discrediting and then disabling Pagad by criminalising its leadership. During the discussions Pagad handed the police a list of more than a hundred drug dealers complete with names, addresses and details of their main stock in trade. The police response was unexpected:

[T]hey claimed at the time that their problem … is resources, that they need to spend money on policing Pagad marches every week and therefore they do not have the time to go and raid the gangsters' houses or the drug dealers' houses. Now Pagad then signed an agreement with the police that for one month we're not going to march, we're not going to take to the streets because we want to give the police the opportunity to use those resources to act against the drug dealers who they have the information on. …
We don't want to stop marching, but if they are interested in fighting the drug dealers then let them do it. We said, if we don't stop, they will always have the excuse that it is Pagad that's causing this … . We stopped. We signed an agreement that for one month we will stop. [And] in that month the police signed an agreement that they will actually use those resources against the drug dealers. The month went by. It was extended to two months - they didn't act against a single drug dealer with the resources. When we started applying for a march again after this we made it public that the police now went back on their word. In fact I can tell you what the police did. [When the talks began] the executive of Pagad was relatively unknown to the police. But when we brought in the delegation, we brought in our entire leadership.
[T]he reason why we said we want to suspend talks is [that] … at the time when we started, no one had charges against them. [But] at the time when we finished I think there were only three people who didn't - who [hadn't been] arrested for some charge and had a charge against them. So what happened was that the police [were] now looking at all these people … you, the representatives of Pagad, we will find something against you and then we will say we don't speak to people who have charges against them. Now … if that isn't malice then we don't know what is. [A]nd at the end of the day we said, what you did in these two months was to use your resources to hunt down Pagad members rather than drug dealers. And we said we are not interested in this. That is why the … talks broke down.
Strength from adversity: 1999/2000

With so many of their most prominent supporters either in prison or facing criminal charges, Pagad have continued to rely on the organisation's collectivist tradition.25 Our own dealings with Pagad in carrying out this research are evidence of this. When we first approached Pagad to ask for their co-operation they suggested that we should speak to their National Co-ordinator, Abdus Salaam Ebrahim. However, we were unable to go ahead with an interview because of difficulties in obtaining permission from the Department of Correctional Services to speak to him in Goodwood Prison. We eventually had to ask Pagad to nominate an alternative. When we finally did manage to meet someone from the organisation it became clear that Pagad had agreed to take part in the research, but only after lengthy deliberation. Our interviewee was also at great pains to explain that he was speaking not as an individual but as a representative of Pagad and that he was only one of several people authorised to speak on the organisation's behalf.

The combined effect of what Pagad sees as State repression, media misrepresentation and the threat of violent retaliation by gangsters has been to change the nature of the organisation's support since the heady days of 1996. Pagad also point to three more specific factors that have contributed to their inability to mobilise large numbers of people for marches and rallies.

It must have been a calculated thing to bring this … law in that said that, when you are in a gathering, you can't cover your face. It is a method of reducing the numbers … because people … can't afford to risk their lives. Not all of them have cars, they have to travel by bus, they have to go via the gangsters and so on. Whereas in the past … people in Salt River could actually walk the street in Manenberg because Manenberg gangsters wouldn't ever get to them because they stay in Salt River. That's the nature of things. But now you go to a march, your face is on television. Whether you march in Manenberg or Salt River the Salt River gangster's going to see you. And that is why people [don't come out] - not because they don't want to go out and support [Pagad], but because of the simple reality - not even fear - it's the reality of having to defend yourself.
[And then] the next point [is] that people were even prepared to defend themselves. But the police systematically confiscated firearms of Pagad members and they still do. When that happens, the gangster has an illegal firearm, you have nothing. Now … it's a stupid person that tries to defend himself with his hands when someone else has got a firearm. And that is why people also say it's OK when I'm there now, but when I am alone I'd rather not go to a public function. Reality.
Third one: you may be aware of the survey which was done by IDASA in two consecutive years.26 The first survey was [on] violence in the Western Cape or something like that. And it dealt extensively with Pagad's support base and the police not having that particular kind of support in the community. They then analysed that it was the religious personalities that would change the minds of people regarding the Pagad alternative. The fact of the matter is that people saw Pagad as the genuine alternative. But that report said that if people's minds would be changed, it was going to be the religious personalities that were going to do it. And the State used the religious personalit[ies] in order to say to people - don't go the Pagad route, go the other route. Right. Go the what they call tolerance, negotiation, whatever route. [T]hese religious personalities didn't come out of the blue and decide to make statements against Pagad. It was because of the IDASA report that they felt, how do we cut off the community from Pagad. And they did it.
Now the fact that they want to make a couple of statements rejecting the violence now and the killing of this person and that person and - it's a whole, it's a big hypocrisy because they had a chance to support the community and they didn't want to. They chose the establishment, rather than the community. And that was also a point where people who were still hanging onto the cloaks of the religious leaders, rather than onto the cloak of truth. Those were the people that separated from Pagad and chose to pray their prayer in the mosque and in a church rather than do their supplication on the street where they need to defend their community. And that's where more people left.
Exposed to violent retaliation from drug dealers, unable to defend themselves, and under concerted ideological attack from religious leaders, Pagad's less committed supporters have gradually melted away. For them the 'fad' of fighting gangsterism and drugs has passed. The paradoxical result is that Pagad has emerged from these experiences a smaller, leaner organisation, but also a stronger one with a more active, more purposeful, membership.
[T]he infrastructure [of Pagad] is so embedded that it will continue, it will continue. And … the amazing thing is, there's a whole lot of things stacked against Pagad … you might almost think it's stupid of anybody to join Pagad now. But the reality is that there are people that are actually joining Pagad now. And those are the people that we know are people who have already seen what it entails - it's the more meaningful participation. Because they were not necessarily there when it was popular to be there … but they realise now that this is a vehicle that can help them. So participation now, membership now, is sort of in our view a thousand times stronger than the participation of an individual that had been there before. So if you gain one member now, it's like gaining a hundred members three years ago. Because the person makes a conscious decision, that, 'I know what all the problems are. I know I can die. I know I can be jailed. I know I can - everything can happen to me - but I want to do it'. And that's the difference in terms of the strength. And for that reason we believe … that public perception in terms of media and just about everything is against Pagad. But public support in terms of the people who suffer is very much for Pagad. And membership has gone down dramatically, but every single member that is now added is a meaningful one rather than one that you don't know exists.

Thus, while the number of members has gone down, the quality of those that remain or join is much higher than in the days of mass mobilisation. In short, Pagad has drawn strength from adversity.

Defining moment: Mitchells Plain, May 2000

We interviewed Pagad's spokesperson on 6 June last year shortly after the media had been full of stories of renewed gang fighting and a 'Pagad shoot-out' in Tafelsig, a poor working class neighbourhood in Mitchells Plain with an unenviable reputation for violence (Cape Times, 22.5.2000). This incident cast a long shadow across the interview and illustrates many of the frustrations that Pagad feels today, 5 years after its foundation as a popular movement against gangsterism and drugs. Typically, the story begins with violence and the apparent inability (or reluctance) of the police to do anything to stop it.

For three weeks [the] community was bleeding, persons dying almost every day. And the police were nowhere to be found.

But then - and this too is typical of Pagad's experiences with the police:

… the Sunday afternoon Pagad goes into Tafelsig and you had police and helicopters and everything everywhere. And I want to say that … when a policeman gets out of [his] car and announces [to Pagad members getting out of their vehicles] that, 'This is an illegal gathering. I give you ten minutes to disperse or I will act.' Then in the normal sense one would appreciate the fact that this policeman has seen a crime being committed, and now he's acting, right? So you would pat him on the back. But if you think … to yourself that for weeks crimes are being committed and the police doesn't come there, they don't come in there … the same policemen … they don't come in there and say to the drug dealer, 'A crime has been committed. This is an illegal activity. I give you ten minutes to stop or I will take action'. No they don't. In fact … that is why I say confidently that the police are not interested in fighting crime.
[A]nd I want to make [a] second analogy. Pagad is of the view that the police can and must go into the drug dealers' houses and go and seize their possessions and do what they need to do in order to stop drug dealing. But the police have consistently told us … they need a sworn affidavit, they need a warrant, they need just about everything in order to get into a drug dealer's house. On the day [of the Tafelsig incident] the police went into a Pagad member's home, smashed his house in, smacked the woman that was standing in the front door and arrested three Pagad members inside the home, on a finger being pointed by a gangster that that person had terrorised him before. Now there was no affidavit, there's no search warrant, there's no nothing. But they can do it …
You have these two incidents: … a policemen making his judgement there … firing tear gas, firing rubber bullets at the crowd [of Pagad supporters] because he believes they are doing an illegal thing. It's not because [the police] are opposing crime. It's not because the people are doing something illegal. It's because people are doing what the police don't want them to do. And there is a big difference. [W]here people carry on with drug dealing the police don't mind. But when you protest against drug dealing, it puts - and this is the second layer - it puts a picture into people's minds that all is not well - that when a community rises and takes to the street then it puts a picture to the rest of the world that all is not well in South Africa. But when a drug dealer is in his house and pumps drugs into children and the guys die or they kill their mothers, it's normal, it's a statistic … it's all about numbers.

Added to this anger at police double standards and their apparent acceptance of drug dealing and gang violence as unexceptional and tolerable, is Pagad's disillusionment with the media and its slavish devotion to reporting not what Pagad actually does, or the experiences of ordinary people living with gangsterism and drugs, but what the police say Pagad do and what the government wants to hear.

[What] sticks in the minds of people [about the Tafelsig incident] is [a] report on [local news radio station] that says a splinter group of people … left a march … that turned chaotic. And they called it eyewitness news. I saw the [radio station] person and I still want to know where the eyewitness [was] … . But again those are the realities that we as Pagad have to contend with.
And the only thing for us really is when you listen to the people of Tafelsig, then all these things that everybody else in their towers - protected towers - say is insignificant. They can say what they like. We know that when you go to Tafelsig then the people of Tafelsig will say, 'Man you can say what you like, [but] nobody's going to protect us. It's only Pagad that's going to protect us.' And that is the only thing of importance to us. It's not what the news people say because they're [never going to] report the truth because it's not in line with, unfortunately, the police report. Nor is it in line … with what the government would like to hear and therefore they're not going to say it. And this is exactly the same that happened in the apartheid era. There's no difference. It's exactly the same. And I just want to say that the issue really again is Pagad isn't concerned any more about distortion in the press. Pagad is more concerned about how people on the ground see what is being done.

Hard questions

This completes the inevitably incomplete story of Pagad's development that we were able to glean from our interview. But it still leaves three important issues outstanding - issues that we believe are critical for Pagad, its future, and the prospects for an end to the violence.

1. Going it alone: shared objectives, irreconcilable methods

The first of these - briefly alluded to earlier in this narrative - is the question of Pagad's relationship with other anti-crime groupings and why, despite its stated aim of co-operating with 'people and people's organisation [sic], having similar aims and objectives', Pagad stands virtually alone in its fight against gangsterism and drugs.27 Pagad's position on this is quite clear.

Pagad's constitution says that we will work with every and any organisation that shares the objectives of Pagad. Therefore Pagad has made approaches to just about every type of organisation and [we] actually accepted the approaches by … all types of organisations in order to work together. However there are instances that [need] to be … understood. For example, take the … Manenberg situation where Pagad's understanding of solving the problem is that when it … was already made abundantly clear … to the gangsters and drug dealers that here is the community, here is the mass of people, and all of them reject you not because of who you are but because of what you do, your decision is whether you want to continue to be gangsters or come to the community. We believe that if they had enough brain power to sell drugs and to set up the business then they also had to have enough brain power to decide which side of the line they're on. And that is why we believe that it is important that they decide and make the decision where they are … and then the community must … cut themselves off [from the dealers].
The [community] police forum - and take Manenberg for example - had a different view and not only a different view … superficially … but … a radically opposing view to Pagad. And that is that they believe that - and this was the catch phrase I think - that harmony and peace could be achieved by talking to what they called both … sides of the warring factions. OK now when we're talking about peace in the community if a group [of] people attacks the community then we are not talking about sides [or] warring factions, we're talking about an aggressor and a community that must be defended. And … Pagad's position was that if gangsters and drug dealers terrorise and kill people then the community has already said we don't like you, we don't want you, irrespective of whether [drug dealing] is legal or not.

And that is the point where Pagad differs from the community policing forum. We don't talk to gangsters because we will [only] talk to them when they leave their gangsterism. We will talk to them when they leave their drug dealing in terms of negotiating where they want to find themselves in the spectrum of the community. We will only give a message to them to say that - and that is the only talking that we will do to gangsters and drug-dealers - we will inform them what the community expects from them and that is to give up their ways. We're not going to inform them how they can [give up]. We're not going to negotiate with them how they can continue their drug dealing and gangsterism and find their place in the community. And that is where the big difference is between what the police forums have done and what Pagad has done and is doing. And because of that we could not reconcile our programme with that of the community police forum where you have gangsters that decide what [the] limitations of their operation is going to be and in the meantime they're still terrorising the community. We can't work like that … and therefore we made it abundantly clear we didn't want to work with [them].

From Pagad's perspective, the rock on which all attempts to work with other anti-crime groups founders is their insistence that processes of negotiation, reconciliation and reintegration can only begin when drug dealers have been confronted by the community, accepted the error of their ways, and decided once and for all that their future lies with the community rather than the gangs.

[W]e believe that every person that wants to do his ounce of good needs to be encouraged. But not at the expense of accepting a person within your ranks that is actually going to kill your son or your daughter. And that's what the gangsters do. So … we have different ways of looking at it simply because we can't see the rationale in speaking to a gangster when he says to you, to your face, 'I will continue with my drug dealing, but you'll find a place for me in your society'. There is no place for such a person in society.
2. Qibla and a political agenda

The second issue has also been referred to earlier but - since it goes to the heart of what Pagad sees as its demonisation by a malevolent State and a pliable media - it merits further consideration here. Essentially the charge - first levelled by Ali 'Phantom' Parker in 1996 - is that Pagad is little more than a front organisation for Islamic militants grouped around Qibla and the Islamic Unity Convention.28 As such, its stated concern with the eradication of gangsterism and drugs provides cover for a wider, more sinister, and less popular political agenda aimed at subverting the authority of the State and reversing pieces of social legislation that are deemed inconsistent with a narrowly sectarian version of Islam, such as the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion and the abolition of capital punishment.

There are several aspects to Pagad's response to these allegations. The first is that, even if the charge is true and Qibla/Pagad does have a political agenda, that is their prerogative.

I want to put it this way: … there is no problem, [as] I understand it, to have a political agenda in South Africa. At least if we have a democracy you have every right to have a political agenda … I want to say that it doesn't matter if [Pagad] had [a political agenda], and it doesn't matter if it even emerged from Qibla … I'm not just going to say that it's not true, I'm going to say even it were so, what is the problem?

The first line of defence then is that, in the new democratic South Africa, everyone - including Pagad and Qibla - has a right to be political. This flows into a second line of argument which is, quite simply, that Pagad is not and never has been in Qibla or any other organisation's political pocket.

The truth about it is that there are … people who are members of Qibla that are also members of Pagad. There are people who are members of Qibla that are not members of Pagad. And there are divergent views [on] modus operandi between what people in Qibla feel needs to be done and what people in Pagad feel needs to be done. Totally independent. But there are members in common and there are members who choose only to be Pagad members and not [in] Qibla.

A third strand in their response is less defensive and aims to show how the association with Qibla has been used to undermine popular support for Pagad.

[A]n easy way to break down an organisation that has found its way into the hearts of people is - instead of trying to find factual issues - you say this is where the organisation is going wrong, you lean on a stereotype that has already been created and then link the organisation to that stereotype. And then … you take it from there. People can then say do you or don't you want to be part of this organisation.
Now the issue of Qibla. Qibla has been demonised for whatever reason by the previous regime. It's sad that members of Qibla had actually fought side by side with members of the liberation movement during the apartheid struggle. But those very same members are now saying, 'Beware, Qibla has got a political agenda' to [do] whatever. And it is borne out in the emergence of Pagad. But why was it questioned whether Pagad or Qibla had a political agenda.? [Y]et 90% of the people fall for it. They say 'gangsterism and drugs is what you say you're fighting, but you actually have a political agenda.'

For Pagad then the irony is that a government whose members fought alongside Qibla in the liberation struggle have used its reputation for militancy - carefully crafted by their former foes in the apartheid regime - to discredit Pagad and proclaim them guilty by association of the cardinal sin of Muslim fundamentalism.

Muslims in the Western Cape had actually rallied to Pagad because they saw in it some salvation. But the powers that be knew that Qibla was actually not favoured by the majority of Muslims in the Western Cape and also Muslims had been conditioned - I am talking about Muslims per se - had been conditioned by the religious leaders as extensions of the apartheid regime to say that when you indulge yourself in political affairs, then you're staring down the barrel - you don't get involved with it.

Pagad's fourth and final argument on this question of politicisation is a question of tactics. They maintain that, next to arms, 'the drugs industry' is probably the largest in the world. It cannot therefore be 'unrelated to economics and politics' in the broadest sense. But, nonetheless, it would be foolish of an organisation like Pagad to turn the fight against drugs into a party political matter or itself into an electoral machine.

[I]t was Pagad's view, and still is, that when you decide that you are going to go for a political office or … go and score political points, you will of necessity run up against other political parties. And then you will say to people, 'Make your choice: support the PAC or support Pagad, support the ANC or support Pagad'. And that in itself we believe would undermine the quest to have a uniform society that's against gangsterism and drugs. And that is why Pagad believes that it is not in our interest or in the interest of the community to forge ahead with a political agenda, … striving to get into political office. [T]he objective isn't to have a person's voice heard in parliament about the issue, but … to get all parliamentarians to have the voices of the community heard on the issue of gangsterism and drugs. And for that reason I am saying, while … there's no problem in having a political agenda - anybody can - but the issue is it actually defeats the purpose of binding the community on the issues across the political spectrum.

Underlying this attempted stigmatisation of Pagad by association with Qibla lies fundamental flaws in South Africa's new democracy: firstly the real - and, at least to Pagad, increasingly well-documented - association between the main political parties and leading gangsters, and secondly the ANC's growing intolerance of political dissent.

And I will tell you now what the issue at hand is. It is all about fascism. [W]hen you oppose the ANC then you start becoming a political problem. And when it now emerged that the allegations that Pagad made at its emergence is true, that the ANC and the PAC were funded by drug money, they denied it. Now it's coming up. And the fact that the National Party campaigns were also funded by the likes of [well known ganglord and leading member of The Firm] is coming up now and it will come out. And that is why when you start stirring the political pot, then they come back with a political backlash.
3. Pagad and the bombings

The last of the three issues we discussed with Pagad in detail has already been covered at some length in our discussion of the terror of 1997/8. All that we want to do here is reproduce our interviewee's reaction to speculation that the organisation (or at least its armed wing or G-force) has been involved in 'spectaculars' such as the bombing of Planet Hollywood at the Waterfront in August 1998 and the St Elmo's pizzeria in Camps Bay in November 1999. As with so many of his replies his response to our questioning conveys both a sense of frustration at the way in which public figures and the media leap to conclusions about Pagad's responsibility for this kind of attack, and an acute awareness of the dangers of giving credibility to such wild accusations by taking the trouble to deny them.

Yes, Pagad has been accused of many of these things. I simply want to respond like this. Take the St Elmo's bomb. On the day it happened … Wiley [then MEC for Community Safety in the Western Cape] said, 'It's Pagad, no questions asked'. It's amazing that he could in fact be allowed to get away with it in the public sphere, because it's a travesty of justice. It actually undermines any investigation that you're going to do.
But the question that was put to me by a journalist was, 'Was it a Pagad member that did it?' Our position is we don't do such things, we don't order it, and it's not part of our agenda. But the question that was asked is, 'Can it be, and is it a Pagad member?'. And I would say that any other organisation would have said, 'No, absolutely not'. But I put it to the journalist that to be fair, two things are going to happen. If I say no, the fact that you have asked Pagad the question is already giving me an indication that you think that Pagad is possibly responsible for it.
Now what St Elmo's has to do with Pagad, I don't know, right. Call it sensationalism. Now you say, 'But why Pagad? Why don't you blame the National Party, or the ANC, or the PAC, or Black Sash, or UCT? Why Pagad?' It is the question that is stereotyped in people's minds. In fact when this thing happened in North Africa, where they blew up the Embassy in wherever … [BD: Kenya] … in Kenya. We were having a conference in Kwa-Zulu Natal. And one of the journalists asked whether Pagad had anything to do with it. Now that's the kind of hysteria that happened. But the answer is - and this is the factual answer - if I were to tell you that it's not a Pagad member, then I would be in the same boat as Mark Wiley accusing Pagad of doing it, because then … - just for the sake of defending the organisation and its members - I would say it's not Pagad, right. It's not a Pagad member. But I challenge a priest in the area of Camps Bay to tell me, and I challenge anybody to ask the priest, 'Is it possible that it is [a] member of your congregation that planted that bomb?' If the priest says, 'Absolutely not', then he's lying because he cannot say it with certainty. He doesn't know what the guy had for lunch, breakfast or supper and therefore he cannot say with certainty that it's not a member of that congregation.

The State agents' story29

Running parallel and occasionally intersecting or overlapping with this narrative is the story told by two State agents. We will take the two main threads of this narrative - as seen by two intelligence operatives - in turn, beginning with their view of Pagad's development. Once again we present the story as straightforwardly as possible and as one of many truths.30

The State on Pagad

According to our interviewees, the origins of Pagad in the concerns of mainly middle and lower middle class Muslims contrast sharply with what the organisation later became under the tutelage of Qibla's Islamic ideologues. Indeed the State's view of its formation is remarkably similar to Pagad's own account.

At that point in time [before 1995] … people from Qibla … were planning to establish an anti-crime organisation - [an] anti-gangsterism, anti-drugs organisation. But the later formation of the organisation [as Pagad] was not necessarily a reflection of [their] hegemony — in other words they were not necessarily the dominant force. OK, I'll explain that. Mostly the core members initially of Pagad - the mass members - were militant [but they] were actually anti-crime activists [from] Hanover Park and all those kinds of areas … Surrey Estate … neighbourhood watch people … who happened to be Muslim. That was the core - they were not ideologically inspired - they were [not] political[ly] … oriented, but just had a very political approach to dealing with drugs and gang-related problems. But their base was entirely semi-middle class, lower middle class … . That's why they never could develop a working-class base.
Populism and spontaneity

From these relatively blameless beginnings a very different, and more dangerous, Pagad was soon to emerge. But, at least in the early days, the group was a loosely structured and genuinely popular movement against gangsterism and drugs headed by an informal group of leaders who had emerged rather than been elected.

[Y]ou're not talking about an organisation that exists as an organised structure [with] bureaucratic process[es]. You're talking about some people at one stage having the … expressed intent to form … a movement [against gangsterism and drugs], but being caught up in the momentum of the energy they generate from the mass side. So you have a populist kind of effect and the individuals who lead at that point in time, Nadthmie Edries … Ali Parker, are not necessarily leaders by virtue of being elected … by having arrived there through a formal process.

Militancy - violent attacks on individual drug dealers and gangsters - was largely spontaneous and unplanned. In so far as a military wing (the so called G-force) existed, its operations were restricted to 'marshalling functions' on Pagad's regular rallies and marches on the homes of drug dealers. A 'turning point' came midway through 1996, after the breakdown of talks with Justice Minister Dullah Omar, when a march on a gangster's house in Hanover Park ended in violent confrontation between the police and armed activists.

[T]he turning point was the first march to [gangster's] place in Hanover Park … where, aside from the march, this group of so-called G-force people just broke out and turned on the police. [It was a] spontaneous kind of thing … it swept up … it had no deliberate ideologically defined agenda.
From this point on shootings became more frequent. But the violence remained largely spontaneous up to and including the attack on Rashaad Staggie in Salt River on 4 August.

[W]ith the Staggie incident for example, Nadthmie Edries and Ali Parker and them really didn't know that was going to happen. That was just spontaneous action of a small militant group inside it. But they didn't plan it.

Throughout the first nine months of its existence then Pagad resembled an untended box of fireworks - something could go off at any time but you were only going to get hurt by the explosion if you were standing right next to the box.

Organisation and ideology

But, according to the intelligence operatives interviewed, even as Staggie was being attacked with the original populist leadership standing idly by, the influence of Qibla was growing. Slowly but surely Pagad was changing from a loosely structured popular movement into a more ideologically driven and tightly controlled political organisation.

But around that period [August 1996] another group is slowly beginning to build its hegemony - it's beginning to structure the organisation, OK - and that's Qibla. They're beginning to develop their organisation into an organisation and this is where their [Pagad's] leaders … actually come with Qibla because they [Qibla] have the organisational experience from the previous era. They know how to organise people. They started filtering in to the rituals of ascendance by August. So when the organisation was structured there was now no more need for the populist, impulsive leadership of Edries, Parker and those kind of people. Things were structured in an organised manner now … that was up till … about the September '96 where they kicked out Edries and all of them. That was a natural [development] … because populists who are not defined by an ideological agenda … are not going to - for example - distinguish from a principle[d] perspective … how wrong it would be for example to get involved in negotiations with the police, because all you're interested in is dealing with drugs. However the people who kicked them out have an ideological agenda and they use that opportunity - based on negotiating with us [the police ] to actually kick these people out of the organisation - label them as traitors, munafiqs and all those kinds of things.

Using organisational skills honed during the anti-apartheid struggle, and armed with the ideological programme of political Islam, Qibla gradually asserted its ascendancy over Pagad. After the departure of the populist triumvirate, a new, more principled leadership with a more instrumental attitude towards co-operation with the State emerged around Aslam Toefy. However, within just over a year he too had fallen foul of Qibla's ideologues.

Militarisation and political consciousness

Along with this politicisation of Pagad came a growing militarisation. In much the same way as the armed wings of the liberation movements had been forced to adapt under the harsh operating conditions of the apartheid police State, Pagad too restructured a much-expanded G-force into 'a separate entity' capable of mounting attacks more or less on its own initiative and quite independently of the marches undertaken by the mainstream organisation. Yet, even today, there are those in the intelligence community - including one of our respondents - who believe that Pagad is not simply a Qibla-owned brand name for the politics of militant Islam. According to this perspective, dominated by ideologues it may be, but the grassroots membership of Pagad remains only loosely committed to Qibla's fundamentalist agenda.

Until today, I still maintain that the G-force members and even [some] Pagad members are firstly Qibla members. They might have dominated the militia - Qibla members definitely - but that does not translate into all of the members down [t]here becoming part of some fundamentalist group, because people don't have that political consciousness here. They might be able to spew the slogans, but they don't have it.
State responses to Pagad

The second thread woven into our respondents' story starts much closer to home and relates to the State's response to Pagad. Rather than continue with the roughly chronological approach we have adopted up to now, this section of the report lends itself to a more thematic treatment, not least because - while the State's attitudes towards Pagad changed as the organisation itself evolved from popular movement into urban terror organisation - its underlying strategic orientation to the twin problems of gangsterism and vigilantism did not.

The pains of transformation
The most obvious feature of the State's response to Pagad is the extent to which it has been structured by the process of democratic transformation being undertaken by police and intelligence services steeped in the thinking and practices of authoritarianism. Moreover, neither transformation nor the co-ordination of an effective response to gangsterism and Pagad has been made easier by the crisis of resources faced by a new democratic government with so many popular expectations to meet. Examples of the hesitancy and uncertainties that have dogged the police approach to Pagad abound. But the explanation that one of our respondents provided for police inaction on the evening of 4 August 1996 provides a particularly striking illustration of the problems experienced by a service struggling to span the divide between the 'skop, skiet en donder' of apartheid policing and the more subtle methods of crowd control expected of a democratic police organisation.

Our respondent's view of the events surrounding the death of Rashaad Staggie is that the police were disabled - and therefore perceived to be 'complicitous [sic] with what was happening' - for three main reasons. Firstly, as a result of their 're-training and re-acculturisation to the new environment', they knew 'what not to do so as not to repeat the mistakes of the past', but 'they didn't know what to do in the new democratic order'.31 Consequently, as the march 'erupted' around them, they made what, from a public order policing perspective, was a basic error - they hesitated.

[I]n front of [the] casspirs people are burning things … and [Rashaad] Staggie was burning ... it was just simply that people didn't know what to do - they really didn't know. That's one weakness that they had … they were more inhibited to act on the basis that … public order policing was always in the spotlight in terms of their actions on the person. And this was the first real test in this province of them performing their work function by demanding a little bit … stronger action than standing around at Parliament when people stand and protest.

The second failure was one of planning and the learned inability of paramilitary policing units to operate without a clear set of instructions and according to well-rehearsed plans of action.

The second [problem] was a lack of planning for the event. You see public order policing has eleven models of performance [according to the behaviour in a crowd]. [The Pagad marches] didn't fit into the mould of any of those eleven models … . So in an environment where you're dealing with a group [public order policing unit] that … is probably one of the most paramilitary-oriented structures within policing … in the absence of clearly defined instructions [or] guidelines - you will do 'A' when 'B' happens and 'C' when that happens … . [I]n the absence of that, if you place a person in [a] situation where there is no prescribed framework that fits that particular situation, that person is not going to react. [I]f you give confused instructions in that period you'll cause total confusion (R8, 14 April 2000).

The third problem was a simple lack of resources. With the public order units already at full stretch to contain an outbreak of violence in the taxi industry, too few people were deployed to effectively police Pagad marches:

So they had to adjust between two very high profile and … labour-intensive, demanding … policing experiences and juggle their minimal resources between meeting those needs and in the end not meeting [either] at all successfully (R8, 14 April 2000).

From this interviewee's perspective then, Staggie's death and the contribution of the police to it, was the result not of a conspiracy but of uncertainties and constraints attributable to the organisation's transformation. And yet this clumsiness in dealing with Pagad was not limited to those responsible either for planning particular operations, or for carrying them out. On the contrary, it seems to have pervaded the entire police organisation as two diametrically opposed schools of thought clashed over the strategic orientation of the State's response to Pagad.

There were two … there are factional interpretations of how we should deal with the [Pagad and] the gang issue. [LMJ: From the police side?] Yes, there were people who, right in the beginning, were calling them fundamentalists, no more. There were people like me who said that is not what they are at this moment in time. There are fundamentalists among them, but that is not what they are. So … that kind of approach … makes you more open, you know, makes you more open to engage … but the other people who ended up even investigating us for possible police complicity came from a different kind of - very ill-informed assumption -[about] it - an 'old order' assumption … because an old order situation is: the enemy needs to be neatly defined, neatly structured and neatly organised. The reality even till today on the Pagad side does not lend itself to such an interpretation. If you're going to waste your time chasing the structure, and chasing the route to define the enemy, you miss the issue. We [respondent's unit] spoke of threats in a situational context … understanding full well that the context could spontaneously change into violence, not as part of a pre-defined structural agenda (R8,