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Vigilantism v. the State:

A case study of the rise and fall of Pagad, 1996-2000

Keith Gottschalk

Occasional Paper 99, February 2005

INTRODUCTION

Non-governmental armed organisations

 

To contextualise Pagad, it is essential to reflect on the scale of other quasi-military clashes between armed groups and examine other contemporary vigilante organisations in South Africa. These phenomena peaked during the1990s as the authority of white supremacy collapsed, while state transformation and the construction of new democratic authorities and institutions took a good decade to be consolidated.
 
The first category of such armed groupings is feuding between clans ('faction fighting' in settler jargon). This results in escalating death tolls once the rural combatants illegally buy firearms. For decades, feuding in Msinga1 has resulted in thousands of displaced persons. More recently, feuding between the Zondo and Dladla clans near Nongoma reached the scale of over 200 armed men operating from nearby forests.2 In the Majola area eight persons had already been killed before police prevented a 300-strong, armed group from attacking another group of 100 people.3
 
The second category is 'taxi wars', the popular name for what is more accurately analysed as route turf wars by syndicates of minibus owners. This is a variant of protection racketeering, under which drivers or owners have to pay yearly 'membership fees' of thousands of rands, or even higher-or get shot.4 Between 1994 and 1999 in Gauteng Province, which includes Johannesburg, the estimated number of people killed is an astonishing 1,500 to 3,000.5 For example, the South African Local and Long-Distance Taxi Association (SALDTA) and the Letlhabile Taxi Organisation admitted that they are among the rivals who hire hit squads to kill commuters and their competitors' taxi bosses on such a scale that they need to negotiate amnesty for their hit squads before they can renounce such illegal activities.6
 
Petrol-bombing minibuses7 and shooting drivers8 were routine. In Cape Town, killings started in 1993 when seven drivers were shot.9 There, the rival taxi associations (Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association, Cata, and the Cape Organisation of Democratic Taxi Associations, Codeta), both appointed a 'top ten' to negotiate with the bus company, and a 'bottom ten' as a hit squad. The police were able to secure triple life sentences plus 70 years in jail for each of three Codeta taxi bosses.10 Various hitmen were paid between R350 and R10,000 for their assassinations.11 Some taxi owners are also involved in other crimes such as vehicle theft. In Nelson Mandela Metropole12 the Assets Forfeiture Unit seized one million rand from one such taxi owner.13
 
The Weberian concept of the state as possessing a monopoly on lawful violence is most starkly challenged by the third category, namely armed clashes which, on the face of it, are between rival political parties, though in practice their dynamics are usually of smaller groups who seek wider affiliation to gain leverage in legitimacy for power or to acquire firearms. Killings of African National Congress (ANC) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) town councillors and members in various specific localities in KwaZulu-Natal Province have resulted in the arrest of suspects ranging from princes of the Zulu royal house to the grandchildren of another prince who is the provincial Member of the Executive Committee (MEC) for welfare.14
 
In Philippi15 there has been a spiral of assassinations and attempted killings. These include United Democratic Movement (UDM) and ANC town councillors and other local leaders.16 This, among other local power struggles, involved rival factions attempting to occupy 140 council houses.17 At Hammanskraal18 a local South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) chairperson was prosecuted for attacking a shack and office of its nominal ally, the ANC.19
 
This confirms that formal party affiliations often obscure rather than explain local power struggles. Death threats are made between factions within the same ANC shantytown branch.20 Also, power over land is power to extort payments from homeless persons seeking to erect a pondokkie (shack).
 
Such 'shacklord' protection racketeering probably merits being analysed as a fourth category of armed groups. In New Rest at Gugulethu21 new arrivals have to pay R1,000 to 'the local committee', in addition to paying R1,500 for a shack.22 In Brown's Farm a 'local area committee' charges between R100 and R200 for each of about 600 sites-which the committee does not own.23 Once local authorities build brick houses and grant freehold title deeds, the shacklords lose their power to exact and extract such payments.24 25
 
In the Vrygrond shantytown, a grouping of around 120 persons calling themselves the Vrygrond Community Organisation repeatedly tried to disrupt the building and allocation of houses by the Vrygrond Community Development Trust, representing 5,000 others.26 The latter's leader was assassinated.27 The same cause led to killings in Crossroads.28
 
The importance of housing allocation as a cause of factionalism and clashes was underscored when the Cape Town Council replaced houses destroyed by a tornado in Mannenberg township. One group of homeless people destroyed houses built for the homeless, and disrupted meetings of a rival group.29
 
A fifth category, explicit plans to overthrow the Government through counter-revolution, exists on the far right wing. During 2002 a series of sabotage and bombings ended when police arrested most members of the Boeremag,30 22 of whom are currently standing trial for treason.31
 
The sixth category of armed groupings is probably those most relevant to the context in which Pagad was born: other anti-crime vigilantes.
 
Middle and business class suburbanites respond to the crime wave by paying for burglar alarms and paying fees to security companies for armed response and bicycle patrols. The working class townships and shantytowns have time rather than money, especially the unemployed, and form neighbourhood watches, which can swiftly degenerate into vigilantism.
 
By far the largest vigilante organisation in South Africa is Mapogo a Mathamaga.32 Monhle John Magolego founded it on 27 August 1996 in Jane Furse33 with about 100 business owners who had suffered a string of robberies. By 1999 it claimed 35,000 members, with 90 branches in Gauteng including Pretoria, North-West Province and Mpumalanga. The founder was 'snapped up' by the UDM and almost won a seat in the Limpopo Provincial Legislature.34
 
By 2000 Mapogo claimed 50,000 members. In 2001 it opened new branches in the Eastern and Northern Cape. Members have to be on call for duty and pay subscriptions, depending on the services they hire, of between R100 (now raised to a minimum R165) and R10,000 per year. Mapogo calls its hundreds of floggings with sjamboks "medicine to cure the culprit". Its vigilantes also beat people with knobkerries and one suspect was killed by electric torture. Its vigilantes have reportedly killed at least 20 suspects and face 120 criminal charges. So far, there has not been one conviction. Mapogo usually has close links with chiefs and taxi operators where it exists.
 
In Tzaneen, schools, clinics and regional government offices are paying 'protection levies' to Mapogo. In February 2000 the ANC ordered its members to resign from either Mapogo or the party. Magolego's dictatorial behaviour-he reportedly uses the organisation for his own benefit - led to secession by some 300 members who founded a rival crime-fighting organisation called Sekhukhuni se Bonaa ke Sebataladi,35 which does not beat suspects.36
 
The second largest vigilante grouping is Mfelandawonye.37 It arose in the 1980s as a burial society. Stock theft made people create armed formations, which began to act as quasi-judicial bodies, arresting suspected thieves and their supporters and punishing them. Between 1993 and 1996 it killed over 350 persons in 750 attacks around Tsolo, Qumbu, Tyira and Tina Bridge.38 It then spread to Gauteng cities, where migrant workers from the Transkei are employed in its offices, as well as to the Free State and Mpumalanga Provinces. Some allege that both individual Communist Party members and individual policemen are involved. People who were accused of stock theft, or attacked by Mfelandawonye, have in turn set up the smaller Inkumpa grouping.39
 
This paper's brevity precludes more than mentioning a sample of innumerable smaller vigilante groupings. When Cape Town gangs extended to Bredasdorp, a mob killed three gangsters and burnt down their house and car.40
 
In Khayelitsha,41 a mob of 3,000 people captured three alleged criminals, interrogated them, beat them, kept them overnight, then burnt them alive when they heard that the previous three suspects they had beaten and handed to the police had been released.42 After democracy was achieved, the street committees affiliated to Sanco stopped trying criminal cases themselves and instead sent the suspects to the police and confined their own trials to civil cases. One Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) leader in that township ran a kangaroo court at his home, keeping people imprisoned until their families paid a fine. The Peninsula Anti-Crime Agency (Peaca) sometimes acted as vigilantes, in one case even temporarily kidnapping a policeman on the accusation that he had stolen the car he, in fact, owned.43
 
Pagad's largest analogue outside Cape Town is People Against Drugs and Violence (Padav) in Nelson Mandela Metropole. In September 1996 the Provincial Police Commissioner generously offered Padav that they could both work from a joint operations room, share information and maintain transparency, provided Padav did not take the law into their own hands. Padav walked out of the meeting.44 Padav anti-crime units, armed and masked and with no legal standing, searched a flat.45 On one Christmas holiday Padav smashed up a disco and its liquor, assaulted night club security guards, broke into houses and robbed cash and sports shoes.46 Like Pagad, Padav, operating in the Gelvandale and Bethelsdorp suburbs,47 could almost only attract members from among those areas' Coloured communities.

RELIGION AS A COMMUNITY POLITICAL RESOURCE

 

The liberation upheavals of the 1990s made some among both the Christian and African traditionalist faith communities draw on religious beliefs to a far more extreme extent than previously. This was especially so among individuals who lacked confidence in any political party and who had relatively low levels of formal education. The early 1990s saw 'Satanism' scares breaking out among poorer Afrikaner whites. The police set up a Satanism and occult crimes unit, though no such crime is known in South African law. Unable to process more than convictions for cruelty to animals, and malicious damage to property such as tombstones, this unit was disbanded soon after South Africa became a democracy in 1994.
 
During the 1990s more people were accused of witchcraft and then murdered than in all recorded South African history. By 1994, witch-hunting mobs in villages in the then-Northern Province (now Limpopo Province) had burnt 250 middle-aged and elderly people as 'witches'.48 Some of these 'witch' accusations involved mobs of unemployed youth extorting pension money under threat of death from those elderly people living on their own, without family to protect them.
 
Both the Satanist and witchcraft scares were peaking around 1996 when Pagad was launched with religious symbolism. This simultaneous adaptation of community-specific religious resources by strata in society feeling marginalised, is suggestive to a sociological imagination. That point made, scholars need to interrogate whether it is heuristic to describe Pagad as an 'Islamic fundamentalist' organisation.
 
Pagad's words as to whether or not it is an Islamic organisation differ from their deeds. To the media, it denies it is an Islamic organisation, claiming that it is simply an anti-drug and anti-gang grouping whose members happen to be mostly Muslim, but which welcomes members whatever their religion.49 But its meetings are held in mosques, never churches; its supporters chant Muslim Arabic taunts such as 'munafiq' (hypocrite or traitor), rather than taunts in Afrikaans; they gave their spiritual leader, Hafiz Abdulrazaq Ebrahim, the title amir, not dominee.50 Pagad's posters advertise such mass events as 'Iftaar' and 'Eid Salaah'. 51 These are specifically Muslim prayers, not terminology or prayers common to other religions. During the last trials - which suppressed Pagad's armed wing, the G Force - the accused wore white robes and some came to court holding Qu'rans.52
 
Further, South African Muslim clergy use the titles sheikh, imam or moulana. The title amir is not in usage locally. Amir literally means 'commander', both spiritual and temporal. This certainly reflects Qibla's theocratic ideology. The same could be inferred from a poster on a Pagad protest march, which read: "'Democracy' is the Devil's Law".53 This reflects Qibla's perspective that even in a country 98% non-Muslim, it is not the democratic majority, but Qadr, divine power, that is the source of legitimacy and victory.54
 
But on the other hand, neither media reports nor oral communications indicate that Pagad activists were anything except Western mainstream Muslims in their daily dress codes, frequency of mosque attendances, or in permitting TV and videos in their homes. Their daily practices were not remotely the most 'fundamentalist', i.e. the most stringent, of all Muslim schools of belief in South Africa. In fact, the most fundamentalist Muslim, Christian and Jewish sects alike avoid South African politics, which they consider a profane matter that wastes time best spent on the study of scripture and the practice of religious ritual.
 
To conclude this theme, there was existing prejudice against Muslims among many of the Christian majority of Coloureds in the Western Cape.55 Pagad's strident militancy and militarism perpetuated Western stereotypes about Islam among the Christian majority, and in doing so hurt Islam and the Muslim minority. Malicious Christian pranksters spread rumours 'like wildfire' that some Muslim man, in return for a favour, warned them not to use the Canal Walk, or some other shopping centre, because of a possible future terrorist attack.56

CRIME WAVE CRISIS AND NARCO-BARONS

 
To argue that religious extremists exploited the drug dealer crisis begs the question: why would religious extremists focus on drug dealers when religious extremists typically attack other persons over dress codes, selling taboo foods, or other issues of personal behaviour?
 
First, Pagad supporters are not alone in demanding more effective state action to suppress the crime wave. The official opposition has made it an election issue that since South Africa became a democracy in 1994 there have been two million house-breakings, 500,000 rapes and 250,000 murders.57 The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has demonstrated to demand police protection of workers from mugging and murder on commuter trains.
 
By the time Pagad killed him, Rashaad Staggie was making R100,000 per day selling drugs.58 In contrast with these vigilantes, it took the prosecution a further six years to succeed in convicting the co-leader of this gang, Rashid Staggie, and even then they could not get a conviction for drug selling. In the end, he was convicted of ordering the rape of a teenage police informer and of illegal possession of a gun.59
 
After Rashaad Staggie's killing, his Hard Livings gang painted his face on walls. Balaclava-clad gangsters fired shots as salutes, while supporters wore tracksuits with the logo 'Weermag'.60 The Hard Livings were creative in bribing policemen and low-ranking court officials, and in buying community support by paying an unemployed person's rent and making a financial contribution towards a funeral.61 The Staggie brothers sponsored the Crystal Palace and Benfica soccer teams, buying them togs, and sponsored a netball team.62 Rashaad Staggie allegedly gave money on the Grand Parade to clothing workers who were on strike.63 Rashied Staggie and his convoy, in fast cars, wearing designer sunglasses and sporting mobile phones, used his front organisation, Community Outreach (Core) to stage a series of popular rallies in the working class, Coloured suburbs of Hanover Park, Lavender Hill, Mitchell's Plain and Parkwood.64
 
Such was the power of those gangs that during the 1980s, uMKhonto weSizwe (MK) had to negotiate a degree of co-operation with them to use safe houses and safe routes in the Coloured ghettos.65 During the 1990s, the Olympic Bid Company agreed to negotiate with the gangs' front organisation, Core,66 until Pagad threatened them for so treating the gangs as legitimate.
 
Similarly, the police could not get a drug-selling conviction against druglord Colin Stanfield, but only a conviction for tax fraud. Stanfield's gang gave a chilling demonstration of its social base of support when it mobilised a demonstration of 2,000 working class supporters, with banners and printed T-shirts, for a protest march to the Western Cape Director of Prosecution's offices, and later, several hundred supporters for a protest march to Parliament, complete with a 'People for Justice Foundation' led by a born-again Christian pastor.67 Supporters included not only heavily-tattooed gangsters and their dependants, but also those who had been given loans by the gang-lords or helped with their rent and other pressing debts on the implicit understanding that this was in exchange for favours that could be called up in turn.
 
Second are the issues of police incompetence and corruption. Where a state has to employ persons by the hundreds of thousands, such as police, nurses and teachers, their wages will inevitably be low. Also, there will be scant moral sanctions against accepting bribes not to enforce unpopular laws on legitimate behaviour. The colonial state imposed a prohibition on 'white' wines and spirits until 1962, and enforced the dompas and other pass laws until 1986. Pressure from the Woodrow Wilson USA and League of Nations led to the criminalisation of the traditional dagga (cannabis) from the 1920s. The result was such levels of bribery that the ancien apartheid regime had police squads flown in from other cities to raid shebeens (illegal pubs and wine shops). Under the apartheid regime, dagga gangs bribing policemen was a legendary practice. Gangs, including prison gangs, grew for nine decades. One former MP noted, when an apartheid political prisoner, how gang 'Godfathers' controlled some prison warders.68 When cocaine burst upon Cape Town's working class townships from 1995, the gang bosses had hugely increased gross takings with which to bribe police and court officials.
 
The Grassy Park police station had allegations of corruption reported.69 It is interesting that this correlates with where the most active cell in Pagad's G-force was - in Grassy Park.
 
Since 1994, the work of the police and magistrates was also in turmoil due to transformation, in two senses. The upheaval of demographic transformation ('corrective action') left many white policemen demoralised. They were also learning that the democratic constitution and its Bill of Rights mean that the higher courts now overturned convictions on a large scale when assault and torture were used to obtain confessions, or even to improperly obtain material evidence. Case upon case collapsed, until many of the police learnt detective methods compatible with democracy. South Africa was caught by surprise by the crime wave, or shifts in crime, as were the new governments following regime change and democratisation in South America, Eastern Europe, Nigeria and Mozambique.70
 
The overthrow of the pass laws enabled many caught in rural poverty traps to escape and join the mushrooming shantytowns. While the democratic Government made significant progress on 'left' demands to extend safe water, sanitation and electricity to shantytowns, it was far slower on 'right' demands to build police stations and extend police patrols. When it did, quite a few of those policemen were former Bantustan 'greenflies' and 'kitskonstabels'- police who had only a primary schooling and were authoritarian to the public, ill-trained and incompetent. Robbery, murder and rape led to shackland neighbour-hoods across the country setting up vigilante patrols and community courts, some of which degenerated into kangaroo courts.

THE START OF PAGAD

Anti-drugs and anti-gangsterism 1996-1997

 
South Africa is not the only African state where people threatened by an unprecedented crime wave have modified religious institutions in attempts to combat this moral and social crisis. In northern Nigeria, at the end of the 1990s, the traditional Shari'ah courts had their jurisdiction extended to criminal law and their policing beefed up. This came about in the context of the secular police and courts being perceived as ineffective in dealing with theft, while many crime victims had long resorted to vigilante justice.71
 
In the period under discussion, Cape Town had an estimated 137 gangs with estimates of gangster numbers at 30,000 upwards.72 One little-noticed statistic provided the last straw that triggered the founding of a new social movement. In 1990, the police seized 125g of cocaine entering South Africa. In 1995 the police seized 65kg of cocaine.73 As drug smugglers increased their efforts exponentially, the price of cocaine plummeted. Until then, only the millionaire class and their youth could afford it. By 1996, its price had fallen until working class addicts of earlier drugs could buy cocaine in its variants. The scale of drug smuggling escalated. During the last six months of 1998, police seized 434kg of cocaine in Gauteng Province alone.74 The amount not seized by police is estimated to be ten times higher.75
 
In what its website calls "the untold side of the Pagad programme" due to "sensation seeking media", Pagad reports that its Drug Counselling Centre opened for out-patients in Rylands76 in February 1999. It emphasises after-care, only charges R20 per counselling session and waives that if the patient cannot afford it. It refers those needing in-patient treatment to existing rehabilitation clinics.77 Christian drug addicts have also attended the Centre as they cannot afford the fees of other drug rehabilitation centres.78 Pagad also staged anti-drug plays and cameos in various Cape Flats schools.79 It is interesting to note that some Islamic groups in the Middle East, such as Ha'mas, were social welfare organisations for many years before becoming political parties, in the case of Ha'mas only in 1987.
 
Pagad was formed on the Cape Flats, the working class townships, in the same year that Mapogo was also formed at the other end of the country. Its first major public event was its May 1996 march to Parliament to demand effective action against drug dealing within 60 days. The thousands of demonstrators included Muslim establishment figures. One Catholic priest, Father Christopher Clohessy, was a Pagad leader at its start, until he was swiftly transferred to the Vatican.80 The Government initially tried to work with Pagad, arranging a meeting with Pagad that included the Ministers of Justice, Safety and Security, and Correctional Services, the Western Cape Attorney-General and Premier, and senior police and magistrates. A sticking point was Pagad's insistence that they would continue to wear masks and carry guns at their public rallies.81
 
One of the organisers warned that if the state failed to deal within crime within 60 days they would "start taking matters into our own hands".82 By late July 1996 Pagad rhetoric had taken on a more militant and militaristic tone. In August Pagad launched another major march to a 'crack house' in Salt River, from where drugs worth R100,000 were being sold per day, where it shot dead the Hard Livings gang co-leader, Rashaad Staggie. Pagad leaders considered this as proving to the public that gangsters are not invincible.83 A week later Pagad was formally launched at an Athlone stadium with well over 10,000 supporters present, including Sheikh Nazeem Mohamed, head of the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC).84 Towards the end of that year, a survey found that Pagad enjoyed the support of 64% of Muslims and 18% of Christians in Cape Town. This support eroded away to only 200-400 people within two years.85 Pagad also launched a few branches outside Cape Town, such as one in Durban that made verbal threats against gays and lesbians.86 There was also a Gauteng-based group, People against Crime and Drugs, Pacad.87

OFFENSIVE

Community contestation and terror, 1997-1999

 
Pagad's website, last updated in 2000, states: "We condemn the recent terror attacks in Cape Town". It bluntly denies Pagad involvement in terrorist bombings and shootings and claims such actions are in some cases frame-ups by the police, or else done by agents provocateurs.88
 
However, not long after its founding, more and more Pagad speeches and slogans included the words 'death', 'kill' and 'bullet'. They adapted one wartime slogan of the youth wing of the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), "One settler, one bullet", into "One [drug] merchant, one bullet" and "One gangster, one bullet". This militarisation of Pagad's public face was simultaneous with its founding an armed G-Force of at least six cells, who made their own bombs.89 Pagad activists were seen in public armed with AK-47s, R4s, Uzis and a wide variety of shotguns and pistols.90
 
Pagad soon established its strategy. Masked marchers would demonstrate outside the shop or house of a drug dealer. They would deliver an ultimatum to "stop all illegal activities within 24 hours or face the mandate of the people".91 Within a week, their death squads would shoot that drug dealer. At its meetings held at a mosque, it would read out a list of names. If these were alleged drug dealers, they were given an ultimatum to confess at the Gatesville mosque. If they did not, within weeks they would be bombed or shot. Another Pagad list of names was of people denounced as "political criminals" who "should be eliminated". This included policemen.92 The drug dealers confessed in front of a crowd, but were first led to a small room at the mosque to a Pagad panel headed by Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim.93 They also had to pay all their profits into Pagad bank accounts, allegedly to be used for rehabilitating drug addicts.94 As early as 1996, the G-Force hitmen started stealing from the drug dealers they attacked, taking jewels, money, "even drugs" which they distributed among themselves.95 By 1998, the Pagad extortion racket was squeezing Muslim Indian shopkeepers in Athlone and Surrey Estate. Those who did not pay up got bombed.96 Two alleged drug dealers, father and son businessmen, took a lawyer with them when Pagad 'summoned' them to the mosque. Pagad shot the father within six months, the son a month later. Their lawyer received death threats and had his Porsche stolen and dumped in Yzerfontein fishing harbour.97
 
Extremists from the Qibla movement, founded by Achmat Cassiem around 1979, reportedly gained control of Pagad.98 The core of second-generation leaders that came to power in Pagad, replacing all but one of the founders, are mostly reported Qibla enthusiasts. This merits a brief digression to a few reflections on Qibla.
 
Jhazbhay noted that some Muslims perceived South Africa's transformation as threatening,99 and that "a universal alienation, when mediated through particular interests, produces exclusivist discourses".100 One of Qibla's slogans is "One solution, Islamic revolution". When the Call of Islam was formed in 1983 it "renegotiated new inclusivist discourses".101 Qibla sent dozens of its poster-waving activists to try to disrupt the first Call of Islam rally. They chanted, not in Arabic but in Farsi, "Death to hypocrite-traitors!" and "Death to the Soviets!".102 In 1983 the latter slogan alluded to the Call of Islam affiliating to the United Democratic Front (UDF). Friends and foes alike saw the UDF as the home of supporters of the ANC/SACP/Cosatu alliance, which was given foreign aid by the Soviet Government.
 
Cassiem's greatest coup to date was to be elected as head of the Islamic Unity Convention, founded in 1994. This has its own community radio station, Radio 786, and acts as a militant rival to the establishment MJC, which operates its own community radio, Voice of the Cape.103 Radio 786 gave empathetic coverage to Pagad.
 
What is fact is that four Pagad founders - Ali Parker, Farouk Jaffer, Nadthmie Edries and Ebrahim Satardien - complained of a 'Qibla faction' with a 'hidden agenda'. They were expelled in September 1996.104 Jaffer was subsequently assassinated,105 as was Satardien three months later. Both killings were marked by many shots to the head.106 Satardien's brother was Imam of the Lotus River mosque. When he criticised Qibla at meetings, his mosque was petrol-bombed.107 There was an attempted assassination of Ali Parker.108 Pagad's G-Force also threatened to kill any members who dropped out.109 Aslam Toefie, the national co-ordinator, and other founding leaders also resigned, warning that what was going on in Pagad gave an alibi to gangsters and drug dealers to commit crimes, claiming they were done in Pagad's name.110
 
The first sensational conflict between Pagad and the Muslim religious establishment came on Friday 10 January 1997, when a 50-strong Pagad group, watched approvingly by its balaclava-masked amir, invaded the Muir Street mosque111 during the mid-Friday prayers before Ramadan, to abuse and manhandle the congregation's Sheikh Mogammad Moerat and his family. The MJC issued a statement expressing:
...our strongest condemnation of the abhorrent behaviour. This constitutes a violation of the sacred time of Ju'mah, the sacred space of the masjid, and the sacred person of an individual, and calls for the highest censure.112
The MJC condemned Achmat Cassiem, leader of Qibla and the Islamic Unity Convention (IUC), and Radio 786 as responsible for creating an atmosphere of belligerence and intolerance. They violated Shari'ah by demonising Muslims who hold alternative viewpoints as munafiqs (hypocrites). Sixty-two imams, moulanas and sheikhs signed the statement, supported by the Muslim Youth Movement.113
 
Pagad activists manhandled, spat at, and called "hypocrite" and "pig" Sheikh Achmat Sedick, Secretary-General of the MJC.114 Pagad leaders now spoke of "economic gangsters" and "religious gangsters".115 After criticising Pagad's methods, Sheikh Nazeem Mohamed, a much-loved leader of the MJC for forty years, and then its president, had a hand grenade thrown at his house in mid-1998.116 Also publicly critical of Pagad's methods was Ebrahim Moosa, a liberal Muslim academic theologian, Director of the Centre for Contemporary Islam at the University of Cape Town and among the first Muslims to be appointed in that department. The day after Pagad's legal spokesman denounced him as an enemy of Islam (munafiq), which was reported on Radio 786, a bomb was thrown at his house. The bomb attack was preceded by a Pagad trademark, the balaclava-clad squad, who in this case made a road-block keeping people away while the bomb was planted. Pagad leader Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim denounced Moosa as a "religious gangster".117 Moosa moved himself and his family to the USA. Many other imams, from Mountain View to Surrey Estate to Grassy Park congregations, had to endure aggressive confrontations from Pagad leaders and supporters. This echoes how Qibla had earlier during the 1980s alienated one congregation after another.118 Sheikh Sattardien of the Lotus River mosque criticised Qibla's agenda again in 1996.119
 
Pagad regularly made use of the Masjid-ul-Quds mosque in Gatesville on the Cape Flats. When the mosque committee stopped Pagad using its mosque for meetings in 1997, its Sheikh Sa'dullah Khan suddenly received death threats, and took a sabbatical in the USA.120 When in August 1999 he returned to deliver a Jumu'ah sermon, Pagad chief co-ordinator Abdoes-Salaam Ebrahim and others shouted him down and prevented him from delivering the sermon. The current Imam Maulana Ahmed Mukkadam, the mosque executive and the MJC condemned this as a violation of the sanctity of the mosque.121 During 1997 one mosque after another, such as Grassy Park (5th Avenue) and Lansdowne (York Road), refused to let their mosques be used for Pagad meetings.122 Pagad members also disrupted a meeting at Kensington mosque.123 Pagad had created perceptible fear among both the traditionalist, mainstream Muslims, as well as the liberal minority of intellectuals.124 Many from then on confined their criticisms of Pagad to private occasions.
 
Most Cape Muslims rejoiced as democracy saw their co-religionists rise for the first time to high positions in the great institutions of civil society. Moegsien Williams became the first Muslim to be editor of a daily newspaper, the Cape Times. Pagad, however, swiftly denounced its reporting and launched an unsuccessful boycott of the newspaper.125 Many journalists were harassed.126 Pagad specifically threatened Muslim photojournalists working for the Cape Times and Reuters, such as Benny Gool and Shafiek Tassiem.127 Dullah Omar became the first Muslim to be Minister of Justice. Pagad demonstrators invaded his house. He deemed that avoiding the possibility of a future shootout made it advisable for him to move to the Presidential Estate.128 Ebrahim Rasool became the first Muslim to be elected a provincial ANC chairperson. Pagad supporters chanted threats at him and graffiti demanding he be killed appeared. Since 1998 he has had to be protected by armed guards. These and other incidents create the impression that Pagad saw every prominent Muslim leader that did not tow its line as a rival, who must be broken in a power struggle for hegemony over the Muslim community.
 
Pagad's next stage appeared to be attempting to project its power to cower non-Muslims. The Jewish Book Centre, housed in a private home, was burnt down. A bomb was planted129 at the Wynberg synagogue (Orthodox denomination) when no-one was in the building.130 These were the first and only such incidents in 180 years of mosque and synagogue congregations co-existing in Cape Town. Another bomb exploded as the then-Western Cape Premier, Gerald Morkel, and other Democratic Alliance (DA) leaders arrived at the Samaj Centre,131 which is owned by the Hindu community. Seven people were wounded.132
 
Throughout 1997, the media gave decreasing publicity to pipe-bomb attacks and shootings on the Coloured and working class Cape Flats. Events indicate that the bombers realised that headlines could from then on only be obtained by killing wealthy whites.
 
Around this time Pagad G-Force members learnt how to make bombs that could be detonated by remote control via mobile phones.133 In August 1998 a bomb killed two diners and wounded 27 at the Planet Hollywood Restaurant in the popular Waterfront 'shoppertainment' precinct. Business slumped and the restaurant later went bankrupt. This came weeks after two Pagad G-Force men blew themselves up with a pipe bomb while they were in a numberplate-less bakkie outside the Wett Spot nightclub in Wetton.134 In late 1999, bombs went off in the Camps Bay St. Elmo's pizzeria (wounding 48), and outside Mano's restaurant. Other targets included the Blah Bar and The Bronx nightclub, both popular with gays and lesbians in Green Point's 'Pink Triangle'.135 In 2000 targets included the NY Bagels take-away in Sea Point. Another Pagad cell was arrested after having planted a bomb outside a pub.136 A bomb exploded outside Obz Cafe137 and at the Constantia Village shopping centre138 while another was defused before it could explode at the Kenilworth Centre shopping mall.139 A Pagad cell was arrested after planting a bomb outside the Keg and Swan pub near the Tyger Valley140 Centre shopping mall.141
 
A huge number of Muslim organisations condemned the Planet Hollywood terrorist bombing, including the militant IUC142 and Qibla founder, Achmat Cassiem.143 Imam Abdurahmaan Gafieldien of the Manenberg mosque joined other clergy who staged a peace march to Planet Hollywood restaurant a day after it was bombed. Less than two months later, he was shot at in his home.144
 
As early as December 1996, Pagad members shot and wounded a policeman.145 Police detective Ben Latagan was then assassinated, being shot thirteen times.146 Schalk Visagie, a commander of the Pagad Investigative Unit and son-in-law of ex-President P.W. Botha, was shot and wounded weeks later.147 Policewoman Natasha Pillay had one leg amputated after a remote-controlled bomb exploded.148 Pipe bombs exploded outside the Pagad Investigative Unit offices in August 1998, in 1999 outside the Cape Town, Woodstock and Athlone police stations and in 2000 outside the Wynberg Magistrate's Court.149 A Pagad squad attacked and stole guns from a police station in Claremont.150 Magistrate Pieter Theron was assassinated in his driveway151 and Pagad planned to assassinate another magistrate, Wilma van der Merwe, who presided over trials of Pagad activists.152 Shots were fired at Judge Nathan Erasmus.153
 
Alongside this, Pagad continued operating as another vigilante group against crime. In the last eight months of 1996, it staged 112 marches to the homes of drug dealers and was estimated to have lanched 38 attacks by petrol bombs, drive-by shootings and hand grenades. In the first six months of 1997, the number of marches dropped to 41, freeing up manpower for 71 terror attacks.154 Police estimated that between October 1997 uand January 1998 Cape Town saw 195 attacks by Pagad on gangs and 429 attacks by gangs on each other and on Pagad. In 1998, Pagad was thought to have committed another 168 bombings and other incidents.155 By 2000, Pagad had killed 24 gang leaders156 plus street drug dealers.
 
In the end, Pagad's vigilante campaign had little effect on the gangs, except that its assassination of several gang bosses led to increased turf wars as other gangs tried to seize the opportunity the assassinations opened up.157 Some gangsters responded to the attacks of Pagad hitmen by shooting the nearest Muslim corner shop owners and petrol bombing their shops. In one week, gangsters shot dead five Muslim shopkeepers and a doctor.158 Others shot and bombed Muslim clergy and worshippers.159 Gangster threats to get revenge by shooting Muslim schoolchildren once led to all Muslim schools being closed for a day.160 Gangsters routinely shot Pagad activists.161 When police intelligence heard that the gangs planned to attack mosques (where Pagad held meetings) during the most crowded Ramadan days, they raced to the Hard Livings' gang hangout, Die Hok,162 and seized Uzis, a Russian machine-gun and armour-piercing bullets.163

THE STATE: FROM FAILURE TO COUNTER-OFFENSIVE, 2000-2002

 
The ANC's Western Cape Provincial leadership strategised to fight back against Pagad, which had demonised both democracy and the ANC, and to prevent Pagad acquiring legitimacy and support.164 The strategy was:
The police saw prosecution witness after witness assassinated before they could give evidence against Ebrahim Jeneker and other Pagad hitmen.169 The house of one state witness's aunt was bombed.170 Pagad killed two witnesses to the Ben Lategan murder,171 including one whose name was on a list in Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim's diary.172 Two witnesses to the Keg and Swan attempted bombing, a husband and wife, were each shot seven times.173 The assassination of Ashraf Saban left no remaining witnesses against the accused who planted a bomb outside the Wynberg magistrate's court.174 Witness Mogamat Abrahams was murdered before he could testify against Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim, Pagad national co-ordinator. He was the eighth witness Pagad murdered.175 Abader was assassinated before he could give evidence about five Pagad murders.176 Another Pagad hitman murdered relatives of a witness to their killing of Pagad founder Farouk Jaffer.177
 
Initially, led by Minister of Justice Dullah Omar, the police in Cape Town (as in Port Elizabeth) tried to negotiate with Pagad to refrain from vigilantism and provide police with evidence about drug dealers.178 Pagad stopped co-operation with the police when they started to arrest Pagad bombers.179
 
In August 1997 the police set up a squad of some 130 police members to investigate Pagad and crimes against the state.180 By 2000, the police had 26 Pagad members in jail and charged a total of 117 gunmen in 55 cases.181 There were no further remote-controlled bombs. After a raid by the Scorpions (as the Directorate of Special Operations - DSO - is known) in November 2000 caught the Pagad Grassy Park G-Force cell red-handed with bombs, no further bomb blasts occurred at all.
 
The first conviction of a Pagad G-Force leader was for intimidation of a policeman.182 The first murder conviction of a Pagad member came in December 1999. Dawood Osman shot four teenagers at the entrance to the V&A Waterfront and stole a mobile phone from another person murdered in Plumstead. He was sentenced to 32 years jail.183 Pagad hitmen were convicted of killing a seven-year-old girl while shooting at Ocean View drug dealers.184 Another five Pagad members were convicted of illegally possessing guns, ammunition and a stolen police bulletproof vest.185 Ronald Johnson was jailed for 12 years for murder in a series of trials that ended the G-Force Mitchell's Plain cell.186 Later that year prosecutors succeeded in having two Pagad members convicted for bombing the Lansdowne police station.187 Pagad member Mansour Leggett was convicted of 11 murders and seven attempted murders.188 Another three Pagad members were found guilty of the attempted murder of a drug dealer and of robbing his nephew's bakkie.189 Pagad's national co-ordinator, amir and former amir - Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim and Abdur-Razaak Ebrahim - were sentenced to five and three years jail respectively for public violence.190 Another Pagad supporter was convicted of killing the four-year-old daughter of a drug dealer and of the attempted murder of her father.191 Mogamat Isaacs was sentenced to 25 years for three murders.192 Ebrahim Jeneker, found guilty of three murders and other crimes, got three life sentences.193
 
During the series of trials held in Cape Town since 2000, in no case have the accused nor their legal teams complained of torture. The most severe pressure upon the rule of law concerned intelligence agencies placing a hidden TV camera within the court room to monitor intimidation by the accused, which could only pick up "loud shouting",194 the bugging of a defence advocate's phone or chamber195 and the legal tactics used by two prosecutors to get an interdict from a British court to obtain a video.196 No state of emergency was proclaimed and detention without trial was not re-introduced. Police were given temporary powers to search without warrant in the Silvertown precinct. Equally important as Pagad's eventual suppression by the police was how it discredited itself and alienated mainstream Muslims by its abuse of religion. For example, more and more of Pagad accused at major trials for murder wore the white robes of worship in front of the TV cameras and media and held a Qur'an. But few of them wore them when praying in their mosques, even on Fridays, as other members of those congregations pointed out. Fellow Muslims also criticised Pagad members for marching into a mosque to recruit members after a service, and not coming for the prayers.197

CONCLUSIONS FOR DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW

 
The young South African democracy was fortunate that Pagad did not succeed in enlarging its social base wider than a minority within a minority within a minority - a militant minority within a Muslim minority within a Coloured minority. The Pagad episode offers several lessons spanning the whole political and security spectrum for other states confronting the same phenomenon.
  1. Governments, in both state and party dimensions, should give high priority to inclusivity, with its reassuring symbolism. The ANC, for example, became the first political party to elect a Muslim as its Western Cape Provincial leader. (His two ANC predecessors had been former Christian clergymen, from the Nederlandse Gereformeerde Sendingkerk (NGSK) and Presbyterian churches). This minimised the proportion of Coloured and Indian Muslims who might feel marginalised by an African-dominated government and reject a South African identity. When the ANC won the Cape Town municipal elections, it placed large Eid greetings as newspaper advertisements.198

    Ruling parties must encourage their rivals to also accept that is the duty of political leaders to speak out against religious bigotry, so that religious minorities do not feel marginalised. As is often the case, religious inclusivity also aids ethnic inclusivity. A huge proportion of Cape Town Muslims are of partly Indonesian or Indian descent.

  2. Fear is a nursery for polarisation and extremism. For the abolition of capital and corporal punishment to be safe, the public must feel safe. Governments must indeed "take back the streets" from muggers and other criminals through visible policing. The state has to prove that it is the certainty of arrest and conviction, not the ferocity of punishment, which rolls back the crime wave. Permanent struggle against organised crime must always enjoy high priority in allocating resources or support for a variety of vigilante groupings will persist. Equally, any state erodes at the margins if it lacks the capacity to stop the operations of non-governmental armed organisations. The Max Weber truism - that the modern state has a monopoly on legal violence - reminds us that to the extent that gangs rule (and tax) entire ghettos, bus and taxi stops and train stations, the state shrinks as a state.

  3. The more that torture and other forms of coercion are criminalised by justiciable human rights, the more vital does police intelligence become. This necessitates a paradox. Democracy and the rule of law require huge expenditure on both human and electronic surveillance. Democracy requires that this be regulated through judges to prevent misuse against political opponents.

    This is the appropriate place to emphasise the necessity of avoiding one-dimensional views and stereotypes in favour of a more sociological imagination. Conspiracy theories are popular with intelligence services and the tabloid media. In the case study under discussion, this popularity could divert both police and public to 'international Islamic terrorist conspiracies' and theories. It is as important in the post-Cold War world (as during the Cold War) to analyse the local social order and its specificities at the grassroots. Understanding social movements and defending democracy both require this. Pagad's overlap with religion was mostly to use it to mobilise support, to claim legitimacy for killing and extortion and to have venues for meetings.

  4. Estimates of Pagad G-Force activities include 472 attacks by shooting, petrol bombs, pipe bombs and grenades, with over 24 gang leaders, street drug leaders, and passers-by killed. This is less than one-fiftieth those killed in taxi wars. Pagad's members are less than one-hundredth the number claimed by the largest vigilante group, Mapogo, and less than one-tenth its likely members. Pagad's G-Force killed less than one-tenth those killed by Mfelandawonye.

    But once Pagad's G-Force used or misused religious symbolism, and diversified their attacks from drug dealers to restaurants, delis, pubs, the police and magistrates, they triggered their own nemesis. Their actions meant the state had to priortise suppressing Pagad over other vigilante groups, such as Mapogo and Mfelandawonye, or the crime wave.

  5. Police counter-intelligence is vital to combat both corruption and infiltration by vigilantes. The criminalisation of some states in Asia and Africa has given rise to Andreski's concept of the kleptocracy. Many Middle-Eastern theocratic opponents of regimes cite corruption as one reason legitimating the overthrow of their governments. The leaders of the Scorpions have pleaded for adopting the Hong Kong "where did you get it?" law, which empowers the state to confiscate all property from police or other civil servants in excess of their salaries, unless they can explain by which lawful means they acquired it.

    The extent of gang leaders' bribery of low-paid policemen, sometimes their street neighbours or relatives, makes a huge increase in counter-intelligence investigations one prerequisite for sustained success against wealthy crime syndicates.

    Pagad G-Force members infiltrated neighbourhood watches in Grassy Park-Lotus River, Hanover Park and Lansdowne.199 Apart from its implications for gathering information, some neighbourhood watches included police reservists who were issued with police walkie-talkies, bullet-proof vests and guns. One court official was arrested in connection with Pagad bomb attacks.200

  6. The Pagad episode confirms another truism: generals always plan how to win the last war. When South Africa became a democracy, the only fears of counter-revolution focused on the ultra-right, Afrikaner Nationalist extremists such as the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), Israel Vision201 and the Boeremag, whose leaders were jailed for assault, sabotage or murder. The biggest armed attack upon the state came from an unexpected direction. This has led to incidents of petty harassment of some Muslims by the more mediocre among security guards at airports and the V&A Waterfront shoppertainment precinct.202

    Any future such attempts will in fact come from yet another unexpected political direction. A vibrant multi-party democracy, which maximises the interest groups operating within its party organisations, with diverse media, is the best defence against this.

REFERENCES

 
R C Adams, The "Coloureds" of South Africa, in Brian M. du Toit (ed), Ethnicity in modern Africa, Westview, Boulder, 1978.
 
ANC leader, interview, 2002.
 
J-F Bayart, The criminalisation of the state in Africa, International Africa Institute, London, in association with J. Currey, Oxford, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1999.
 
Business Day, various issues, 2000.
 
Cape Argus, various issues, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003.
 
Cape Times, various issues, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002.
 
A Christelow, Islamic law and judicial practice in Nigeria: An historical perspective, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 22(1), 2002, pp. 185-204.
 
F Esack, Three Islamic strands in the South African struggle for justice, Third World Quarterly, 10(2), 1988, pp. 473-498.
 
H Forgey et al, South African survey 1999-2000, Johannesburg, South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), 1999.
 
H Forgey et al, South African survey 2000-2001, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 2000.
 
I Jhazbhay, South African political Islam: A preliminary approach towards tracing the Call of Islam's discource(s) of struggle, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 22(1), 2002, pp. 225-231.
 
F Kockott, Prisoners used as hired guns, Mail & Guardian, 10-16 May 2002.
 
F Kockott, Murder trial exposes prison 'mafia', Mail & Guardian, 17-23 May 2002.
 
F Kockott, The jailhouse rot, Mail & Guardian, 17-23 May 2002.
 
Mail & Guardian, various issues, 1997, 2000.
 
Muslim Views, December 2000.
 
New York Times, 1999 issues.
 
S Ngwema, High price of warlords' feuds, Democracy in Action, 10, 5 September 1996.
 
O A Rashied, Muslims and religious pluralism in post-Apartheid South Africa, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 22(1), 2002, pp. 219-224.
 
Oral communication. Various, all wish anonymity.
 
Pagad, various posters, 2000.
 
S Pillay, Problematising the making of good evil: Gangs and Pagad, Critical Arts, 16(2), 2002, pp. 39-76.
 
M Shaw, Crime, police and public in transitional societies, Transformation, 49, 2002.
 
E Sidiropolous et al, South African survey 1995-1996, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1996.
 
E Sidiropolous et al, South African survey 1996-1997, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1997.
 
E Sidiropolous et al, South African survey 1997-1998, Johannesburg, SAIRR, 1998.
 
Sunday Independent, various issues, 1999, 2000, 2002.
 
Sunday Times, various issues, 1996, 2002.
 
Sunday Times, Cape Metro, various issues, 1999.
 
R Suttner, Inside Apartheid's prison: Notes and letters of struggle, Ocean Press, Melbourne and New York, and University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2001.
 
B Tshehla, Non-state justice in the post-Apartheid South Africa - A scan of Khayelitsha, African Sociological Review, 6(2), 2002.
 
Weekend Argus, various issues, 1996, 1997, 2000.
 
www.pagad.co.za

NOTES

  1. Msinga, Nongoma and Majola districts are all in KwaZulu-Natal Province.

  2. Business Day, 23 June 2000.

  3. Cape Argus, 7 January 1999.

  4. A similar phenomenon existed in Curitaba, Brazil.

  5. Business Day, 25 January 2000.

  6. Sunday Times, 1 December 1996.

  7. Cape Argus, 15 July 1999.

  8. Cape Argus, 30 November 1999.

  9. Cape Times, 19 June 2000.

  10. Cape Argus, 26 April; 3 May 2002.

  11. Cape Argus, 17August 2000; Cape Times, 22 July 2002.

  12. Formerly Port Elizabeth.

  13. Cape Argus, 12 March 2003.

  14. Business Day, 21 June 2000; Cape Argus, 8 October 2002.

  15. In Cape Town.

  16. Sunday Independent and Sunday Times, Metro, 14 March 1999; Cape Argus, 16 November 2000, 27 March 2001, 18 September 2001; Cape Times, 24 August 2001.

  17. Cape Argus, 17 November 2000.

  18. In Tshwane, formerly Pretoria.

  19. Cape Argus, 18 July 2001.

  20. Sunday Times, 21 April 2002.

  21. Gugulethu is a township, Brown's Farm, Vrygrond and Crossroads are shantytowns in Cape Town.

  22. Cape Argus, 15 September 1999.

  23. Cape Argus, 25 March 1999.

  24. The dynamics are well explained in two letters to the editor from Jonathan Schrire, chair of the Vrygrond Community Development Trust, Cape Times, 2 July and Cape Argus, 4 December 2002.

  25. Ngwema, 1996, 18-19.

  26. Cape Argus, 9 August 1999.

  27. Cape Times, 20 December 1999.

  28. Cape Argus, 22 April 2002.

  29. Cape Argus, 20 February 2001.

  30. Sunday Independent, 1 December 2002.

  31. Cape Argus, 20 May 2003.

  32. Translated idiomatically as: "If you act like a leopard, I act like a tiger".

  33. In Limpopo Province.

  34. Cape Argus, 13 July 1999 and 11 September 2001; Sunday Independent, 11 July 1999.

  35. Translated: "You think you are hidden, but are watched".

  36. Mail & Guardian, 5-11 May 2000.

  37. Translated: "We are united".

  38. In Eastern Cape Province.

  39. Sunday Independent, 1 December 1996.

  40. Cape Argus, 22 November 1999.

  41. A township in Cape Town.

  42. Cape Argus, 16 January 2002.

  43. Tshehla, 2002, pp. 55, 59, 62.

  44. Eastern Province Herald, 16 September 1996.

  45. Eastern Province Herald, 10 September 1996.

  46. Eastern Province Herald, 29 December 1997.

  47. Eastern Province Herald, 13 November 1996.

  48. Sidiropolous, 1996, p. 60.

  49. For example, Cape Times, 12 August 1996.

  50. Sunday Independent, 17 September 2000.

  51. Posters, 2000.

  52. Cape Argus, 6 October 2000.

  53. Sunday Times, Cape Metro, 19 January 1997.

  54. Esack, 1988, p. 486.

  55. Adams, 1978, pp. 263-5.

  56. Cape Times, 21 December 2001.

  57. Cape Argus, 20 May 2003.

  58. Cape Argus, 19 June 2001.

  59. Cape Argus, 28 January 2003.

  60. Sunday Independent, 17 September 2000.

  61. Cape Times, 6 August 1996.

  62. Cape Times, 11 June 1996.

  63. Cape Argus, 6 August 1996.

  64. Cape Times, 3 October 1996.

  65. Mail & Guardian, 9-15 May 1997.

  66. Cape Argus, 9 June 1997.

  67. Cape Times, 24 May 2001; Cape Argus, 19 February 2002.

  68. Suttner, 2001, pp. 132-3.

  69. For example, Cape Times, 25 October 2002.

  70. Shaw, 2002, p. 1.

  71. Christelow, 2002, p. 198.

  72. Sidiropolous, 1997, p. 73.

  73. Sidiropolous, 1996, p. 71.

  74. Medical Research Council, cited in Cape Argus, 8 June 1999.

  75. Cape Times, 2 April 2001.

  76. An Indian suburb in Cape Town.

  77. www.pagad.co.za

  78. Oral communication.

  79. Cape Argus, 15 May 1997.

  80. Cape Argus, 6 February 2003.

  81. Eastern Province Herald, 4 December 1996.

  82. Cape Times, 8 August 1996.

  83. Cape Argus, 22 September 1998.

  84. Cape Times, 12 August 1996.

  85. For example, Cape Argus, 15 June 1998; Cape Times, 13 July 1998.

  86. Weekend Argus, 7/8 December 1996.

  87. Eastern Province Herald, 9 December 1996.

  88. www.pagad.co.za

  89. Business Day, 5 January 1998.

  90. Eastern Province Herald, 13 August 1996.

  91. Cape Argus, 31 October 1996.

  92. New York Times, 29 March 1999.

  93. Cape Argus, 16 February 2000.

  94. Cape Times, 16 February 2000.

  95. Cape Times, 13 May 1999.

  96. Cape Times, 11 June; Cape Argus, 12 June 1998.

  97. Sunday Times, Cape Metro, 13 June 1999.

  98. Cape Times, 30 September 1996.

  99. He is not explicit, but we may note that in the 1980s the overwhelming majority of Muslim Capetonians were classified under apartheid as 'Cape Coloured', 'Cape Malay' or 'Indian', while the overwhelming majority of ANC members were African.

  100. Jhazbhay, 2002, p. 225.

  101. Ibid, p. 226.

  102. Esack, 1988, p. 487.

  103. The Muslim Students' Association and Muslim Youth Movement incline to the MJC. The IUC claims it represents 356 Muslim organisations, but by 2000 only 36 organisations came to its bi-annual general meeting (Muslim Views, December 2000).

  104. Cape Argus, 25 September; Cape Times, 26 September 1996.

  105. Cape Argus, 19 July 1999.

  106. Sunday Times, Cape Metro, 3 October 1999.

  107. Cape Argus, 28 July 1997.

  108. Cape Argus, 21 November 2000.

  109. Cape Argus, 4 September 2000.

  110. Mail & Guardian, 5-11 December 1997.

  111. This is the largest mosque in District Six, where the entire congregation had been evicted during the ethnic mass removals of apartheid's Group Areas Act.

  112. Cape Times, 14 January 1997.

  113. Cape Times, 14 January 1997.

  114. Weekend Argus, 17-18 October 1998.

  115. For example, Cape Times, 16 September 1998.

  116. Cape Times, 22 November 2000.

  117. Cape Times, 14 and 15 July 1998; Cape Argus, 15 July, 1 and 9 October 1998.

  118. Oral communication.

  119. Cape Times, 30 September 1996.

  120. He was also managing editor of Muslim News, director of the Gatesville Islamic Centre, and on the Exco of the Islamic Council of South Africa (Cape Times, 14 September 1998).

  121. Cape Argus, 11 July and 10 August 1999.

  122. Cape Times, 4 September 1997.

  123. Cape Argus, 30 September 1997.

  124. Sunday Times, Metro 13 September 1998; Cape Times, 18 January 1999.

  125. Cape Times, 11 and 15 November 1996; Cape Argus, 13 November, Weekend Argus, 9/10 November 1996.

  126. Cape Argus, 11 November 1996.

  127. Cape Times, 18 December 1999.

  128. Eastern Province Herald, 15 August 1996.

  129. Four Pagad accused, notwithstanding arguments over the possession of a pipe bomb, were later acquitted of the bombing as a prosecution witness's testimony was "riddled with lies". They were found guilty of stealing a van used in the bombing. Another state witness, Faizel Steyn, did however testify to Pagad leaders expanding its targets to include Jewish ones (Cape Times, 28 February 2002).

  130. Cape Argus, 7/8 October; 10 October 2000.

  131. Gatesville is the largest Indian suburb in Cape Town.

  132. Cape Times, 13 September 2000.

  133. Cape Times, 11 June 1998.

  134. Cape Argus, 30 July 1988.

  135. Cape Times, 21 August 2000.

  136. Cape Argus, 29 July 2000.

  137. Weekend Argus, 9/10 September 2000.

  138. Cape Times, 12 September 2000.

  139. Cape Argus, 13 October 2000.

  140. Camps Bay, Constantia, Green Point, Kenilworth, Observatory, Sea Point, Tyger Valley in Bellville and Wetton are all suburbs in Cape Town.

  141. Cape Argus, 3 & 6 November 2000.

  142. Cape Times, 27 August 1998.

  143. Cape Times, 28 August 1998.

  144. Cape Times, 8 October 1998.

  145. Cape Times, 18 December 1996.

  146. Cape Times, 15 January 1999; Cape Argus, 23 August 2002.

  147. Cape Times, 16 September 1999.

  148. Cape Argus, 28 December 1999.

  149. Cape Argus, 20 July 2000.

  150. Cape Argus, 5 & 8 January 1998.

  151. Cape Times, 8 September 2000.

  152. Cape Times, 13 September 2000.

  153. Cape Times, 10 December 2002.

  154. Sidiropolous, 1998, pp.57-8.

  155. Forgey, 1999, pp. 62, 75.

  156. Forgey, 2001, p.82.

  157. Sunday Times, Cape Metro, 19 March 2000.

  158. Cape Argus, 27 September 1997; Cape Times, 24 Oc9tober 1997.

  159. Cape Times, 4 September 1997; 1 December 1999.

  160. Cape Argus, 6 August 1996.

  161. For example, Cape Times, 8 August 1996.

  162. 'The den' is probably the best translation in this context.

  163. Cape Argus, 30 September 1997.

  164. ANC, interview 2002.

  165. Cape Times, 25 September 1998.

  166. Cape Argus, Friday 1999; Sunday Times,14 October 2001.

  167. Sidiropolous, 1998, p. 59.

  168. Business Day, 5 January 1998.

  169. Cape Times, 14 October 1998.

  170. Cape Argus, 11 November 1999.

  171. Cape Argus, 17 May 2000.

  172. Cape Argus, 19 May 2000.

  173. Sunday Times, 31 December 2000.

  174. Cape Argus, 21 March 2001.

  175. Cape Argus, 9 April 2001.

  176. Cape Argus, 18 June 2001.

  177. Cape Times and Cape Argus, 17 October, 9 November 2001.

  178. Weekend Argus, 11/12 October 1997; Cape Argus, 17 October 1997.

  179. Cape Times, 20 October 1997.

  180. Sidiropolous, 1998. p. 58.

  181. Forgey, 2000, p. 82.

  182. Cape Argus, 29 September 1999.

  183. Cape Argus, 15 December 1999.

  184. Cape Argus, 15 September 2000.

  185. Cape Argus, 21 November 2000.

  186. Cape Argus, 25 June 2001.

  187. Cape Argus, 21 September 2001.

  188. Cape Argus, 29 March 2001.

  189. Cape Argus, 20 April 2001.

  190. Cape Argus, 26 March 2002.

  191. Cape Times, 8 May 2002.

  192. Cape Times, 22 October 2002.

  193. Cape Argus, 18 and 20 December 2002.

  194. While application for a mistrial was rejected, the Bar Council protested that it was "adamantly opposed" to installing secret surveillance apparatus without prior notification to the defence lawyers (Cape Argus, 8 November 2001).

  195. Cape Argus, 30 October, 22 November, 20 December 2001; Cape Times, 31 October 2001.

  196. An enquiry by the Chair of the General Bar Council found that the prosecutors were not guilty of improper conduct (Cape Argus, 13 March 2002).

  197. Oral communication.

  198. For example, Cape Times, 19 January 1999.

  199. Cape Times, 7 August 1998.

  200. Cape Argus, 24 April 2002.

  201. 'Israel Vision' has nothing to do with the State of Israel nor Zionism. It is yet another of those ultra-right white racist groups that argue that they, not Jews, are the real 'chosen race'.

  202. For example, letter, Cape Argus, 25 August 2000.

ABOUT THIS PAPER

 
Pagad began as People Against Gangsterism and Drugs. It ended as Pipe-bombers and Gunmen and Detonators. Pagad evolved rapidly into an organisation with a political power agenda, purging dissenters, intimidating the Muslim establishment, as well as liberal and feminist Muslims, and attacking
police, prosecutors and judges. Media photos and videos focused on Pagad’s use of religion as an ideology to mobilise supporters and to legitimate killing. It rarely perceived this organisation as part of the social phenomenon of numerous vigilante groups springing up around the country to combat the worstever crime wave. It is also essential, however, to analyse the dimension of Pagad as one of numerous popular initiatives against South Africa’s worst-ever crime waves. Pagad also challenged the young South African democracy with two difficult tests. First, could the post-apartheid police and prosecutors break Pagad? Second, could the police, prosecutors and judiciary, caught in the upheaval of transformation, suppress its terrorism without detention, torture and other violations of the rule of law, and the Constitution’s Bill of Human Rights?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 
KEITH GOTTSCHALK is head of the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Western Cape. His thirty academic publications include apartheid’s death squads, political party rivalry during South Africa’s first decade of democracy and the founding of the African Union. His first poetry collection, Emergency Poems, was published in 1992. He is also deputy chair of the South African Writers’ Association and of the Cape Centre of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa.

ABOUT THE FUNDERS

 

The publication of this paper was supported by the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs.