gangsters
Andy Duffy
An investigation by the public protector has found that senior Cape Town police effectively shielded members of the notorious Hard Livings gang from the rule of law for years.
The probe uncovered more than a dozen cases against the gang’s members that collapsed because police investigators lost witnesses and vital evidence, ignored prosecutors and failed to protect either complainants or witnesses from intimidation.
The high-profile cases were all reported between 1993 and 1995 – the period when the Hard Livings gang violently established itself as one of the strongest on the Cape Flats.
The charges included attempted murder, assault, kidnapping and drug-dealing, and were laid against Hard Livings members, including gang leaders Rashied Staggie and his late twin brother, Rashaad.
Rashaad Staggie was burnt and shot to death in August 1996, allegedly by members of People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) – the vigilante group spawned in protest against the police’s failure to combat the gangs.
Public Protector Selby Baqwa is due to release a full report on the investigation to Parliament later this year. Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi and Minister of Justice Dullah Omar have already received copies.
The Western Cape police’s special internal investigation unit is investigating charges against officers who worked on the cases.
The unit’s chief, Superintendent Johan Cahill, declines to name the police or their units, but says the culpability reaches senior levels.
Cahill, who started his work two months ago, says he is mainly looking at charges of criminal negligence. But officials close to the public protector’s investigation say there was clear evidence of some police threatening complainants and witnesses, and even forging their statements and signatures.
Advocate Stoffel Fourie, who worked on the investigation for Baqwa, says the police’s work was generally “of a very poor standard”.
“Most of the residents live in fear and would not dare lodging any complaints against members of this gang,” he adds. “People who have lodged complaints with the police are mostly intimidated, and in some cases even assaulted or murdered.”
Despite this, police investigating the charges made no effort to protect complainants or witnesses. Intimidation usually derailed the cases before they got to court, as complainants dropped charges or witnesses backed off. “It became clear that justice could neither be done nor be seen to be done,” Fourie says.
He adds that most of the investigating officers were inexperienced and “obviously did not take much interest … the branch commanders and the supervisors of these officers failed to assist and to direct them”.
His team also found it “peculiar that these cases were not referred to the gang investigation unit [which] specialises in dealing with these kinds of matters … and consists of trained and experienced officers”.
Some police elements believe the public protector’s report reflects particularly badly on serious violent crime division head Leonard Knipe.
Knipe, however, says the report vindicates his unit’s efforts but raises questions about several police stations in the province. Knipe saw a copy of the report late last year.
“A lot of the failures are down to poor investigation,” he adds. “But part of the failure is down to the communities themselves. They won’t come forward.”
The official release of Baqwa’s report is likely to fuel fears that police have played a key role in promoting the violence on the Cape Flats. Two officers were recently charged for their role in the 1996 killing of a gangster in Pollsmoor prison. The murder triggered one of the province’s most vicious gang-on-gang wars.
Rashied Staggie is long believed to have led a charmed life, evading a string of criminal charges in recent years. He was, however, arrested twice earlier this year, but on relatively minor offences, including allegedly interfering with a state witness.
Staggie’s brother, Sulayman, was arrested last week in connection with the murder last month of three alleged members of a rival gang outside the Hard Livings headquarters in Mannenberg. Four other Hard Livings members have also been arrested in connection with the killings.