Ganglands: Competition for territory and battles between rival gangs in areas on the Cape Flats such as Bishop Lavis (above) and Valhalla Park have waged for years. South Africa is high on the Global Organised Crime Index for drugs, kidnapping and extortion.
This is part three of a series about the Numbers gangs in the Western Cape. Read part one here and part two here.
Ricardo’s arms are covered in tattoos, rendering him almost a walking, breathing icon in praise of the feared and “sacred” 28s prison gang. He revels in the history of the 26s, 27s and 28s, dating back almost two centuries.
“When the Number calls, you act,” he told the Mail & Guardian, but refused to divulge anything about the “constitution” of the gangs, because that could get him killed.
The calling of Nongoloza
The year is 1886, and the man who would one day become the founder of prison gangs left his homeland in what is now KwaZulu-Natal after being punished for an act he said he did not commit. Burdened by resentment and feeling a sense of injustice, Mzuzephi Mathebula resettled in the gold mining town of early Johannesburg.
Mathebula, who later changed his name to Nongoloza, became a leader in an organised crime group. Many described these “Ninevites” as an anti-colonial resistance force.
Similar to the gang rankings one would find today, Nongoloza assigned ranks to the group of criminals. Charles van Onselen records in his book, New Nineveh, how members were recognised as colonels, captains, sergeant-majors and sergeants.
Nongoloza was sentenced to prison in 1900 for attempted murder. A few years later he was sent back to prison on charges varying from stock theft to attempted murder. The Ninevites were not deterred by their leader’s imprisonment. Instead, Nongoloza’s stature grew and he maintained his authority inside and outside prison.
By 1912, Nongoloza’s empire had an estimated 1 000 members.
Despite multiple attempts to turn his life around, he was declared a habitual criminal in 1930. His discipline, however, earned him a release 10 years later. In 1940, at the age of 73, Nongoloza — whose life as both prisoner and criminal, took him to Pretoria, Swaziland, Cullinan and finally Barberton prison — was taken back to Johannesburg by train.
Researcher and journalist Lucille Davie wrote in 2008 about his return: “But if he was quietly enjoying the ride, his reverie was broken at the Belfast station — the platform resounded to the roar of ‘Bayede’ and ‘Ngwenyama’ — the king who rules, and the lion. A dozen Ninevites, some elderly like him, were calling for him to once again lead them as Ninevites.”
It was the dawn of the violent and thriving number gangs we still find in prisons today.
Sacred Numbers
“I’ve always bowed before the number of two-eight,” said Ricardo.
The Numbers are sacred. It is a language understood by only those who embody the Number, he says. “When your wife is in hospital and the Number calls you, then you respond. You don’t wait to first visit your wife, the Number calls you now.”
Ricardo spent more than 10 years in prison. That was when he first “touched” a Number gang. To prove his worth to the Number, he had to stab a prison warder. When he “took blood”, three years were added to his initial sentence.
“I worked hard to get the Number. I had to reach out to it. I wouldn’t have been able to stand on my own. When you touch the Number it is easier for you [in prison].”
The Numbers 26, 27 and 28 are not a toy, Ricardo said, saying there was a “massive hit” on the alleged underworld kingpin, Nafiz Modack, for upsetting the Numbers. Modack was arrested in 2021 and together with his co-accused has been charged with the murder of former cop Charl Kinnear, who was shot and killed outside his Bishop Lavis home in September 2020.
Despite being overly observant of his surroundings during our interview, Ricardo says he is not scared of the Numbers gangs. According to him, he is not a gangster but part of a “tronkbende” (prison mob).
There is a difference between earning your Number inside the prison and claiming it outside, he said, referencing street gangs, which over the years adopted and claimed numbers without undergoing prison initiation traditions.
It is believed that the late Colin Stanfield, the uncle of alleged crime kingpin Ralph Stanfield, was one of the first gang leaders to adopt the 28 Number for his street gang, named the Firm.
But Ricardo maintains vehemently that there is only the “drie-kamp” (the three camps) — 26, 27 and 28s.
Valhalla Park’s biggest party in history
Street gangs have evolved over the past century and have become deeply embedded into the social fabric of Cape Town. Many suburbs surrounding the Mother City originated under apartheid’s Group Areas Act. Well-structured households and areas were displaced to what we know today as the Cape Flats.
Valhalla Park, where the Stanfield family established its empire in every structure of the community, is one such area. In a 2004 monograph titled Nongoloza’s Children, Johnny Steinberg described the turn of a new era.
In the late 1980s underworld figures became millionaires for the first time, breaking through the class barrier, which initially motivated the marginalised in the early 1900s to become robbers, part of the Ninevites.
Said Steinberg: “They had defied apartheid, not just by breaking its laws, but by becoming omnipotent … They were far more competent than the Number gangs ever were at blurring the distinction between crime and politics, at spinning banditry as a life of political virtue.
”At this, Colin Stansfield was the best of all.” He had “cut his teeth in the Scorpions and scaled the ranks of the 28s”, wrote Steinberg, adding the late abalone king, Ernie “Lastig” Solomon and drug boss Jackie Lonti to the list of millionaires.
In 1994, Colin celebrated the ANC’s victory and the start of democracy by organising, and funding, the biggest party Valhalla Park has ever seen.
“He hired the local football fields in the ghetto of his childhood, Valhalla Park, erected a giant marquee, bought thousands of litres of beer and truckloads of meat, and invited every resident of the ghetto to attend.”
Money bought mob bosses prominence in areas where poverty and hopelessness reign. The cash flow bought gangsters a seat in governmental structures, not only allowing them to evade prosecution but to procure multimillion rand tenders.
But it was also the love of money that “sold out” the Number.
Worth R200
Colin was sentenced to six years in prison for tax evasion in 2002. By then, the Firm — headed by Colin — referred to itself as “the 28s”, according to Steinberg. In his monograph, Steinberg recorded statements of prison guards who were present at the time Colin was sentenced to prison for the first time.
It is said that when Colin found himself among 28s in his prison cell, he handed each a R200 note. This act infuriated the 28s who purportedly did not consider Colin a “real” 28. Steinberg received an account of the events from prison warders, who told him that Colin “had to buy his safety” and that those R200 notes “saved his skin”.
“Because he knew that here he would encounter real 28s,” Steinberg recounted what he was told by prison guards.
“On the outside, he calls himself a general; in prison, he was never vleis en bloed [flesh and blood]. On the outside, he allows young boys to call themselves 28s, and when they get here, they think they’re ndotas [men]. Here, there are tough questions he has to answer. So he bought his way out. He is a weak man.”
Steinberg noted that although the R200 notes were handed out, there are different versions of exactly how Colin was received in prison. At its core, the collision between street and prison Numbers showcases how capital changed the laws of the Number.
“The essence of the story is that men like Stanfield have stolen something with their R200 notes. They have stolen an inmate tradition,” rote Steinberg.
Money talks
“The number has lost its value,” Ricardo said, and money had taken its historic stature.
“The Number that you get outside [prison] is not the same as the one inside. You don’t understand each other. Outside [prison] the Numbers kill one another.”
He claimed that 90% of the time someone is killed today, it is by one of his own.
The suspected gang boss, Ralph Stanfield, finds himself in a strikingly similar situation to his Uncle Colin back in 2002 in that he could, for the first time, appear before the prison 28s.
Stanfield’s possessions could, however, make life in prison easier. “He has money and that will buy him power,” said Ricardo. “Money, drugs and networks can get you far.”