Andy Duffy
Pollsmoor prison in the Western Cape has gone on alert following police reports that gangster Rashied Staggie is planning to get into the jail to confront and possibly kill inmate and rival gang leader Jacky Lonte.
It is understood that the prison’s management has drawn up plans with the Department of Correctional Services and the Department of Justice to ensure that Staggie, leader of the Hard Livings gang, is held in another prison in the province, should he be jailed for any reason.
Pollsmoor management, fearing the violence racking the Cape Flats will hit the prison, is also considering transferring other prominent gang members among its awaiting- trial inmates to other jails. Included on the list is Ernest Peters, chair of the umbrella gangster organisation Core.
The prison has transferred 1 400 convicted inmates to other jails in the past three months. More than 3 000 awaiting-trial prisoners are still crammed into Pollsmoor, most of them gangsters. Lonte, leader of the Americans gang, is facing a murder charge, while Peters is to be tried for assault, kidnapping and attempted murder.
The alleged plot to kill Lonte was dug up by the Presidential Investigations Task Unit, the squad set up last year to probe police corruption. The unit is also probing a crime syndicate involving rogue police and Pollsmoor’s gangster inmates.
The Gang Investigations Unit, the main police group investigating gangster conflict in the province, says it has not heard of the alleged plot. Other intelligence sources dismiss the story out of hand. But Pollsmoor management has apparently picked up similar stories from inmates, and is taking no chances.
The Cape Flats conflict claimed another victim this week, with the murder on Tuesday of Moeneeb “Bowtie” Abrahams, one of Staggie’s closest lieutenants. Among other recent victims is Edmund Herold, Lonte’s brother.
Police have still to determine whether such strikes, which have claimed more than 20 lives in the past three weeks, are the work of gangsters or vigilantes, or both.
“What is happening on the outside among the various gangs is definitely going to have a negative impact here,” says one senior Pollsmoor official. “We’ve heard these stories and we’ve got plans in place. He [Staggie] will definitely not be incarcerated here.”
Staggie has been arrested twice in the past two weeks, once for allegedly hindering police and on a second, unrelated charge of visiting a state witness. He was released on bail both times. Staggie was not available for comment.
His motive, if any, for wanting to get to Lonte is not immediately clear. The two are both “generals” in the 26s, the dominant prison gang inside Pollsmoor. But their relationship has been strained ever since Staggie and his late brother Rashaad established the Hard Livings gang and began eroding The Americans’ power base. Lonte has also refused to bring his gang into Core, which Staggie jointly runs with Peters.
Intelligence sources also believe Lonte may have broken the strict code of the gangster community — a brutally enforced protocol dating back more than 150 years — in his bid to hold his place in the thriving Cape Flats drugs trade.
The unit detective liaising with Pollsmoor management, Captain Gerhardt Engelbrecht, declined to comment.
The local press reported this week that the unit had found at least seven examples in recent months of police requesting the temporary release of Pollsmoor inmates, particularly gangsters, for cases that did not exist. The inmates then allegedly carried out criminal activities in collusion with their police bosses.
The scam meant many investigations have collapsed as the prime suspect always had an alibi: he was in Pollsmoor at the time of the crime.
Meanwhile, police have had no more success in determining the motives for Abrahams’s slaying.
“People that are involved in these gangs are wonderful characters — for every one taken out there’s a long list of motives for him to be killed by someone else,” says Superintendent Andre Heyliger, head of the Gang Investigating Unit.”At this point we have absolutely nothing. No suspects have been identified by any of the witnesses we have spoken to.”
The unit has taken on more than 90 new cases since October, including 36 murders. “Breakthroughs are few and far between.”