Andy Duffy
The investigation into the fiery killing of Cape Flats gang leader Rashaad Staggie has exposed a deep split within the ranks of the Western Cape police.
The probe has already looked at police allegations that top police intelligence operatives have collaborated with People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) – the vigilante group responsible for Staggie’s murder – to thwart police efforts.
The office of Western Cape Attorney General Frank Kahn this week called in the police watchdog, the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), to investigate the police intelligence operatives who worked on the Staggie case.
Senior state advocate Willie Viljoen, who is leading Kahn’s original probe, says the operatives may have withheld information that could have prevented the Pagad march in which Staggie died.
But Western Cape police Intelligence Chief Jeremy Veary counters that the operatives’ report warning of the march had been ignored. He says his unit is merely being blamed for overall police failings. Viljoen’s investigation will lead to an open inquest on May 19.
Intelligence operatives on the one side and police officers on the other see Staggie’s murder and the ensuing foul-up as proof of their allegations against each other.
Staggie, joint commander of the Hard Livings gang, was shot and burnt to death in August 1996 after hundreds of Pagad supporters marched on his house in London Road, Salt River.
The murder propelled Pagad into the international spotlight. Securing a conviction for the killing was a major credibility test for the forces of law and order. But the state’s case against the accused, Ozeer Booley, collapsed two months ago when the key witness – a mandrax-dealing gangster – changed his story. The state had nearly 150 witnesses lined up, but none of them could link Booley to the murder.
Days before the case went to the high court, it emerged that two of Veary’s operatives had been at the forefront of the Pagad march. The case’s failure was hugely embarassing for Kahn and Leonard Knipe, the Serious Violent Crime Division chief who led the murder investigation. Both swiftly spread the blame across to Veary’s intelligence unit monitoring Pagad.
The unit bit back, saying police had ignored the reports it sent through in the months prior to Staggie’s death.
The unit also compiled a report two days before the attack, which described plans for a mass Pagad march from the Gatesville mosque to Staggie’s house in Sea Point. The march nevertheless caught the public order police unit off guard.
Kahn called on Viljoen to lead a judicial inquest days after Booley went free. National Police Commissioner George Fivaz seconded his favourite trouble shooter, Director Ivor Human, to work alongside Viljoen.
Human concentrated on the allegations of complicity against intelligence operatives. It is understood Human questioned the operatives on their ties to Pagad and to the ANC (Veary and one of his operatives are former members of the party’s department of intelligence security), and even their religious affiliation. He found nothing solid to support the claims.
“These youngsters had been left to their own discretion to gather this information. It was a lack of experience,” he says. No longer involved in the investigation, Human is back in Pretoria on sick leave.
Viljoen charges that Veary’s unit is reluctant to co-operate with his probe. He says the evidence he has amassed to date suggests the operatives gave the public order police unit vague information, apparently withholding the detailed report.
Viljoen says the report would have prompted police to stop the march, avoiding the circumstances in which an “agitated” and “trigger-happy” crowd murdered Staggie.
“Insufficient information was passed to the public order police unit,” he adds. “They [the intelligence operatives] made mistakes.” He wants the ICD to verify whether the operatives could face negligence charges before the inquest gets under way.
Director Flip van der Riel, provincial public order police unit head, says his men were never tipped off that a march was planned. Knipe also says he knew nothing of the operatives’ report.
Veary, however, says the report went through to the public order police unit and later to Knipe. “The report was conveyed to the appropriate authorities,” he says. “What they did with it after that was their problem.”
He adds that a pattern of violence had developed in other Pagad marches in the months before Staggie’s death. The operatives in the Salt River march had been on a “legitimate exercise”.
They had reported it just before the marchers turned on Staggie, but even those reports were apparently ignored. Both had later been commended for their work on the night, and are regarded as the top performing intelligence operatives.
Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi ordered an independent investigation directly after Staggie’s murder. It found poor police communication was a main failing.