Sexy Boys gang leader Michael Booysen has an uncanny gift for silencing witnesses and staying out of jail. Andy Duffy reports
The investigation into the gang murder that triggered one of the most brutal conflicts on the Cape Flats is a case study in the many flaws in the state’s law enforcement armoury.
The police officer heading the investigation was pressed by colleagues and superiors from day one to drop the probe – other police were implicated. He finally had to quit the police to see the case through to arrests.
The man alleged to have masterminded the murder, Sexy Boys leader Michael Booysen, has evaded an estimated 56 murder charges in recent years. Witnesses for the state tend to change their minds, disappear or die.
For this case – the 1996 murder of Pollsmoor inmate Steven “Munti” Jones – Booysen has been charged with murder, attempted murder and firearms offences.
But Booysen was given months to prepare himself, thanks to a tip-off from an advocate in Western Cape attorney general Frank Kahn’s office.
The senior state prosecutor, as required by law, has now given Booysen’s attorney a list of prosecution witnesses. A Wynberg magistrate two weeks ago released Booysen on R5 000 bail, provided he stay in his Belhar house 24 hours a day.
“The playing fields aren’t level,” says Jasper Tredoux, the senior state prosecutor leading the prosecution. “He’s evaded us in the past, he’s had serious charges against him withdrawn. And he’s probably going to try again.”
Booysen is alleged to have led a conspiracy involving two police officers, a Pollsmoor warden and several Pollsmoor inmates to murder Jones with a pistol smuggled into the prison. Jones, a prominent member of the gang cartel, The Firm, and the 28 prison gang, was shot dead execution-style, and a second man was injured.
The killing unleashed a wave of tit-for-tat murders, which continue to plague the Elsies River suburb of the Cape Flats.
Tredoux instructed Gavin Meyer, then a captain in the police’s anti-corruption unit, to lead the investigation into Jones’s killing. But Meyer had to leave the police and move to the police watchdog, the Independent Complaints Directorate, before he could begin making any headway. The pressure on him until then had ranged from direct obstruction to attempts to snow him under with other cases.
Fourteen months later, Meyer had amassed enough evidence to arrest all eight alleged conspirators, and to convince Tredoux to prosecute. Four of the accused are prisoners serving time for other offences. But the two police officers, the prison warden and now Booysen are all out on bail. None of the accused was asked to plead.
None of them, Meyer says, has admitted to their alleged role in the plot. The case will stand or fall with the witnesses. Meyer says the Independent Complaints Directorate does not have the facilities to offer them protection.
The state did not even oppose bail for Booysen – a source of friction between Meyer and Wynberg court senior prosecutor Faiek Davids.
Davids says there was no disagreement about the decision he took. Meyer thinks otherwise, particularly as he did not get the opportunity to tell the court about Booysen’s past success in evading murder charges. “We should have at least fought [against bail],” Meyer adds.
Meyer was also surprised to hear Booysen’s attorney, Mushtak Parker, tell the court that Booysen knew last year he was under investigation, and – as an example of his client’s willingness to co-operate – that Booysen had undertaken to be available to Meyer.
Tredoux told Parker about Meyer’s investigation as an aside during another case the two attorneys were involved in last year. “I probably would have told him the investigation was regarding the murder at Pollsmoor prison, but not the details,” Tredoux adds. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.”
Davids says the community may well feel aggrieved that a notorious gangster charged with murder was set free on bail.
The bail decision does not sit well with the drive by the Minister of Justice, Dullah Omar, to tighten bail laws for alleged serious offences.
“Our attitude has always been on serious charges we take a firm stance,” Davids says. “But I was of the view that we would have difficulty opposing bail. Booysen didn’t seem to be a flight risk.”
And apart from that, the reality is that Booysen’s influence on the Cape Flats does not diminish, even if he is kept in custody. Booysen was serving time in Pollsmoor before, during and after Jones’s murder. “When I came out of the court, people asked me whether I thought the 14 months had been worth it,” Meyer says. “But that’s the system.
n At the time of going to press, Meyer and Davids were preparing to go back into Wynberg Magistrate’s Court to argue that Booysen’s bail should be revoked.
Meyer says he received several calls earlier this week from the Belhar community, alleging that Booysen had been seen outside his house. None of these callers, however, would make a sworn statement.
Meyer’s evidence is a cellphone account that allegedly shows that earlier this week Booysen was in Swellendam – two hours’ drive from Belhar