Marianne Merten
Ousted People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) leader Farouk Jaffer was assisting intelligence services with their investigations into the vigilante group. Last Saturday he was found shot dead near his home.
Said an intelligence official: “Jaffer started helping us a long time ago. But he also advertised his assistance. The hit could be linked to his role.”
As Jaffer’s body lay on the road for several hours in the rain, an unusual number of senior police officials attended the crime scene. They included provincial deputy commissioners Dirk Crafford and Adam Blaauw, Operation Good Hope operational head Director Simon Mpembe and detective boss Director Andr du Toit.
“There is no motive as yet. No witnesses have come forward,” said Operation Good Hope representative Captain Neville Malila.
Provincial police representative Senior Superintendent Wicus Holtzhausen said they are pursuing several avenues. “It is not our policy to say who may be an informer. It would be irresponsible to do that. We had several discussions with him and other members since Pagad started.”
When Jaffer and Pagad’s founding leaders, Ali “Phantom” Parker and Nadthmie Edries, were expelled from the organisation in September 1996, speculation was rife that Jaffer had opted to assist the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).
This followed his comments that Pagad had been taken over by Islamic fundamentalists under the umbrella of the left-wing organisation, Qibla. He and Parker registered the name Pagad as a Section 21 company in a failed attempt to remain in control.
Both Parker and Edries have also been attacked. Since a grenade was thrown into Edries’s home in 1997, he has maintained a low profile. Parker was seriously injured when he was shot in front of his home last year.
Jaffer was regularly spotted in the company of police, sometimes high-ranking officers, before and after his expulsion from the anti- drug group. One such occasion was Pagad’s protest at Cape Town International airport in December 1996, when its followers clashed with police. Jaffer was seen in a police helicopter at the scene. He had been flown up to Pretoria and Johannesburg to meet police officials there.
Police began an investigation into sedition against Jaffer and Parker, but the two were never charged.
Although Jaffer left Pagad almost three years ago, he had useful information to share with the police. He was part of what observers regard as the “palace coup” which transformed Pagad from a community-based anti-drug, anti- gangster movement into one with an overtly Islamic agenda.
More importantly for the police, Jaffer was to have testified at the inquest into the lynching of Hard Livings gang boss Rashaad Staggie. His murder during a Pagad march in August 1996 propelled the vigilantes into international headlines. Jaffer would have been able to point out at least some of the people who could be held responsible for Staggie’s death.
The inquest is expected to resume in the Cape High Court on August 31.
Ministry of Intelligence representative Helmut Schlenter said it is not the NIA’s policy to confirm or deny whether a person works for them. But the agency’s active interest in the anti-drug group was exposed when former Pagad Gauteng co-ordinator Ayub Mungalee revealed he was a “spy” after he and four Pagad members were arrested at a police roadblock near Oudtshoorn in February.
It later emerged that Mungalee had been on the NIA’s books as an informer since 1994. After a hiatus in 1997, when he gave up his Pagad leadership position, he again worked for them.
Mungalee claimed he had transported gunpowder to Cape Town with the knowledge of the agency and knew of at least two pipe bombs the NIA had photographed before letting them go.
His handler, Gretha Bezuidenhoudt, vehemently denied this. She insisted she had only been told about it later. During testimony she refused to answer questions about the nature of the agency’s role in Pagad, except to say Mungalee could have been briefed either in Gauteng or the Cape.
Investigating officer Superintendent Henry Beukes has been relieved of the Mungalee docket. The official reason is that he allegedly withheld the bail file of one of the Oudtshoorn Pagad Five, but he also expressed concern over the lack of co- operation between the NIA and police.
Mungalee was not the first informant to be exposed. On Christmas Eve 1996 Cape Town police arrested prominent Pagad G-Force member Rushdien Abrahams on several attempted murder charges related to shootings at various drug dealers’ homes.
Detectives linked Abrahams and at least two policemen to an undercover hand grenade sting. The secret operation went wrong when a grenade from the same batch killed a pregnant woman late in 1996.
The incident caused a rift in the Western Cape police. Intelligence services accused detectives of scuppering a long-standing infiltration.