Marianne Merten
Guilty of tax evasion? Call on the People for Justice to raise public support while your appeal is pending.
Dozens of posters sprang up in the Cape Town CBD on Wednesday in support of reputed crime boss Colin Stanfield, who is out on R100 000 bail pending his appeal against a six-year jail sentence for tax evasion of R2,6-million.
During Stanfield’s trial it was reported that the state estimated the self-proclaimed vegetable hawker had earned more than R9-million between 1990 and 1996.
Stanfield himself is not shy to tell the story of how he started his budding entrepreneurial career at the age of seven by selling petrol illegally on a Sunday.
The head of the drug cartel, The Firm, was convicted at the end of March after pleading guilty on one count of tax evasion while others were dropped.
It is understood he has repaid the outstanding monies to the South African Revenue Service and had expected to be slapped with a fine.
“The Magistrate Mr JJ van Zyl did not take into account my domestic and personal inadequacies as a victim of apartheid, spending the best part of my life in state homes, unschooled and a father of 11 children. I am a first offender,” his posters read.
In an accompanying pamphlet stuck under car windshields, Stanfield says the sentence was racist, but that he pleaded guilty to stop the witch-hunt against him. On 16 occasions criminal charges against him were dropped.
“I am not a gang leader and even less so responsible for the lawlessness on the Cape Flats … The white people under apartheid had many privileges and as a result of these have enriched themselves through this system and [were] placed in a position of power.”
In the pamphlet, “Auntie Gerty” and “Uncle Georgie” testify to Stanfield’s good will, saying he paid school fees and never let anyone leave his home empty-handed after asking for help.
People for Justice a newly formed organisation of 25 pastors representing Pentecostal churches on the Cape Flats are organising a mass rally in Stanfield’s support and protests outside the provincial office of public prosecutions next week. They are hiring buses to bring protesters into the central business district.
“We are using Mr Stanfield as a rallying point to prove a legal point. The law and how it is applied is done in an unjust manner,” said the organisation’s chair, Daniel Nathan Fletcher.
The group discussed taking up other issues like child grants, pensions, street children as causes, but decided the millionaire Stanfield was a worthier recipient of their help. Fletcher said Stanfield had given them his support.