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Breaking The Bombers: How the Hunt for Pagad Created a Crack Police Unit
At the very dawn of the country’s brave new democracy, Cape Town was at war. Pagad, which started as a community protest action against crime, had mutated into a sinister vigilante group wreaking death and destruction across the city. Between 1996 and 2001, there were more than 400 bombs – most famously at the popular Planet Hollywood restaurant at the V&A Waterfront – and there were countless targeted hits on drug lords and gang bosses.
The police were at their wit’s end. The new ANC government was alarmed. The citizens of Cape Town were living in fear.
Mark Shaw tells the incredible tale of how the police’s response pulled together former foes – struggle cadres and the apartheid security apparatus – to break the Pagad death squads. It is a story that has never been told in full and was not possible until recently, when many were released from prison or had retired and were finally willing to talk openly about this revealing chapter in South Africa’s recent history.
The police were at their wit’s end. The new ANC government was alarmed. The citizens of Cape Town were living in fear.
Mark Shaw tells the incredible tale of how the police’s response pulled together former foes – struggle cadres and the apartheid security apparatus – to break the Pagad death squads. It is a story that has never been told in full and was not possible until recently, when many were released from prison or had retired and were finally willing to talk openly about this revealing chapter in South Africa’s recent history.
298 pages, Paperback
Published September 24, 2023
6 people are currently reading
7 people want to read
About the author
Mark Shaw
82 books145 followersFor Mark A. Shaw, growing up in the concrete, urban environment of Baltimore, Maryland only cultivated a stronger appreciation for that which he had little of –wilderness and countryside. It also fostered in him a vibrant imagination and captivating creativity, and he began crafting stories in his mind at an early age. Mark draws his inspiration from a lifetime of adventures – from his childhood play with a whimsical stick and blanket, which became his magical instruments for commanding the wind, to his current life in Vancouver B.C., where he strolls through nearby woods and forests much like those portrayed in his first novel, The Keeper of the Wind. Mark is a U.S. Navy veteran.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 25, 2023
#BreakingTheBombers – Mark Shaw
#JonathanBall
As is the case with even the best laid plans, Pagad (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) might well have been created with the best intentions imaginable. At the dawn of South Africa’s democracy an area known as the Cape Flats was increasingly ruled by drug lords and gang leaders. Urban street gangs evolved into criminal enterprises and, in the absence of legitimate protection by state security, communities found themselves captured by criminal governance.
Intervention was essential and a community protest action group consisting of mainly Muslim members was formed to counteract and protect. For various reasons (opportunistic criminal elements, greed, and extremist influence) the seemingly benevolent group mutated into a sinister vigilante group, known for assassinations and bombings throughout the Western Cape. The murder of Rashaad Staggie on 4 August 1996 was the beginning of a sustained campaign of violence. Fueled by a radical Islamic agenda, civilian targets became the norm and violence spiraled out of control.
This book was at least three years in the making. During 2020-2022 the author interviewed more than sixty people, including ex Pagad members, those employed by the state and various community members. The narrative comprises a map of the Cape Flats area, chapters setting out the sources and types of firearms and explosive devices utilized, and a timeline providing a detailed overview of the key events during 1996-2001. The latter includes the attacks on civilian targets like Planet Hollywood, the Blah Bar, St Elmo’s Pizzeria, New York Bagels, and the Bronx nightclub, as well as the bombings of the Bellville, Lansdowne, Woodstock and Mowbray Police Stations, the Constantia Village Shopping Centre, Cape Town International Airport and the Wynberg Court and Synagogue, and the executions of gang leaders and drug bosses like Bowtie Abrahams, Lapepa Peters, Bobby Mongrel and Jackie Lonte, investigators, witnesses and the judiciary.
The author investigates the classic chicken and egg question whether Pagad was indeed created as a group determined to protect the community that was later hijacked by the extremist Qibla, or whether Qibla had been behind Pagad’s creation all along and motivates his answer in detail in the text. Irrespective of the reader’s own view in this regard, it is undoubtedly so that Pagad failed to heed Nietzsche’s warning that the battle with monsters often creates more monsters since the abyss you gaze into also gazes into you. Pagad became a monster that had to be beheaded.
The creation of the Scorpions to counter Pagad is described in avid detail, highlighting the unique combination of former foes from both the struggle cadres and the apartheid security force members. Familiar names are fit into the picture like interconnecting puzzle pieces: David Africa, Arno Lamoer, Bulelani Ngcuka, Leonard Knipe, Percy Sonne, Mzwandile Petros, Jeremy Veary. Likewise, the bastions of Pagad are listed: Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim, Ebrahim Yeneker, Boeta Yu, Ayob Mungalee. A though provoking reminder of a very dark period in local history.
The author is the director of Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and a foremost analyst of organized crime in South Africa. This book is a detailed and accurate reminder of the price to be paid if power is allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #Uitdieperdsebek
#JonathanBall
As is the case with even the best laid plans, Pagad (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs) might well have been created with the best intentions imaginable. At the dawn of South Africa’s democracy an area known as the Cape Flats was increasingly ruled by drug lords and gang leaders. Urban street gangs evolved into criminal enterprises and, in the absence of legitimate protection by state security, communities found themselves captured by criminal governance.
Intervention was essential and a community protest action group consisting of mainly Muslim members was formed to counteract and protect. For various reasons (opportunistic criminal elements, greed, and extremist influence) the seemingly benevolent group mutated into a sinister vigilante group, known for assassinations and bombings throughout the Western Cape. The murder of Rashaad Staggie on 4 August 1996 was the beginning of a sustained campaign of violence. Fueled by a radical Islamic agenda, civilian targets became the norm and violence spiraled out of control.
This book was at least three years in the making. During 2020-2022 the author interviewed more than sixty people, including ex Pagad members, those employed by the state and various community members. The narrative comprises a map of the Cape Flats area, chapters setting out the sources and types of firearms and explosive devices utilized, and a timeline providing a detailed overview of the key events during 1996-2001. The latter includes the attacks on civilian targets like Planet Hollywood, the Blah Bar, St Elmo’s Pizzeria, New York Bagels, and the Bronx nightclub, as well as the bombings of the Bellville, Lansdowne, Woodstock and Mowbray Police Stations, the Constantia Village Shopping Centre, Cape Town International Airport and the Wynberg Court and Synagogue, and the executions of gang leaders and drug bosses like Bowtie Abrahams, Lapepa Peters, Bobby Mongrel and Jackie Lonte, investigators, witnesses and the judiciary.
The author investigates the classic chicken and egg question whether Pagad was indeed created as a group determined to protect the community that was later hijacked by the extremist Qibla, or whether Qibla had been behind Pagad’s creation all along and motivates his answer in detail in the text. Irrespective of the reader’s own view in this regard, it is undoubtedly so that Pagad failed to heed Nietzsche’s warning that the battle with monsters often creates more monsters since the abyss you gaze into also gazes into you. Pagad became a monster that had to be beheaded.
The creation of the Scorpions to counter Pagad is described in avid detail, highlighting the unique combination of former foes from both the struggle cadres and the apartheid security force members. Familiar names are fit into the picture like interconnecting puzzle pieces: David Africa, Arno Lamoer, Bulelani Ngcuka, Leonard Knipe, Percy Sonne, Mzwandile Petros, Jeremy Veary. Likewise, the bastions of Pagad are listed: Abdus-Salaam Ebrahim, Ebrahim Yeneker, Boeta Yu, Ayob Mungalee. A though provoking reminder of a very dark period in local history.
The author is the director of Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime and a foremost analyst of organized crime in South Africa. This book is a detailed and accurate reminder of the price to be paid if power is allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ #Uitdieperdsebek
October 6, 2024
This book is an excellent and important read - I would say almost so-called 'prescribed reading' for local and foreign audiences.
The book's sub-title reveals its core purpose and remit: 'How the hunt for pagad created a crack police unit' and, as noted at page XX of the Preface, 'It seems remarkable that this story has never been told in full'.
Information - accurate, well-researched, balanced - is the light that helps eclipse the darkness; including that of the underbelly of organized criminal activity, corruption, and the relevant actors' (oft inadequate) responses thereto. Shaw has, in this book, bravely, yet sensitively, gone where no author has gone before by relaying important information, in a gripping yet balanced way.
They say sometimes 'truth is stranger than fiction' - this resonates in the case of 'Breaking the Bombers' and the book it reveals a truth with which all should reckon. As Thamm aptly noted, '[w]hile Shaw might be an academic, his book is engrossing and highly readable....you will begin to see the pieces of the vast mosaic of crime, violence, politics and money that operates all around us, all the time.'
And, as former Chief Justice noted at the HSRC Zondo Colloquium of 2023, if we as South Africans indeed wish for 'never again' - never again to state capture, crime, unfair discrimination, what have you - we need to become more informed and active citizens that seek to hold others accountable. Reading this book may just be a good place to start.
Lauren
The book's sub-title reveals its core purpose and remit: 'How the hunt for pagad created a crack police unit' and, as noted at page XX of the Preface, 'It seems remarkable that this story has never been told in full'.
Information - accurate, well-researched, balanced - is the light that helps eclipse the darkness; including that of the underbelly of organized criminal activity, corruption, and the relevant actors' (oft inadequate) responses thereto. Shaw has, in this book, bravely, yet sensitively, gone where no author has gone before by relaying important information, in a gripping yet balanced way.
They say sometimes 'truth is stranger than fiction' - this resonates in the case of 'Breaking the Bombers' and the book it reveals a truth with which all should reckon. As Thamm aptly noted, '[w]hile Shaw might be an academic, his book is engrossing and highly readable....you will begin to see the pieces of the vast mosaic of crime, violence, politics and money that operates all around us, all the time.'
And, as former Chief Justice noted at the HSRC Zondo Colloquium of 2023, if we as South Africans indeed wish for 'never again' - never again to state capture, crime, unfair discrimination, what have you - we need to become more informed and active citizens that seek to hold others accountable. Reading this book may just be a good place to start.
Lauren
December 10, 2023
Mark Shaw's book concludes with two questions from Bruce Walsh, a victim of the 1998 Planet Hollywood bombings in Cape Town. Walsh asks of the bombers, "what were your objectives and did you achieve them?" Unfortunately the book doesn't assist either Walsh or the reader in answering these questions with the story of Pagad's bombing campaign against civilian targets left untold.
The book is far stronger in detailing Pagad's assassination campaign against Cape gangsters and the police's mostly faltering, but ultimately successful, efforts to disrupt them. The story of perhaps the less well known side of Pagad's operations is gripping and Shaw illuminates that which I had almost no knowledge of, introducing the key protagonists, their motivations and their methods.
Is it the book's fault that it is light on detail on the civilian bombing attacks at the turn of the millennium? Probably not - there has not one successful prosecution for the most prominent of these attacks. But the absence of this side of the story is felt and the book that details that campaign is a book I'd like to read.
The book is far stronger in detailing Pagad's assassination campaign against Cape gangsters and the police's mostly faltering, but ultimately successful, efforts to disrupt them. The story of perhaps the less well known side of Pagad's operations is gripping and Shaw illuminates that which I had almost no knowledge of, introducing the key protagonists, their motivations and their methods.
Is it the book's fault that it is light on detail on the civilian bombing attacks at the turn of the millennium? Probably not - there has not one successful prosecution for the most prominent of these attacks. But the absence of this side of the story is felt and the book that details that campaign is a book I'd like to read.
January 11, 2024
Breaking the bombers is my initial read of the year and I must say it was quite informative and educational.
The book enlightened me on the events that occurred between 96’ and 01’ which led to the rise and prominence of the People Against Gangsterism And Drugs (PAGAD) in the Cape. Before the book, I only had slight knowledge of what the group was about and this was solely due to the infamous incident where the group executed the killing of prominent drug lord Rashaad Staggie.
This book also proved to be well researched, cohesive and easy to read for a reader who was seeking to learn more about the history of vigilantism in Cape Town and the greater South Africa. I do think however that this book would have been a 5-star read had the author delved deeper into the relationship between vigilantism and socio-economics in the country.
All in all this was a good read to start my year with and I am grateful to the author for always exposing us to some of South Africa’s less talked about significant events.
The book enlightened me on the events that occurred between 96’ and 01’ which led to the rise and prominence of the People Against Gangsterism And Drugs (PAGAD) in the Cape. Before the book, I only had slight knowledge of what the group was about and this was solely due to the infamous incident where the group executed the killing of prominent drug lord Rashaad Staggie.
This book also proved to be well researched, cohesive and easy to read for a reader who was seeking to learn more about the history of vigilantism in Cape Town and the greater South Africa. I do think however that this book would have been a 5-star read had the author delved deeper into the relationship between vigilantism and socio-economics in the country.
All in all this was a good read to start my year with and I am grateful to the author for always exposing us to some of South Africa’s less talked about significant events.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews