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Back in the mid-’90s, Cape Town had a particularly serious problem with gangsterism.
The People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) took it upon themselves to clean up the streets. But things got intense. Enter Pagad G-Force, a shadowy militant wing that escalated the fight into what would become an urban terrorism campaign.
For six years, the covert crime intelligence team fought to bring the gangs down. And they did. Lives on the Line, written by security analyst David Africa, is the inside story of that battle – how a handful of operatives took on an underground war and won. By 2002, the terror campaign was over.
Criminology professor Irvin Kinnes calls it a must-read, a fearless deep dive into a secret war that played out in the heart of the Cape Flats.
What set the stage for all this chaos?
Picture this: It’s 1995, the rainbow nation is still in its honeymoon phase, and the police force is in absolute shambles. The old apartheid cops were suddenly expected to work alongside the very people they’d been locking up, torturing, and generally making life miserable for. Trust issues? Just a bit.
The South African Police Service (SAPS) had just been born, merging 11 different agencies – some from the apartheid-era homelands, others from liberation movements. It was a mess. And while people were riding the high of newfound freedoms, crime, especially drugs and gang violence, exploded. The cops weren’t ready for what hit them.
Pagad started as a broad, multi-faith movement of regular citizens who were sick of gang rule. But as time went on, the organisation became almost entirely Muslim-led, and its militant arm, the G-Force, took things to another level.
So, who were the G-Force, and how did they go from activists to urban warriors?
These weren’t just angry neighbours with baseball bats. The Pagad G-Force was a disciplined, highly secretive unit operating outside of Pagad’s public face – but with at least some backing from within. Some had military training, possibly from Afghanistan and Iran. These guys weren’t playing.
They became notorious for their assassinations, taking out as many as 30 senior gang leaders and drug lords. Pagad would march outside a dealer’s house, publicly warning them to stop. Then, boom, the place would get torched, and the dealer would often end up dead.
It didn’t take long for a full-scale war to break out between gangsters and Pagad members. One of the most infamous moments was the 1996 execution of Rashaad Staggie, Hard Livings gang boss, in front of a massive crowd – while the cops just stood by. It was a clear message: the old days of gang rule were over. But the gangs weren’t about to go quietly.
Why did it take so long to stop this war?
Plenty of books have covered the Cape Flats conflict, but Lives on the Line stands out because Africa tells it from inside the intelligence machine. The struggle wasn’t just against Pagad, it was also within SAPS itself.
On one side, you had a new breed of democratic police, ex-liberation fighters determined to build a crime-fighting unit that played by the rules. On the other, the old apartheid-era cops, still running the show and highly suspicious of the newcomers. The tension between these two factions led to sabotage, infighting, and a painfully slow start to dismantling Pagad G-Force.
Who was David Africa, and what was his role?
Africa wasn’t just a bystander, he was running the show on the intelligence side. He spearheaded a new approach: instead of the usual blunt-force police work, his unit built airtight cases with solid evidence, so suspects could actually be convicted in court. No more rounding people up and hoping for the best.
To pull this off, he fought to get proper funding, backing from key allies, and most critically, the support of SAPS boss Jackie Selebi. Selebi took a side, and it was Africa’s. That backing made all the difference in finally breaking G-Force’s grip.
So, what’s the big takeaway from the book?
If you want a behind-the-scenes look at how you dismantle an underground militant group, Lives on the Line delivers. Africa lays out the chess game of infiltrating and flipping key G-Force members, outmanoeuvring their secrecy, and ultimately shutting them down.
It is a book for anyone who wants to understand the fight against terror, globally, regionally and locally, and what it really takes to bring people who commit such acts to justice.
Lives on the Line confirms why it is so difficult to investigate organised crime and urban terrorists today.
It’s not just a history lesson, it’s a real-world guide to taking down organised crime and urban terror. And it makes one thing clear: fighting these kinds of wars isn’t about brute force. It’s about strategy, patience, and knowing when to strike.
[Source: The Conversation]
