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Hydra's Heads: PAGAD and Responses to the PAGAD Phenomenon in a Cape Muslim Community

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070500035919

1465-3893

Sindre Bangstad,

South African History and Culture

Abstract People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a Cape Town-based movement that arose out of the context of some of the most violent and crime-ridden Coloured townships in Cape Town in the 1990s, has attracted a lot of interest in the media and from academics. A central issue in the debate on PAGAD has been what role Islamist discourses have played in the generation of support for the movement and, more specifically, whether one can regard such discourses as motivating factors for individual PAGAD members. In this article, I present the case-story of a convicted PAGAD member in a community in Cape Town, and the ways in which the Muslim community in which he resided responded to the phenomenon. On the basis of ethnographical data, I argue that PAGAD ought to be seen as a movement attracting actors from a variety of social backgrounds within Muslim communities in Cape Town, and that the common-sensical assertion of a linkage between Islamist discourses and PAGAD violence therefore is problematic. PAGAD's violence is linked to the long history of vigilantism in non-white areas in South Africa, to young South Africans’ exposure to violence in the anti-apartheid struggle, to the absence of legitimacy of the police and the courts, to local models of masculinity, and to marginalisation. PAGAD was bound up with the hybrid social and religious formations of Coloured communities in Cape Town, yet its outward expressions as an Islamist movement cannot be reduced to a mere epiphenomenon in relation to its social and cultural origins. In the community of Mekaar, PAGAD failed to attract a substantial following due to the fact that most actors in the community stalled at the prospect of a cycle of violence between local PAGAD-members and local drug-lords. This article emphasises the general significance of local social and cultural contexts for the understanding of so-called Islamist movements. Notes * This article was first presented at a seminar at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen in April 2001. I would like to thank the participants at the seminar for their instructive comments and the following for comments and suggestions on the topic: Anh Nga Longva, Inge Tvedten, Leslie Bank, Michael G. Whisson, Abdulkader Tayob, Shamiel Jeppie, Gerald Stone, Leif O. Manger and Munzoul A. M. Assal. I would also like to thank the JSAS referees. Fieldwork was undertaken from May to November 2000. In order to protect the integrity of local residents, the name of the community (Mekaar) as well as the individual names appearing in the article are fictive. Vernacular Arabic-derived terms are transliterated in an approximation to Arabic–Afrikaans orthography. 1 The arrests were reported in the Cape Times, the Cape Argus and Die Burger, the main local newspapers, on 6 and 7 November, 2000. See ‘New Bomb Bust’, Cape Argus, 6 November 2000; ‘Arrests a ‘Breakthrough in Urban Terror’’, Cape Times, 7 November 2000; ‘Tight Security at Bomb Hearings’, Cape Argus, 7 November 2000; and ‘Vier in Hof ná Gefnuikte Bomaanval’, Die Burger, 7 November 2000. 2 The doyen of post-September 11 ‘terrorism experts’, Rohan Gunaratna, is undoubtedly in a league of his own in implying that PAGAD represents evidence of Al Qaeda's influence in South Africa. See R. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York, Berkley Books, 2002), p. 212. South African government officials, such as the late Minister of Safety and Security, Steve Tshwete, and Minister of Justice, Penuell Maduna, came close, however, by raising the spectre of ‘an Algerian situation’ and in implying that PAGAD members ‘had been trained in Libya and had links with the Lebanese Hizbollah’. See ‘Pagad en G-Force is Enigste Verdagtes’, Die Burger, 12 September 2000; ‘SA looks to Algeria for Advice on Terror’, Sunday Times, 17 September 2000; and ‘Maduna: Libyan-Trained Guerrillas Behind Bombings’, Cape Times, 14 September 2000. For analytical comments see T. Leggett, ‘Tshwete is Barking up Wrong Tree’, Mail & Guardian, 15 September 2000, and Z. Jaffer, ‘Don't Blame all Muslims for Actions of a Few’, Cape Times, 6 October 2000. 3 Gabeeba Baderoon provides a Saidian analysis of the local South African media's visual and verbal portrayal of PAGAD, in which she links the local media's portrayal of PAGAD to international Orientalist discourses. However, Baderoon understates the extent to which there was already a South African Orientalist discourse linking Islam and violence long before the advent of PAGAD, namely in the 1980s. G. Baderoon, ‘Covering the East – Veils and Masks: Orientalism in South African Media’, in H. Wassermann and S. Jacobs (eds), Shifting Selves: Post-Apartheid Essays on Mass Media, Culture and Identity, Social Identities South Africa Series (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 2003), esp. pp. 329–332. 4 In line with contemporary scholarly practice, I have opted not to put designations of population groups such as Coloured, white and black African in inverted commas, even if it remains a fact that they are essentially socially constructed – if not necessarily completely arbitrary – categories. 5 For comparisons, see for instance: C. Africa, J. Christie, R. Mattes, M. Roefs, H. Taylor, Crime and Community Action: PAGAD and the Cape Flats 1996–1997, Public Opinion Service (Cape Town, IDASA, 1998); A. Botha, ‘The Prime Suspects? The Metamorphosis of PAGAD’, in H. Boshoff, A. Botha, M. Schönteich, Fear in the City: Urban Terrorism in South Africa, Institute for Security Studies Monograph no. 63 (Cape Town & Pretoria, Institute for Security Studies, 2001); B. Dixon and L-M. Johns, Gangs, PAGAD and the State: Vigilantism and Revenge Violence in the Western Cape, Violence and Transition Series, volume II (Braamfontein, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2001); F. Esack, ‘PAGAD and Islamic Radicalism: Taking on the State?’, Indicator S.A., 13, 4 (1997), pp. 7–11; R. Galant and F. Gamieldien (eds), Drugs, Gangs, People's Power: Exploring the PAGAD Phenomenon (Claremont, Claremont Main Road Masjid,1996); S. Jeppie, ‘People Against Gangsterism and Drugs’, Annual Review of Islam in South Africa, 1 (1998), pp. 1–4; S. Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance in the Western Cape, South Africa’, in K. King (ed.), Development in Africa, Africa in Development (Edinburgh, Centre for African Studies, 2000); T. Leggett, Rainbow Vice: The Drugs and Sex Industries in South Africa (Cape Town, David Philip, 2002), Chapter 4; C. J. B. Le Roux, ‘People Against Gangsterism and Drugs – (PAGAD)’, Journal for Contemporary History, 22, 1 (1997), pp. 51–80; C. J. B. Le Roux, ‘PAGAD: A Vehicle for Radical Islamic Fundamentalism in South Africa or an Organisation of Concerned Citizens?’, (Unpublished manuscript presented at the Conference on Theopolitics, Durban, 27–28 March 1998); S. Pillay, ‘Globalization, Identity and the Politics of Good and Evil: Representing Gangsters and PAGAD’ (Unpublished M.A Thesis, Bellville, University of the Western Cape, 1998); S. Pillay, There's a Fundamentalist on My Stoep: Problematizing Representations of PAGAD (Bellville, University of the Western Cape, 1998); S. Pillay ‘Problematising the Making of Good and Evil: Gangs and PAGAD’, Critical Arts, 16, 2 (2003), pp. 38–75; S. Pillay ‘Experts, Terrorists, Gangsters: Problematising Public Discourse on a Post-Apartheid Showdown’, in Wasserman and Jacobs (eds), Shifting Selves, pp. 283–313; A. Tayob, ‘Jihad Against Drugs in Cape Town: A Discourse-Centred Analysis’, Social Dynamics, 22, 2 (1996), pp. 23–29. See also, S. Bangstad, ‘Revisiting PAGAD: Machoism or Islamism?’, ISIM Newsletter, 11 February 2002, p. 11. 6 B. O. Utvik, ‘Islamism: Digesting Modernity the Islamic Way’, Forum for Development Studies, 2 (1993), p. 197. Like many others, Utvik renders sharī'a as ‘Islamic Law’, but this is inaccurate, as sharī'a covers a wider range of meanings than ‘law’ normally does. See M. K. Masud, ‘Muslim Jurists’ Quest for the Normative Basis of Shari'a’ (Leiden, ISIM, 2001), p. 2. 7 M. Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York, Pantheon Books, 2004), pp. 59–60. 8 A. R. Norton, ‘The Challenge of Inclusion in the Middle East’, Current History (January 1995), p. 3. 9 F. Burgat, Face to Face with Political Islam (London, I. B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 3–4. 10 K. Hroub, HAMAS: Political Thought and Practice (Washington, Institute for Palestine Studies, 2000), p. 5. 11 Whilst admitting that ‘PAGAD's Islamist discourse was…[…]…fraught with deep contradictions and…[…]… subject to appropriation and challenges by the traditions of Cape Town’, Tayob repeatedly refers to PAGAD as an instance of Islamic fundamentalism and/or Islamism. See Tayob, ‘Jihad Against Drugs’, pp. 27 and 28. 12 ‘…the PAGAD phenomenon is neither about fundamentalism nor an international Islamist project’. Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, p. 221. 13 Pillay, ‘Experts, Terrorists, Gangsters’, p. 283: ‘The argument of this article is that, firstly, the identity of the gangster in Cape Town – as derivative of poverty, as anti-social, as a result of the Group Areas Act – and that of PAGAD – as representative of a homogeneous Islam and as the incarnation of a global “Islamic threat”– obscures their particularity and specificity’. 14 See, for instance, Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, pp. 222–223. 15 See, for instance, Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, p. 221. 16 Pillay, ‘Experts, Terrorists, Gangsters’, p. 304. 17 Pillay, ‘Experts, Terrorists, Gangsters’, p. 300. 18 Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, p. 224. 19 V. Langohr, ‘Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes: Rethinking the Relationship Between Islamisms and Electoral Politics’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 33 (2001), pp. 591–592. 20 N. Nattrass, ‘The State of the Economy: A Crisis of Unemployment’, in J. Daniel, A. Habib and R. Southall (eds), State of the Nation: South Africa 2003–2004 (Cape Town, Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2003), ff. 7, p. 154. General unemployment increased from 28.6 per cent to 41.5 per cent from 1994 to 2001. See M. Altman, ‘The State of Employment and Unemployment in South Africa’, in (Cape Town, Human Sciences Research Council Press, 2003), ff. 7, p. 160. In the 1990s, ‘inter-racial inequality declined, but intra-racial inequality increased markedly’, so much so that inequality in South Africa is ‘increasingly a function of class, rather than race’. See J. Seekings and N. Nattrass, ‘Class, Distribution and Redistribution in Post-Apartheid South Africa’, Transformation, 50 (2002), pp. 1, 25. 21 See Table 1 below. 22 R. Wilson, The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation: Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 227. 23 For one illustrative example, Brazil, see T. P. R. Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in São Paulo (Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 2000). 24 S. Hall, ‘Introduction: Who Needs Identity?’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity (London, Sage, 1996), p. 4. 25 P. Werbner, ‘Introduction: The Dialectics of Cultural Hybridity’, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism (London, Zed Books, 1997), p. 1. F. Anthias, ‘New Hybridities, Old Concepts: The Limits of ‘Culture’’’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24, 4 (2001), p. 621. 26 A. S. Caglar, ‘Hyphenated Identities and the Limits of “Culture”’, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity and Community (London, Zed Books, 1997), p. 169. 27 Here I draw upon the late Edward Said, perhaps the most ardent critic of the widespread Orientalist tendency to regard ‘Islam’ as socially and culturally determinative of Muslim identities and behaviour for analytical purposes. For critiques of this tendency, see, for instance, E. Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, 3rd revised edition. (London, Vintage Books, 1997), p. xvi, and V. Bernal, ‘Gender, Culture and Capitalism: Women and the Remaking of “Tradition” in a Sudanese Village’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 36, 1 (1997), p. 37. 28 S. Ortner ‘Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture’, in R. G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Santa Fé, New Mexico, School of American Research Press, 1991), p. 172. 29 S. Ortner ‘Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture’, in R. G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Santa Fé, New Mexico, School of American Research Press, 1991), p. 170. 30 S. Ortner ‘Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture’, in R. G. Fox (ed.), Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present (Santa Fé, New Mexico, School of American Research Press, 1991), p. 176. 31 M. C. Guttmann, The Meanings of Macho: Being a Male in Mexico City (Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1996), p. 16. 32 R. W. Connell, Masculinities (Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1995), pp. 76–81. 33 Similarly, Seekings notes that females were largely ‘demobilised’ in the anti-apartheid struggle of the 1980s when township politics ‘came to revolve around violent confrontation’. J. Seekings, ‘Gender Ideology and Township Politics in the 1980s’, Agenda, 10 (1991), p. 77. S. Jeppie provides an insight into the representation of Cape Muslim history during the celebrations of 300 years of Muslim presence at the Cape (The Sheikh Yusuf Tercentenary) in 1994. Muslim participation in the resistance against colonialism and apartheid was the dominant narrative during the festival. The Cape Muslim majority's ambiguous accommodation with the apartheid regime prior to the 1980s was skirted around. See S. Jeppie, ‘Commemorations and Identities: The 1994 Tercentenary of Islam in South Africa’, in T. Sonn (ed.), Islam and the Question of Minorities (Atlanta, Scholars Press, 1996), p. 76. My research experience indicates that this mythological representation of the past has become virtually hegemonic among Coloured Cape Muslims in latter years. For assessments of Cape Muslim resistance against apartheid, see F. Esack, ‘Three Islamic Strands in the South African Struggle for Justice’, Third World Quarterly, 10, 2 (1988), pp. 473–498 and S. Jeppie ‘Amandla and Allahu Akhbar: Muslims and Resistance in South Africa, c.1970–1987’, Journal for the Study of Religion, 4, 1 (1991), pp. 3–19. 34 Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, p. 223. 35 By which I refer to intensive participatory observation and informal interviewing over a lengthy period of time in a specific locality. This has been a standard procedure in fieldwork since the time of Bronislaw Malinowski. See T. Hylland-Eriksen, Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (London, Pluto Press, 1995), p. 17. However, as Talal Asad has pointed out, it is important not to conflate anthropology with the methodology of fieldwork. See T. Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 17. 36 As pointed out by S. Robins, ‘Spicing Up the Multicultural (Post)Apartheid City’, Kronos Pre-Millenium Issue, 25 (1998/99), p. 284. There is – of course – a kernel of truth to be found in these discourses; Coloureds are twice as likely as members of any other population group to be murdered, and twice as likely to be incarcerated. In most murders involving a Coloured victim, the perpetrator is also Coloured. See T. Leggett, ‘Still Marginal: Crime in the Coloured Community’, SA Crime Quarterly, 7 (March 2004), pp. 21 and 22. 37 These figures, drawn from Central Statistical Services [CSS] later renamed Statistics South Africa, are cited in G. H. Vahed, ‘Mosques, Mawlanas and Muharram: Indian Islam in Colonial Natal, 1860–1910’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 31, 3 (2001), p. 305. 38 Figures from Statistics South Africa, as cited in S. Bekker and A. Leildé, ‘Faith in Cape Town: Identity, Co-operation and Conflict’ (Cape Town, Internal Report for the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2003), p. 7. 39 R. C.- H. Shell, Children of Bondage, A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1838, figure 2-1 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), p. 41. See also F. R. Bradlow, ‘Islam at the Cape of Good Hope’, South African Historical Journal, 13 (1981), pp. 14–15. 40 See E. Mahoda, History of Muslims in South Africa: A Chronology (Durban, Arab Study Circle, 1993), p. 2. 41 S. Bhana and J. B. Brain, Setting Down Roots: Indian Migrants in South Africa, 1860–1911 (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 1990), pp. 121–127. R. Ebrahim-Vally, Kala Pani: Caste and Colour in South Africa, Social Identities South Africa Series (Cape Town, Kwela Books, 2001), p. 123. 42 G. J. A. Lubbe, The MJC: A Descriptive and Analytical Investigation (Unpublished PhD Thesis in Theology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, 1989) p. 53. See also E. Moosa, ‘Discursive Voices of Diaspora Islam in Southern Africa’, Jurnal Antropologi dan Sosiologi, 20 (1993), p. 48. 43 Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, pp. 221–222 describes class divisions in Coloured communities in Cape Town as historically having been ‘thin and porous’ due to the enforcement of spatial segregation of the city under apartheid. But material, cultural and spatial class divisions among Coloureds undoubtedly have been reconfigured after 1990. 44 The estimates cited were made by community leaders. Due to methodological flaws in the collection of data in the population censuses, I have every reason to believe that there was a significant undercount of the population, as well as an underestimation of unemployment levels in Mekaar in the censuses prior to 2001. That the population census figure of 14,000 inhabitants for 1994 must be incorrect, is borne out by the fact that, as early as 1983, the then Cape Divisional Council (Divco) estimated the population at around 23,000. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that the figure has decreased since then. See D. Maralack and H. Kriel, ‘Area Study of Cape Town: “A Streetless Wasteland”’ (Carnegie Conference Paper, University of Cape Town, 1984), p. 12. 45 This concurs with national unemployment trends. Citing a 2002 Labour Force Survey, Altman in The State of Employment and Unemployment, p. 162 states that 72 per cent of unemployed South Africans are under the age of 35. All indicators suggest that the labour absorption rate of the formal sector in South Africa is at an all time low. Unemployment in the Western Cape increased by 50 per cent between 1995 and 2002. In 2002 the employment absorption rate for Coloured entrants to the labour market in the Western Cape stood at 53.92 per cent. See Provincial Treasury of the Western Cape, Western Cape Labour Market Trends (2002). Available at http://www.westerncape.gov.za/gds/docs/employment_brief.pdf. Furthermore, since 1994, Coloured unemployment rates have risen by 35 per cent. See Leggett, ‘Still Marginal’, p. 23. 46 The Tablīg Jamāt [ur.] is a Muslim transnational movement for faith renewal established in Mewat in India by Mohammed Ilyas in the 1920s. For an introduction, see Y. Sikand, The Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jama'at (1920–2000): A Cross-Country Comparative Study (New Dehli, Orient Longman, 2002), and M. K. Masud (ed.), Travellers in Faith: The Tablighi Jama'at as a Transnational Movement for Faith Renewal (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 2000). For an introduction to the South African chapter of the Tablīg Jamāt, see E. Moosa, ‘“Worlds Apart”: The Tablīg Jamāt under Apartheid, 1963–1993’, Journal for Islamic Studies, 17 (1997), pp. 28–48. 47 See S. Bangstad, ‘The Changed Circumstances for the Performance of Religious Authority in a Cape Muslim Community’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 34, 1–2 (2004), pp. 39–61. 48 The extensive use of the metaphor of ‘family’ in the community was a point already noted by the anthropologist Michael G. Whisson. He suggested that the phenomenon might be seen as a form of resistance to the arbitrary classifications upon which the forced relocations under Group Areas Act had been based. See M. G. Whisson, ‘The Significance of Kinship in a Cape Peninsula Township’ (manuscript presented at the Fifth Workshop on Mobility and Social Change in South Africa, Abe Bailey Institute, Cape Town, 1975), pp. 14–15. 49 S. Bangstad, ‘When Muslims Marry Non-Muslims: Marriage as Incorporation in a Cape Muslim Community’, Journal of Islam and Muslim–Christian Relations, 15, 3 (2004), pp. 349–364. 50 Afrikaans for ‘he was my chum/pal!’. 51 M. Schönteich and A. Louw, ‘Crime in South Africa: A Country and Cities Profile’, Institute for Security Studies, Occasional Paper, 49 (Pretoria & Cape Town, Institute for Security Studies, 2001), pp. 10–11. Available at http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Papers/49/Paper49.html. The page numbers here and in later footnotes refer to the printed edition. 52 South African Police Services Crime Information Management Centre, ‘Provincial Crime Specific Statistics 1994 to 2000’ (1992). Available at http://www.saps.gov.za/8_crimeinfo/bulletin/942000/murder.htm. 53 Caldeira, City of Walls, p. 127. 54 A. Louw, Crime in Cape Town, Institute for Security Studies Monograph no. 23 (Pretoria & Cape Town, Institute for Security Studies, 1998). Available at http://www.iss.co.za/PUBS/MONOGRAPHS/No23/Levels.html. 55 A. Louw, Crime in Cape Town, Institute for Security Studies Monograph no. 23 (Pretoria & Cape Town, Institute for Security Studies, 1998). This social patterning of crime indicates why Steffen Jensen, on the basis of violent crime in post-apartheid Cape Town, is simply mistaken in asserting that ‘the characteristic of violence in societies with chronic violence is one of unpredictability’. See S. Jensen, ‘Discourses of Violence: Coping with Violence on the Cape Flats’, Social Dynamics, 25, 2 (1999), p. 79. 56 Schönteich and Louw, Crime in South Africa, p. 8. Please note that the police area of Mekaar also includes the black African settlement of Abanthu Bethu. 57 In the era of segregation and apartheid, the South African Police Services was essentially a colonial police force geared to the protection of white interests. It had relatively limited interests in the crime levels of Coloured and black African communities, in so far as this did not affect white interests and the interests of the State. See J. D. Brewer, Black and Blue: Policing in South Africa (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994), for a useful introduction. 58 In a ruling by the Constitutional Court, the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1994. 59 J. Redpath, ‘The Gang Landscape in the Western Cape’, Indicator SA, 18, 1 (2002), p. 34. For the history of a famous gang on the Witwatersrand, the Ninevites, see C. van Onselen, New Babylon, New Nineveh: Everyday Life on the Witwatersrand 1886–1914 (Johannesburg & Cape Town, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2001 [1982]), pp. 379–398. For a history of gangs in Soweto, see C. Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto 1935–1976, Social History of Africa Series (Oxford, James Currey, 2000). 60 D. Pinnock, The Brotherhoods: Street Gangs and State Control in Cape Town (Cape Town, David Philip, 1984), pp. 24–25. Interestingly, Pinnock points out that one of the first gangs in Cape Town's District Six, ‘The Globe Gang’, started out as a vigilante group. Indicator SA, 18, 1 (2002), p. 26. 61 See W. Schärf, ‘The Resurgence of Urban Street Gangs and Community Responses in Cape Town during the late Eighties', in D. V. Z. Smith and D. Hansson, Towards Justice? Crime and State Control in South Africa (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 256. In this contribution to the literature, Schärf – erroneously to my mind – attributes the small number of Muslim street gangs to stronger networks of social control and support in Cape Town's Muslim population. It is a fact that most street gangs in Cape Town do not operate on the basis of ethno-religious affiliation, and that there are a great many Muslims involved in such gangs. 62 See S. Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs: Power, Mobility and Violence on the Cape Flats’, Focaal, 36 (2000), p. 114. Pinnock, The Brotherhoods, p. 4, made a tentative estimate of 80,000 gang members in Cape Town in 1984. Based on police sources, Jeppie, ‘Islam, Narcotics and Defiance’, p. 222, offers an estimate of 130 gangs with up to 80,000 members in the Western Cape. 63 Leggett, Rainbow Vice, pp. 22–66 provides a good description of these drugs and their effects. 64 Drug consumption in South Africa is segmented according to population group. In Cape Town, mandrax is far more popular with Coloured drug-users than with drug-users from any other population group. Dagga appears to be popular among drug-users from all population groups. See T. Leggett (ed.), ‘Drugs and Crime in South Africa: A Study in Three Cities’, Institute for Security Studies, Monograph no. 69 (Pretoria & Cape Town, Institute for Security Studies, 2002), pp. 22, 29. Available at http://www.iss.co.za/PUBS/MONOGRAPHS/NO69.html. 65 Drug consumption in South Africa is segmented according to population group. See also M. Shaw, ‘West African Criminal Networks in South and Southern Africa’, African Affairs, 101 (2002), pp. 291–316. 66 See Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs’, p. 111. 67 See Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs’, pp. 107, 108. 68 Maralack and Kriel, Area Study of Cape Town, p. 14, quotes interviewees who refer to gang fights in the early years after the forced removals to Mekaar under the Group Areas Act, but it appears that this was related to fights between male residents originating from different areas. Michael Whisson (personal correspondence) relates the historical absence of gangs in Mekaar to the fact that it is a relatively small and geographically restricted Coloured community, a fact that has facilitated social networks of control. 69 Drug-users in the Western Cape often mix these drugs. In order to make what is known as a ‘wit pyp’ (‘white pipe’), users mix mandrax and majat (low-grade dagga). Leggett, Rainbow Vice, pp. 42–43. 70 Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs’, p. 113. 71 Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs’, p. 109. 72 Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs’, p. 109. 73 Dixon and Johns, Gangs, PAGAD and the State, p. 13, claim that PAGAD was established in December 1995. Most other sources report that it was in 1996. The media in Cape Town, in any case did not refer to it as PAGAD before March 1996. 74 Dixon and Johns, Gangs, PAGAD and the State, p. 21. 75 Leggett, Rainbow Vice, p. 58. 76 Jensen, ‘Of Drug Dealers and Street Gangs’, p. 115. 77 The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) was established as an administrative organ for Sunni Muslims in Cape Town in 1945. It organises the overwhelming majority of Sunni religious scholars or oelema [ar. ‘ulamā’] in Cape Town. See Lubbe, The MJC, pp. 62–65. Sjeg Gabriels had a background as an imam in Portlands in Mitchell's Plain, one of the Coloured areas worst affected by drugs in Cape Town. Cassiem has played a central role in the Islamic Unity Convention (IUC), an organisation rival to the MJC, since its establishment in 1994. S. Morton, ‘Is Cape Unity all it's Cracked up to be?’, Al Qalam, (July 1995); and M. Desai, ‘MJC Denounces “‘Ulama Council”’, Al Qalam, (August 1995). 78 One of these meetings, between PAGAD and the then Minister of Justice, Abdullah ‘Dullah’ Omar, took place on 25 June 1996. Galant and Gamieldien, Drugs, Gangs, People's Power, p. 10, (‘Chronology’). 79 I have personally seen her name in the Cape Divisional Council's rolls listing forced removees from this town. Forced removees living in Mekaar have also confirmed her identity. 80 ‘Bende-Wraak Dreig in Kaap’, Die Burger, 6 August 1996; ‘Bloed Vloei in Week van Spanning’, Die Burger, 10 August 1996. PAGAD's national co-ordinator, Abdus Salaam Ebrahim, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for public violence in connection with Staggie's murder in 2002, but was acquitted on the charges of murder. PAGAD members, Moegsien Mohamed and Abdurrazaaq Ebrahim, were also convicted on charges of public violence in relation to the incident. PAGAD security chief, Salie Abader, was acquitted on all charges, while charges against former security chief, Nadthmie Edries, were withdrawn, ‘It's Not Over Yet, Say PAGAD Men’, Cape Times, 26 March 2002. 81 See ‘Bende-Wraak’. 82 A. Tayob, ‘Islamism and PAGAD: Finding the Connection’, in Galant and Gamieldien (eds), Drugs, Gangs, People's Power, p. 33. 83 Africa et al., Crime and Community Action, pp. 29, 23. 84 Dixon and Johns, Gangs, PAGAD and the State, p. 38 and Elaine Salo, personal communication. Pillay, ‘Experts, Terrorists, Gangsters’, p. 301 is critical of what he characterises as ‘the class-derived binary’, which he claims represents PAGAD as a ‘middle-class versus working-class’ phenomenon, in spite of the fact that ‘the most ardent supporters of PAGAD are from overwhelmingly working-class areas’. While I agree with the general tenor of Pillay's argument, I would argue that the class composition of PAGAD members and supporters is an empirical question, and that the answer to it may have varied between Coloured communities in Cape Town. Furthermore, bearing in mind the historically porous nature of class distinctions in Coloured communities in Cape Town the fact that a person comes from an overwhelmingly working-class area need not necessarily imply that he/she is of working-class background. 85 See S. Morton, ‘PAGAD Splits, Gangs Mobilise’, Al-Qalam (September 1996). Two of the original leaders, Farouk Jaffer and Mohammed Ali Parker, were forced o