WATCH: Brazen Cape gangs take war into city

Mario is a Bad Boy. He speaks proudly about his affiliation to the gang - unperturbed by the presence of cops who rounded him up in a pre-dawn raid on a suspected drug den in Elsies River.

On the streets of the troubled neighbourhood where three-year-old Courtney Pieters was raped and murdered, Mario is known as an "assassin".

"Murderer! One day I will lock you up," warned a member of Cape Town's gang and drug task team who had gone in search of drugs. They came up empty: every ounce of tik had been sold the previous night. One of the men - in full view of officers - showed the Sunday Times a fistful of money he made from selling 10g of tik.

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This attitude highlights what security experts say is at the heart of the gang violence that has spread from the Cape Flats to the Cape Town inner city and even the exclusive Atlantic seaboard: the perpetrators have no fear.

Experts have warned that corruption at senior levels in the police and the collapse of police intelligence are fuelling the scourge.

Gareth Newham, the Institute for Security Studies' head of governance, crime and justice, said recent shootings outside top Cape Town nightclubs were an indication that syndicates feared no one. "They simply do not think the police are going to be a threat."

Recently two people were injured after gunmen opened fire at popular Camps Bay nightclub and restaurant Café Caprice.

Three people were arrested and a weapon was seized, but the police docket never made it to court and the suspects were released because, said police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel André Traut, "the investigation could not link them to the case".

Newham said some gangsters felt invulnerable " because they had cops on the payroll. [These officers] will tell them they're being investigated and help them evade capture or make sure the investigations don't take place."

The Sunday Times has established that the Camps Bay case, and others relating to protection syndicates, are being handled by a provincial task team.
 

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Protection syndicates have infiltrated many clubs, from upmarket celeb hangouts to sleazy pubs.

Security analyst Mike Bolhuis said nightclubs gave gangs direct access to customers looking for sex and drugs. "Nightclubs exist from drugs ... Alcohol is perhaps 20% of the income. The bigger income is the spreading of drugs and then prostitution and other forms of racketeering."

JP Smith, the City of Cape Town's mayoral committee member for safety and security, said owners were reporting that firearms were being brought into clubs.

"High-calibre, heavy weapons are being flaunted in these spaces. The club owners are saying to us: 'We are seeing arsenals now being sported and exhibited, the likes of which we have never seen before,'" said Smith.
 

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Alleged gang boss Jerome "Donkie" Booysen was shot in the neck in an assassination attempt in Ravensmead on May 8. He is an alleged player in the protection syndicates. A week earlier, four people were killed and nine injured in a shooting in Elsies River.

Former Elsies River community policing forum deputy chairman Imraahn Mukkadam said there was always violence in the area when gang bosses were attacked.

"What we have are these warlords - they are not druglords - that are fighting over territory and control of the drug economy.

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"We don't call them gangs anymore, they are militias. They are armed with machine guns and Uzis and rifles ... they are unleashed on our communities and our areas become war zones," he said.