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How former foes – struggle cadres and the apartheid security apparatus – pulled together to break the Pagad death squads that emerged in the late 1990s.
A march in Cape Town was done under the banner of a group partially using the name of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad).
This highly lucrative alternative economy began to bloom and spread in full during the 1980s when criminals and drug lords who cooperated with the state were allowed to flourish. But there was a grander scheme – to numb resistance to state repression and to destabilise “troublesome” communities. At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) it was revealed that Jackie Lonte, then leader and founder of the Americans, had worked with the deadly Civil Cooperation Bureau. Today, several gang-ravaged areas on the Cape Flats are caught in a deadly turf war. In Mitchells Plain alone, six ...