To try to avoid damage to its reputation, the City of Cape Town recently blacklisted seven companies linked to Nicole Johnson, who is accused of various crimes with her husband, alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield.

But the City’s reputation has already been somewhat tarnished, with aspects of this caused by its own actions (or inactions).

Residents in a suburb where gang violence is prevalent previously raised concerns about the awarding of a tender linked to Johnson, yet despite that, and after opposition politicians too spoke out against the tender, the company was awarded work.

Now, months after police raided the office of one of its former officials, the City has effectively conceded some employees in Human Settlements have been working to benefit criminals or crime suspects. 

At the same time, the City has said before that it “has a zero tolerance approach to fraud, corruption and unethical practices by its staff and suppliers”.

But the growing scandal the City is now central to is damaging that stance and highlights how it has taken years for it to act decisively on certain concerning issues, some related to Johnson and, indirectly, Stanfield.

In that time the situation has escalated.

All this is especially worrying because the Western Cape is effectively South Africa’s gangster capital.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Gangstas’ Paradise – how the ‘bullet rule’ of gangsters is strangling the life out of SA’s Mother City

Related crimes, including shootings, extortion and intimidation, plague the province and the city.

Construction mafia violence, involving gangsters forcing contractors to leave building sites or demanding “protection fees” from them, is another problem.

Glomix and criminal charges

As for Johnson and Stanfield, both face various criminal charges in two different court cases.

They include for 28s gang involvement, with Stanfield also accused of heading The Firm which has a heavy 28s following.

Johnson and Stanfield were initially arrested in 2014 over allegations that corrupt cops had created fraudulent firearm licences for the couple, as well as several other individuals linked to them.

They were detained together again at the end of September 2023.

In the fresh case, along with three other accused, they face charges relating to car theft and fraud.

Read more in Daily Maverick: ‘I want to empty a gun in his head’ – chilling affidavit about alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield’s ‘plans’

Stanfield also faces accusations of attempted murder.

Heavy police presence at the Cape Town Magistrates’ Court where Ralph Stanfield appeared on 2 October 2023. (Photo: Shelley Christians)

The couple have denied wrongdoing and over the next few weeks are expected to hear whether they will be released from custody.

Johnson is the director of a construction company, Glomix House Brokers.

TimesLIVE recently reported that it had emerged during court proceedings that she and Stanfield are central to Glomix and that Stanfield is employed by Glomix and earns R40,000 a month.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Another cousin of alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield murdered, this time while Stanfield in custody

Violence is also linked to this arena.

Individuals related to Stanfield, or connected to him via court matters, have been murdered in shootings, while Stanfield himself was wounded in a shooting in Johannesburg in 2017.

Red flags

Nearly five years ago concerns surfaced publicly in Cape Town about the awarding of a tender to Glomix.

The tender was for building houses in the suburb of Valhalla Park, parts of which are known 28s hotspots.

In March 2019 it was reported that in an open letter, after they became aware that Johnson’s Glomix had been awarded the tender, residents claimed that 28s gangsters robbed the project’s previous contractor, which was also forced to pay “protection fees”.

The residents had feared reprisal attacks.

By that point, Johnson and Stanfield were facing criminal charges in the gun licence case stemming from 2014.

Their arrests in that case had been widely reported on and were therefore public knowledge by the time the Glomix saga made headlines in 2019.

That year the Good party’s Brett Herron was among those who spoke out, saying: “Good movement takes a particularly dim view of this matter as it appears to be a case of the provincial government rewarding intimidation and extortion…

“Cape Flats residents are terrorised by crime and violence. Awarding government contracts to people associated with the violence rubs salt in their wounds, and insults them.”

Continued business dealings

The following year, in 2020, a Western Cape High Court judgment, relating to murder, which is publicly available, alleged that “the Stanfield family… control the 28s in the Valhalla Park area” – the suburb in which Glomix built houses.

In a set of November 2020 questions and answers posted on the Western Cape’s provincial parliament website, then human settlements MEC Tertuis Simmers confirmed that his department had awarded a contract or contracts to “wives or girlfriends of gangsters in the period 2014 to 2020”.

He then seemed to shift attention back to the media, saying: “It was reported through the media in March 2019 that a tender was awarded on 21 January 2019 to Glomix Housing Brokers, for the Valhalla Park housing project.”

Provincial government officials were therefore clearly aware of concerns relating to Glomix.

After that, around 2021, the City asked the human settlements department to do the procurement for six projects. Based on that, Glomix was again appointed to build 204 houses in Valhalla Park.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Company previously flagged over ‘28s gang’ suspicions still building houses for Western Cape government

In March 2023, Daily Maverick revealed that the company was still involved in building houses in the city.

So, even though Valhalla Park residents had been worried about Glomix receiving a tender following gang bullying claims, and even though Johnson was facing criminal charges, this did not seem to affect the province and the City’s business dealings with her company.

Johnson has not been convicted on criminal charges so it can be argued that working with Glomix is above board.

However, the optics of a crime suspect in a gang-linked case doing work for local government in a gang hotspot, are not good.

Taking action

The situation now seems to be coming to a head.

It could be viewed as the City having dragged its feet in that it is only acting now, but much has recently happened, including Johnson and Stanfield being arrested again at the end of September, and this is likely to have spurred the City to act.

This month, city manager Lungelo Mbandazayo confirmed to Daily Maverick that seven companies linked to Johnson had been blacklisted.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Risky business — City of Cape Town blacklists companies linked to 28s gang case accused Nicole Johnson

The companies, which he did not name, “were blacklisted from doing business with the City of Cape Town based on the risk they pose to the city’s reputation”.

But some shenanigans involving the City itself seem to be harming its reputation.

An investigation was launched into construction-related issues after City official Wendy Kloppers was murdered at a housing project in the suburb of Delft in February 2023.

She was killed after the City apparently refused to budge after gangsters demanded work from contractors there.

Complicity and tailor-made tenders

In a recent IOL article, Mbandazayo was quoted as saying: “The investigation also saw some of the officials from the human settlements department being suspended and others are attending disciplinary hearings. 

“They were even tailor-making tenders before they went out so those same companies could easily apply and be granted those tenders. They (the gangsters) don’t operate in isolation. 

“They exist because internally there are people helping them. When you look at any criminal activity that is thriving, it’s because people are conniving.”

Mbandazayo therefore effectively admitted individuals in the City, and possibly provincial government, were working with criminals or crime suspects.

If this is fact, it means those implicated are ruining the City’s reputation from within.

Corruption raid and resignation

Matters also branch towards Malusi Booi.

He was the human settlements mayoral committee member in March 2019 when the Glomix saga made the news because of Valhalla Park residents’ concerns about gangsters.

At the time, Booi said the City “was not aware of these allegations” and only realised what was happening when it received related media queries.

Read more in Daily Maverick: SAPS investigating allegations Cape Town mayco member Malusi Booi ‘took cash from gangsters’

Two years later, in August 2021, photographs (which no longer seem to be available online) of a Valhalla Park housing project were posted to a Facebook page focused on Booi and suggested that Johnson was among those present at that site with him and City officials.

[Watch] The City’s Mayco Member for Human Settlements, @MalusiBooi, visited the Valhalla Park housing project to check on its progress. The project is progressing well and the first of its 781 beneficiaries are expected to receive their keys.

Read more: https://t.co/vqDoqwglTm pic.twitter.com/3xmxAMZkY5

— City of Cape Town (@CityofCT) August 29, 2021

Fast-forward to March 2023.

Booi was fired from that post after his City of Cape Town office was raided during a South African Police Service fraud and corruption investigation.

Stanfield’s name surfaced in that investigation, which dealt with whether Booi had accepted cash gratifications from underworld figures.

Booi was not criminally charged and at the end of October he resigned as a councillor, saying he wanted to get on with his life and clear his name.

Gangs and government

Politics is obviously the foundation of this developing scandal.

The City and Western Cape government are DA run, while the SAPS falls under the national government and therefore the ANC.

This means the SAPS, under the ANC government, is running the investigations that have led to Johnson and Stanfield’s arrests.

The SAPS also conducted the raid on Booi’s office.

These arenas become very murky.

Several years ago AmaBhungane reported that in 2011 Jacob Zuma, in his capacity as president at the time, met several Western Cape gangsters as part of a plot for the ANC to wrest control of the province from the DA.

The ANC labelled the report a smear campaign.

In October 2022, suspicions in the same realm resurfaced.

A Western Cape High Court judge warned that 28s gangsters may have infiltrated the province’s policing structures.

Read more in Daily Maverick: 28s gang ‘capture’ top Western Cape cops, prosecutors’ lives at risk – judge sounds corruption alarm

Reacting to the judgment, Western Cape premier Alan Winde said the provincial police ombudsman would investigate to see if there were links between 28s gangsters and cops.

Introspection

However, what has subsequently happened in terms of construction issues shows that the SAPS has been investigating whether gangsters have effectively infiltrated the City of Cape Town, which operates alongside the Western Cape government.

Suspicions of gang collusion therefore extend from the national government right into the municipality.

It took nearly five years, from when Valhalla Park residents raised concerns relating to Glomix, for the City to blacklist companies linked to Johnson in what it now says is a move to limit risk to its reputation.

But considering events of the past few years – including opposition politicians and residents raising red flags, plus media highlighting those concerns, as well as police and internal investigations – and pairing all that with what Mbandazayo has said about human settlements officials tweaking tenders to benefit criminals, it seems the City’s reputation is set to take a knock, if it hasn’t already.

And some of that is because of what has been happening in its own offices. DM