Illustrative image | ‘Steroid King’ Brian Wainstein (centre). (Photo: Supplied) | Mark Lifman (left). (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais) | Andre Naudé. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais) 
People with sombre expressions, mainly wearing black or dark clothing.
Reminiscing, using words about someone’s lingering legacy, their soft side, and of them resting in peace.
These visual and vocal elements are not out of the ordinary at a funeral.
Based on media reports, this was more or less the case at murder plot accused Andre Naudé’s sendoff in the Cape Town suburb of Durbanville on Monday, 23 June 2025.
But the overall situation surrounding it was anything but ordinary.
Beneath the decorum was gritty reality.
This includes killings and shootings, in which innocent people, including children, can be caught.
While near constant in South Africa’s gangsterism capital, the Western Cape, where Naudé was based, shootings that affect innocent people are tragic and should be viewed as awful anomalies.
And those contributing to this situation should be held to account.
Multiplying murders and court cases
Naudé was murdered – fatally shot – in Cape Town’s northern suburbs on 12 June 2025.
It is not yet clear what the motive for this was.
Naudé said he had survived other attempts on his life, and he was wounded in a shooting in 2014.
He had also spoken to this journalist about issues relating to Cape Town’s criminal landscape, which involves crooks, informants, undercover police officers and intelligence agents.
Naudé seemed to have a deep knowledge of this arena, but had also tried to distance himself from the notion that he was involved in lawbreaking.
Read more: Andre Naudé gunned down – yet another Steroid King case accused killed, months after Mark Lifman
Despite that, at the time of his killing, Naudé was on trial in connection with the August 2017 killing of international steroid smuggler Brian Wainstein, also known as the Steroid King.
Wainstein was shot while in bed at his home in the upmarket suburb of Constantia.
Another of Naudé’s co-accused in the Wainstein trial was his associate, the late Mark Lifman.
The duo had been involved in private security, which led to them facing criminal charges related to a company focused on nightclubs. They were acquitted.
Their names later cropped up when a battle erupted to dominate bouncer operations in and around Cape Town.
Lifman was murdered – he was also shot – in the Western Cape town of George in November last year, about seven months before Naudé was murdered.
(Lifman’s family did not hold a publicly accessible funeral for him. It appears that Lifman’s grave is in the same cemetery as Wainstein’s, whose killing he was accused of playing a role in orchestrating.)
Naudé and Lifman are now among five accused in the Wainstein murder case to have been murdered.
If arrests are carried out for each of those killings, as has happened with Lifman’s murder, it means that five more cases may develop into trials.
This could add to crammed court rolls and potentially see more accused being targeted – in other words, more violence.
Suspects, security, soft takes
Back to Naudé’s funeral.
Based on video footage and news reports, among those present were Jerome “Donkie” Booysen and Igor Russol, who were also on trial in connection with Wainstein’s murder – Naudé and Lifman’s co-accused.
They all pleaded not guilty in the case, a connecting node in a growing web of killings across Cape Town.
Some media outlets reported on Naudé’s funeral.
Netwerk24 angled a report on Naudé’s family and friends recalling him as a protector who would put others’ safety ahead of his own.
The piece, which did not focus much on the criminal accusations against Naudé, touched on his softer side, which people said emerged after he met the woman who later became his wife.
Read more: Murdered Andre Naudé’s own words — ‘I’ve got a gun on my waist and a bulletproof car’
An Eyewitness News report focused on the context of the case in which Naudé was an accused and included that his son “gave a moving tribute about his father”.
A News24 article said Naudé was remembered as “warm and selfless”.
That article was headlined: “ ‘This is not a time to pass judgement’ – Pastor as Andre Naudé laid to rest.”
style="font-weight: 400;">a short video of the funeral proceedings, including Booysen’s son Joel speaking kindly about Naudé and his “joyful spirit”.
While aspects including relatives’ recollections of him, and how associates would miss him, have been aired, other realities about Naudé should not be mitigated.
Abnormal matrix
The News24 article reported that armed private security personnel with concealed firearms accompanied certain people attending the funeral, and that police and traffic officials were stationed along a nearby street.
It should not be viewed as normal for a civilian funeral, and private citizens at such a funeral, to have security.
It should not be viewed as normal for murder conspiracy accused to go to the funeral of a murdered co-accused.
It should not be viewed as normal for this to happen months after the murder of another murder conspiracy accused.
Read more: South Africa’s gang capital and its murderous matrix
This is an unnatural reality in Cape Town that certain people are responsible for constructing - and this reality needs to be emphasised or we run the risk of further normalising crime.
Such crime harshly infringes on the lives of people who have nothing to do with it, and it is just a fragment of a much broader reality.
Naudé was suspected of being aligned with the 27s gang.
Another of his co-accused in the Wainstein trial was William “Red” Stevens, reputed to once have been one of the most seasoned 27s gangsters in the Western Cape.
Stevens was also murdered – fatally shot in 2021 in the Cape Town suburb of Kraaifontein.
The bigger picture
Gangs have long infiltrated various legitimate sectors, and gangsters could be just about anyone.
According to the most recently released South African Police Service crime statistics, of 240 gang-related killings recorded in the country during the first three months of this year, 208 were in the Western Cape.
Of the 308 gang-related attempted murders recorded nationally during those three months, the Western Cape again had the vast majority – 273.
Not all these murders and attempted murders can be detailed in the media and many do not involve high-profile individuals.
But some inevitably spawn more killings – and more court cases, which in turn could spark even more violence and murders.
Crime begets crime.
These deadly cycles happen all around us.
Naudé was murdered earlier this month in Cape Town’s northern suburbs while on trial for a murder that happened in Cape Town’s southern suburbs.
Wainstein, the steroid smuggler whose bedroom murder Naudé was accused of helping to orchestrate, was wanted in the US at the time of his killing.
This forms part of the situation that underpinned Naudé’s funeral, and along with the security presence at his sendoff, serves as a reminder that organised crime has no boundaries.
Read more: Charges against murdered ‘Steroid King’ reveal a global web of crime cases
It also points to the depths, intricacies and dangers in this arena that impacts on people far removed from those specifically targeted.
Intimate family moments, fond memories and denials of criminality aside, if one looks at Naudé’s sendoff, the facts remain that people accused of being part of a murder plot, involving elements of alleged gangsterism, were at the funeral of a murdered man who was accused of being involved in the same murder plot. And this happened after other accused in the same murder plot had been murdered.
There is no way to gloss over these gritty realities. DM