Fadiel Adams of the National Coloured Congress during the 2025 State of the Nation Address debate at the parliamentary dome in Cape Town on 11 February 2025. (Photo: Jeffrey Abrahams / Gallo Images) 
Respect and fear in Lavender Hill were given to the men who drove flashy cars, were seemingly seldom short of money and not averse to using their fists, a gun or a knife. They had tattoos they had earned in prison as part of their upward journey in the ranks of a numbers jail gang, such as the 26s, 27s and 28s, which indicated their status in the criminal hierarchy in the Western Cape.
On the streets of Lavender Hill, a dumping ground for victims of apartheid’s forced removals, young boys regularly encountered these men. The young, impressionable Fadiel Adams had an uncle who was a “general” in the notorious 26s. His uncle was at the top of the gang’s structure. He was a made man, a harde bandiet (hardened criminal). Because Adams was looking for respect and credibility on the streets, he wanted to follow in his footsteps.
On a recent cold Saturday morning I drive out to Mitchells Plain to meet Adams in his home in Westridge. Home to the biggest concentration of “coloured” voters in the province, the township is a battleground in elections.
Inside his modest home we sit down to have coffee. He tells me that his weekend started with an early-morning call to intervene in some violence in the community. I gather that someone was shot. He tells me about his childhood, political background and beliefs, and the party he founded and leads, the National Coloured Congress. It is in the same week the National Assembly adopted a recommendation from the Ethics Committee to sanction him for 15 days for his unbridled outburst on Facebook. His pay will also be withheld.
His offence was a rant against a DA member. Speaker Thoko Didiza called his outburst “repugnant, wholly unbefitting of high office and this institution, and therefore inexcusable”. He apologised and withdrew his remarks.
“I grew up in a township and worked as a construction worker for 20-plus years. That influenced the way I speak. I was not groomed to speak like John Steenhuisen or Helen Zille. I wonder what those who condemn my language will say when they see the brains of a 15-year-old splattered on the pavement.” Losing 15 days’ pay, he says, will make it difficult for community projects that benefit from his MP’s salary. “I regret this.”
A child of apartheid, Adams was born 49 years ago. He grew up in a home where his father was consumed by anger over apartheid legislation that banished him and his family from what has since become the super-wealthy suburb of Constantia for a life on the desolate, windswept Cape Flats.
His father’s seething anger and his uncle’s gangster affiliation rubbed off on the boy. He dropped out of high school when he started his matric year. His life trajectory seemed predictable: crime was calling loudly, irresistibly.
“In Lavender Hill you don’t expect to live long. I was a gangster – a shooter.” Explaining, he adds: “When gang violence starts, the shooters stand and fight.” The rest of his life would have mirrored his uncle’s if it weren’t for the intervention of “attorney Raybin Windvogel, who got me off on some cases and helped me change my life. He made me see that I was busy destroying my life. I’m very grateful to him.”
Before he veered into thug life, he was a young school activist at Steenberg High School. He and his friends were clamouring for political change and supported the ANC. He didn’t vote in 1994, not because he was disenchanted, but because he was stoned out of his mind. However, after 1994 his pro-ANC feelings gradually changed.
“After 1994, we were told that we were not the same as Africans – we were coloured and not African. This was a shock. We were part of the struggle! We fought for equal rights. Now we were pushed away as coloureds… It became increasingly clear: black economic empowerment was turned into a weapon to screw us.”
Does he think so-called coloureds are better off today than under apartheid? “Partially. We can marry who we want, live where we want. Economically, our life has not improved. In the days of colonialism, smallpox devastated the First People. Today they’ve replaced that with economics. They don’t kill us with germs anymore, they take away our income and flood the ghettos with guns and drugs.”
Called “coloured” by the government, he finds himself in a situation of being condemned as a “coloured” nationalist if he campaigns for and among those politically branded this way.
“I’m not a coloured nationalist. But I don’t see anything wrong with fighting for coloured people. Of course, it goes without saying that I am also an African. Why do I need to justify my Africanness?”
‘My constituency is gatvol’
Adams’s foray into politics was accidental. He recalls that there was a land invasion, followed by clashes between so-called coloureds and Africans near Mitchells Plain. “Cars were stoned. It was a war zone. I was in the middle of it. I even lost my car keys in the chaos and had to call my brother to bring my spare keys from home. My brother was then arrested.”
That was the day he resolved that he could not continue to stand outside politics and watch so-called coloureds being shoved to the margins. “I never wanted to be involved in politics. I formed Gatvol Capetonians to fight the oppression of coloureds.
“My constituency is gatvol [fed up] of unemployment, being on housing waiting lists for more than 40 years and being overlooked for promotion or jobs.”
At the coalface of demands for an end to the marginalisation of so-called coloureds, he believes that the continued exclusion will make prison and unemployment the destiny of many of them.
“Unless they open their eyes when they vote, that’s a guarantee. I’m very angry about that. As a socialist, it’s very hard to be a non-racialist in South Africa. Every decision is made on racial lines. Every decision is made to exclude the coloured child.”
His party and Gayton McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance fish in the same waters for votes. Together they are threatening the traditional “coloured” support base of the DA, ANC and Good.
“I respect Gayton. We don’t have the same financial muscle that he has. We have turned down offers of financial support because we want to maintain our independence.
“We look forward to local government elections. I believe coloured people have a chance to win not only the city, but also the province. The Western Cape needs a coloured government that will make decisions for and in the interests of all people. I hope that Helen Zille will experience that day.
“Right now, decisions for the Western Cape are made by people who have no idea of the province. Although 3,000 coloured people die violently every year, the President does not appoint a commission of inquiry. Yet, he appoints a commission to investigate the allegations made by KZN provincial police commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi. If we [the Western cape] were a federal state, we could have investigated these local killings.”
He is sceptical about the lieutenant general’s allegations. “Mkhwanazi is not the saviour of this country. Whistle-blower and former South African Police Service administration clerk Patricia Mashale first exposed corruption. She had to go into hiding and was dismissed in 2022. She is the real hero.”
He admires Mashale. “No one listened to Patricia because she’s a black woman. She was right to take her children and go into hiding,” he says.
Adams hints that he has more information about police corruption, but is coy about his sources who keep him abreast of malfeasance in the City of Cape Town and the police. “My sources trust me… I won’t speak about my sources. And I won’t stop making disclosures about politicians. You really think they won’t kill me so that their secrets won’t come out? But I won’t go into hiding. My culture doesn’t allow me to run – you stand and you face what’s coming.”
That last sentence goes a long way in describing Fadiel Adams. As a young man, he turned down the wrong road in search of veneration. Now, as a leader of a political party, his desire for acknowledgement for himself and his constituency has taken him to the National Assembly. There he has consistently brought so-called coloured grievances to the fore.
He has succeeded in riling bigger political parties in and outside Parliament and on Facebook. Like the EFF and MK party, he represents a development in politics that South Africa will have to get used to. His outspoken voice represents a marginalised section of the population that is clamouring to be heard, refusing to be silenced. DM
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.
