Analysis — Cape Town ‘gang boss’ Ralph Stanfield’s courtroom showdown looms

When Ralph Stanfield, the alleged leader of the feared 28s gang, and his wife Nicole Johnson enter the dock of the Western Cape High Court this week it will kick off a mammoth, make-or-break organised crime trial for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).

The case, which is geared to be one of the biggest underworld prosecutions in the province to date, is set to go on for months with dozens of witnesses expected to testify both for the State and, in defence, for the notorious couple.

The duo’s appearance before Judge Babalwa Mantame is as a result of a nearly four-year criminal investigation into the machinations of the couple’s alleged criminal empire, whose tentacles, amaBhungane has previously shown, have entangled both the private sector and government, and helped make the two wealthy, powerful and popular.

The stakes in the fight against organised crime could not be higher.

Already several key State witnesses have been murdered and left seriously injured, with others reportedly intimidated into not testifying for the State.

In October 2022, Western Cape Judge Daniel Thulare, in a separate case relating to the 28s gang, delivered a scathing judgment on its power and reach, warning that “evidence suggests that senior management of the SAPS in the province has been penetrated to the extent that the 28 gang has access to the table where the provincial commissioner of the SAPS in the Western Cape sits with his senior managers”.

His judgment highlights the pressure and difficulties the police and prosecutors have faced in getting this case ready for trial.

The State is now entering a decisive stage in its efforts to finally put Stanfield and Johnson behind bars and to deal a crippling blow to their alleged criminal empire.

History, however, shows that when it comes to the successful prosecution of Stanfield, whose self-given moniker is “the Baron”, the odds are not on prosecutors’ side.

The odds

This week will be the umpteenth time that couple appear in court to face a litany of criminal charges, which the State has to date failed to make stick.

By 2007 Stanfield had already been acquitted of committing five murders, including of three children, one of whom was two years old, and arson.

Since 2014, when he and Johnson were first arrested in the wider dragnet of the now-infamous guns-to-gangs case, the couple has continued to slip from the clutches of the law.

In that now defunct case they were charged with fraud and corruption under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act and the Firearms Control Act for allegedly illegally obtaining firearm licences and firearm competency certificates from officers at the SAPS central firearms registry in Pretoria.

Charges were initially laid against them in 2014, only to be withdrawn in 2016, then reinstated in 2018, before they were finally withdrawn in 2024.

In 2017, Stanfield was acquitted again, this time of an alleged assault on a police officer who had raided his mother’s house in Beacon Valley in 2015 while looking for suspects.

In 2025, prosecutors provisionally withdrew fraud and corruption charges against Stanfield and Johnson, along with nine co-accused, including former City of Cape Town member of the mayoral committee for human settlements, Malusi Booi.

They had been arrested in 2024 for fraud and corruption relating to a R1-billion city housing tender scam for the construction of homes in some of the city’s most impoverished areas. The NPA withdrew the charges pending the finalisation of an additional investigation into newfound evidence.

A credible source claims that each failed prosecution has made Stanfield even more powerful.

The current sprawling case had its genesis when Stanfield and Johnson were arrested in September 2023 at their Constantia home for fraud, robbery and car theft.

These charges related to their allegedly stealing of their former driver’s BMW, who they claim skimmed large amounts of cash from Stanfield. The driver, a key witness, was shot in June 2024, while his pregnant wife was shot and seriously injured in July 2025.

That case, however, quickly morphed into a far more sophisticated and technically difficult racketeering prosecution, with the couple and their co-accused now facing 41 charges under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act (Poca).

The charges include murder, attempted murder, fraud, money laundering, robbery, possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, and theft.

Key to the case is a racketeering charge which the State will use to show how Stanfield and Johnson allegedly lead a criminal empire dubbed the Stanfield-Johnson Enterprise, which, through its enforcement grouping known as The Firm, is alleged to have terrorised vast areas of Cape Town.

Racketeering is defined in Poca as planned, ongoing, continuous or repeated participation in at least two related serious crimes (known as predicate offences) including murder, fraud, corruption, extortion, theft and money laundering.

Under Poca it is an offence to receive, manage or use property derived from a pattern of racketeering activity, or to knowingly participate in or be associated with an enterprise engaging in such a pattern.

To prove their case, prosecutors will have to show how between 2019 and 2023, and disguised within a sprawling network of businesses, Stanfield and Johnson used violence, extortion, corruption and questionable benevolence to build their power and buy loyalty from both government officials and communities.

In a 2023 report, the international think-tank the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) sounded a warning that the anti-gang provisions of Poca, which was designed to specifically address criminal gang activity, money laundering and racketeering and help prosecutors gain convictions for gang-related crimes, were “severely underutilised” for [countering] these self-same crimes.

“Over 20 years later, very few gang-related cases have been prosecuted under this legislation [Poca]... The act doesn’t have [special] provisions for gang leaders (bosses or high-ranking members) which results in gang leaders receiving low sentences.”

In the Stanfield-Johnson case the prosecutors’ task will be even more difficult given that the couple have worked hard over the years to portray themselves as victims of malicious persecution, whose only crimes have been their benevolence and use of their community organisations to help the poor find much-needed work.

A Valhalla Park resident, speaking on condition of strict anonymity because of security concerns stemming from previous encounters with Stanfield and his family, said that while they should be brought to justice, Stanfield’s arrest had led to “mayhem on the [Cape] Flats”.

“After he was jailed all hell broke loose. There are now shootings every day. Gangs are fighting for control of the 28s’ territory. Every day people are dying. Unfortunately, he is the only one who can bring jobs and now peace.”

She warned that the longer Stanfield stayed in prison the more people would die.

“Ralph being free means those who want control [of] our areas will no longer be able to get what they want. At least if he is out it will bring us some sort of peace.”

Some community leaders begrudgingly agree.

“Unfortunately he is the only one who is seen to be able to provide jobs and food,” said a Bishop Lavis CPF member.

“He gives to people what government can’t.”

Stanfield and Johnson’s perceived benevolence is, however, not without a steep cost itself, with other community leaders fearing what will happen if he and Johnson win their case.

“It will be a lot worse. Him getting out will not stop the violence. Already people who have been helping police have been killed. Their whole aim is to make witnesses too scared to talk.

“They claim they are giving people jobs, but their community organisations are not. All they actually do is use them to get onto tenders, and when there is resistance people get hurt.”

Benevolence or organised crime

The State’s case against Stanfield and Johnson is that they have built their empire on a bedrock of crime and violence, or the threat of violence.

Through their community organisations and businesses they are accused of hijacking and capturing chunks of lucrative government and private sector construction and infrastructure development projects using shakedowns, corruption and murder, crimes which the State believes is the backbone of their enterprise’s operations.

It is this violence that has claimed the lives of people like City of Cape Town housing official Wendy Kloppers, who was shot dead in February 2023 at the City’s Symphony Way housing project site in Delft.

She was allegedly murdered by one of Stanfield’s current co-accused after the City refused to give in to extortion demands from 28s gang members that businesses allegedly linked to the Stanfield-Johnson Enterprise be cut in on the project.

Just a week before Klopper’s murder three construction workers were shot and wounded at the same site.

As with the Symphony Way project, similar incidents of violence occurred during Atterbury Property and Old Mutual Property’s construction of Cape Town’s King Air Industria and during the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa’s (Prasa’s) reconstruction of the City of Cape Town’s Central Line – until Stanfield and Johnson associated businesses and community organisations became involved.

On its Central Line project, Prasa, in a presentation to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts, revealed that 1,654 jobs were created through setting aside some protection services for small and micro enterprises as well as via formal community involvement opportunities, with 300 community members involved in clean-ups.

With Stanfield and Johnson seen by many as a stepping stone out of poverty, and their support base strong, the risk from another failed prosecution is deeply worrying.

Now, more than ever, prosecutors must ensure that they deal a final and crippling blow to the Enterprise’s operations.

If they don’t, as Gi-TOC has previously told us, Stanfield’s power will be solidified as he increases his foothold on the ladders of corporate and political access and bounty. DM

This story was produced by the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism. Sign up for their newsletter.