Now Cape gangsters are after your vote

ONLY in Cape Town: the city’s gangsters have formed a political party to fight next year’s elections.

Their party, the Patriotic Alliance, is made up of some of South Africa’s most notorious characters — bank robbers, current and former gang bosses, underworld operatives, dodgy businessmen, drug peddlers, fraudsters, con artists, smugglers and even church pastors.

They formed the party on October 5 at a Cape Town hotel and yesterday held their first media conference at the Schoongezicht restaurant outside Paarl.

It has all the trappings of a genuine political party, but a police officer told the Sunday Times that the group was nothing more than an attempt to legitimise and organise crime in the Western Cape. “These guys are keen on getting the political stamp of acceptability while muscling in on some real power and state money,” the officer said.

The Patriotic Alliance is still thin on policy, but like most parties it says it stands for “non-racialism, non-sexism and democracy”.

It registered with the Independent Electoral Commission last week.

At the launch in October, one of the main speakers was Ivan Waldeck, a former gangster turned pastor who

How can the leaders be people who like eating sushi off the naked bodies of women?

runs the Western Cape Community Outreach programme in Bellville, which attempts to rehabilitate gangsters.

Waldeck, who survived a murder attempt in May, employs Hard Livings gangster Rashied Staggie, who was released from prison on day parole in September. Sharing the stage with Waldeck was convicted fraudster and bling king Kenneth Kunene and his friend from jail, convicted bank robber Gayton McKenzie.

Waldeck said he had been a founding member of the Patriotic Alliance, but McKenzie denied this.

McKenzie said he and Kunene were the founding members along with Hard Livings gang boss Roland “Zero Watson” Olince, who was jailed for stealing firearms with Staggie; Janine Adendorf, who has a child with Ernie “Lastig” Solomons, once the leader of the 28s prison gang and regarded as the “big daddy” of abalone smugglers in the province; and Shané Stevens, daughter of William “Red” Stevens, who was a “general” in the 27s prison gang.

Waldeck told the Sunday Times this week that he was “no longer in any way” associated with the Patriotic Alliance.

“How can the leaders be people who like eating sushi off the naked bodies of women?” asked Waldeck, referring to one of Kunene’s more controversial activities.

“How can an ex-bank robber [McKenzie] give moral guidance? The coloured people of the Cape Flats are conservative people. I left,” he said.

The Sunday Times was told by one of the delegates at the founding meeting that it was Waldeck who brought all the big gangs and big names to the alliance.

“If he leaves, the Patriotic Alliance will suffer massive losses — Waldeck has been working among the gangs for years, bringing them together,” the delegate said.

“That’s Waldeck’s world. He knows every gangster and gang boss in the Cape.

“Gayton and Kunene are Joburg boys. What do they know about the Flats? They used him because they know nobody in the Cape. They’re seeing dollar signs looking at the gangs. Waldeck was their ticket to getting funding and support for their party,” the delegate said.

A delegate, who is not affiliated to a gang, said most of the powerful gangsters and organised crime figures in the Cape had sent representatives to the alliance meeting.

“They were all there. The Patriotic Alliance is the legitimisation of gangs. Gangsters are clever — you wouldn’t see Ernie Lastig pitching at a meeting like this. He sends a rep. But they all came to see about the Patriotic Alliance.”