Judgment looms for a man called violence
Notorious gangster charged with 19 murders will hear fate soon
THE police photograph showing the naked torso of George “Geweld” Thomas offers a glimpse into the man who has been in the dock for the past four years on gang-related crimes.
“Mr Geweld” is strung in green ink across his Adam’s apple. Further down his chest is an invitation to “Meet me at Sundown”.
Two stars sit on each shoulder; on the left is the figure “2”, on the right an “8” — denoting his rank as “inspector” in the feared 28s prison gang.
The central artwork on his chest is made up of two torches flanked by two guns.
His face is an arrangement of crude tattoos — a skull on his right cheek, a star between his eyebrows, a crown on his chin.
Prosecutors have described him as one of the most feared gang leaders in the Western Cape. His nickname, “Violence”, and the charges against him attest to this — they include 19 counts of murder, 29 counts of attempted murder and 33 counts of illegal possession of firearms. In total, Thomas was charged with 166 crimes.
On Monday — as Judge Chantal Fortuin started reading her 800-page ruling in the High Court in Cape Town, with bodyguards for the three state prosecutors — Thomas behaved less like a hardened criminal and more like the star of his own show.
As he sat with his co-accused — 17 alleged foot soldiers and associates — he animatedly gestured, posed and smiled when a camera lens turned his way.
But for all his foolery, Thomas and his co-accused are at the centre of a complex and drawnout case. Some witnesses have been murdered before they could reach the stand; others remain hidden in protection programmes.
The accused are alleged to have conducted a reign of terror across several Cape Flats townships. Their operations are alleged to have extended into predominantly coloured communities such as Delft, Elsies River, Westbank and Kuils River and Bishop Lavis.
During the trial, prosecutors claimed that Thomas led a gang allied to the 28s. They claimed the group extorted money from rival drug outlets, shebeens, other businesses and taxi operators.
As the inspector of the gang, Thomas allegedly controlled
CENTRE OF ATTENTION: Gang boss George ‘Geweld’ Thomas in the dock as accused No 1 Bishop Lavis and got the “lion’s share of the loot”, while the “foot soldiers” took instructions from him.
Perhaps the most chilling charges are those of murder against Thomas in relation to the deaths of six witnesses who were killed during the trial.
According to the prosecution, Thomas and some of the other alleged gang members ordered the killings while behind bars.
Cecil Barnes, the father of a key state witness, was shot in his kitchen in Bishop Lavis on October 16 2009. He had refused to accompany his son Reagan into the witness protection programme.
Gresham Booysen and Mark Ontong were also killed to “ensure their silence and thus to protect against detection”.
Nylene Davids and Haywin Strydom were shot dead in 2008, shortly after they witnessed the killings of Denver Stander and Ralton Scheepers, who were murdered one day apart in March of the same year, allegedly by Thomas’s gang.
Stander and Scheepers also had links with the gangs. Davids and Strydom were killed at the behest of Thomas, prosecutors said.
This week, Fortuin finished summarising the charges against the accused.
She said she would consider — among heaps of evidence provided by the prosecution — cellphone data collected during the investigation. Prosecutors argue that Thomas used cellphones to control the Cape Flats streets from prison.
The prosecution produced about 26 000 pages of evidence during the trial and called 164 witnesses, while the court record is more than 27 000 pages.
Eric Ntabazalila, spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority in the Western Cape, said 12 witnesses and their families had been placed under witness protection.
But Ntabazalila declined to reveal the total number of witnesses who have been killed.
“It is not appropriate to say how many witnesses were killed because we were unable to indict the accused on some cases where we had no witnesses left,” he said.
“They were, however, indicted for the murder of six witnesses or potential witnesses. Subsequently, two witnesses were killed, but I must add that we are hesitant to speak about it because of the possible consequence and the possible negative effect on the public. We do not want members of the public who give information or testify to live in fear.”
Judgment continues tomorrow.