Cape Town has between 90 and 130 gangs[1] with the South African Police Service stating a total estimated membership of 100,000.
[2] Gangs in South Africa have historically been targeted by the state through a combination of security measures and development strategies, often resembling counterinsurgency tactics aimed at maintaining control over marginalized communities.
In Johannesburg in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, many Black African communities were relocated and resettled, in Soweto in the Meadowlands and Diepkloof.
Lenasia and Laudium became the hub of South Africa's most notorious yet secretive mafia family globally known as RMFO (Rasool Mafia Family Organisation) originally from Pietersburg (now Polokwane) which is the sanctuary of the infamous SAMA (South African Mafia Association) founded by Goolam Rasool (also known as "Moonshie") in the early 1900s establishing a balanced and stable network flow of criminal activities in the South African underworld By the early 1960s, gang violence had escalated, which was counteracted by more policing and patrolling of non-white areas.
[5] Nowadays, gangs continue to contribute to school violence across multiple provinces in South Africa, including Gauteng, North West, and Mpumalanga, where they pose serious challenges to school safety and significantly impact students' ability to learn in a secure environment.
[13] In Cape Town, the two largest gangs are The Americans and the Hard Livings, Controlled discreetly by South African Mafia leader Aziz Rasool Moonshie, an ex principal and educator.