PAGAD was founded by a handful of Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and community members from a Cape Town townships who decided to organize public demonstrations to pressure the government to fight the illegal drug trade and gangsterism more effectively.

[2][3] Notorious gangsters were initially asked by PAGAD members to stop their criminal activities or be subject to "popular justice".

[1] PAGAD's campaign came to prominence in 1996 when the leader of the Hard Livings gang, Rashaad Staggie, was beaten and burnt to death by a mob during a march to his home in Salt River.

This succeeded in transforming PAGAD from a relatively non-religious popular mass movement into a smaller, better organised but also a religiously radical isolated group.

[5] The most prominent attack during this time was the bombing on 25 August 1998 of the Cape Town Planet Hollywood which resulted in two deaths and 26 injuries.

[7] In 1998, Ebrahim Moosa, a University of Cape Town academic who had been critical of PAGAD, decided to take a post in the United States after his home was bombed.