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| Alleged 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield and his wife, Nicole Johnson were arrested at their Constantia home. Picture: ANA Archives |
Ralph Stanfield, the nephew of Colin Stanfield, is being linked to organized crime and interlinked suspicions in Cape Town. Stanfield and his wife, Nicole Johnson, were arrested in Constantia on charges including motor vehicle theft, assault, robbery, and fraud. Stanfield also faces a charge of illegal firearm possession. Stanfield and Johnson have no previous convictions but have an extensive background linked to crime accusations. The State has previously pointed to him as being a leader of the notorious 28s gang.
A Western Cape High Court judgment dated 15 September 2020 stated that detective Charl Kinnear had identified Stanfield as a gang boss. The judgment stated that [Kinnear] is familiar with the gangsterism in the Cape Town suburb of Bishop Lavis and testified that the predominant ruling gang is the 28s under the leadership of Ralph Stanfield.”
Stanfield is the nephew of the late Colin Stanfield, the leader of the gang conglomerate the Firm, which has a 28s following. In a March 2016 affidavit relating to police action taken against Stanfield that year in Mitchells Plain, he said he “grew up in an impoverished environment”, and his mother, a school cleaner and curtain maker, had raised him.
In 2014, Stanfield’s cousin, Saliem John, was handed life sentences in jail for murder. That same year Stanfield and Johnson were initially arrested. They were detained along with his sister, Francisca, and three (now former) Central Firearms Register police officers – Priscilla Mangyani, Billy April, and Mary Cartwright. It was alleged that the police officers had fraudulently created firearm licenses for Stanfield, Johnson, and others.
Stanfield’s name has also cropped up in other sinister matters. He was wounded in a shooting in Johannesburg in July 2017, a month before international steroid smuggler Brian Wainstein was murdered in his Constantia home. It previously emerged in court papers that Wainstein suspected that a Cape Town resident, Mark Lifman, had masterminded the shooting of Stanfield.
The police previously alleged that Lifman and a group of men allied to him had once dominated bouncer operations in Cape Town’s city centre. In 2017 a rival group of men allied to suspected organised crime kingpin Nafiz Modack had tried to muscle out the Lifman group.
Mounting accusations against Johnson and Stanfield have even affected the City of Cape Town. In March this year, Malusi Booi was fired from the post of mayoral committee member for human settlements after his office was raided as part of a fraud and corruption investigation. Stanfield’s name surfaced in that investigation into whether Booi had accepted cash gratifications from underworld figures.
