Cape Town - A notorious Cape Town gangster says his gang were supplied with guns by a former police officer.
The Mongrels leader revealed that they had bought as many as 200 guns from the Gauteng-based colonel between 2010 and 2011.
He told the Daily Voice that they had initially thought the guns were supplied by the ANC to fuel gang violence to destabilise the only non-ANC held province in the country.
The ANC has since slammed the claims as “silly.”
Spokesperson for the ANC in the Western Cape, Yonela Diko, says: “We reject these claims as frivolous and silly.”
“If people have evidence they must take it to the authorities.”
The gang leader alleged that they later suspected the source was Colonel Christiaan Prinsloo.
Prinsloo, 55, from Vereeniging in Gauteng appeared in the Bellville Magistrate’s Court last week on 28 charges including racketeering, murder, attempted murder and fraud.
He was in charge of SAPS’s Vereeniging Confiscated Firearms Stores.
He was released on R20 000 bail and will appear again in September.
“We got between 150 and 200 guns coming in from Joburg in 2010 and 2011,” said the gang member, who spoke to the Daily Voice on condition of anonymity.
“We got between 150 and 200 guns coming in from Joburg in 2010 and 2011,” he said.
Prinsloo is accused of selling firearms from 2007 until early 2015.
“We were buying them at R4 500 each.
“Most of the guns are Z88’s and Parabellum’s (both semi-automatic handguns). That is the most popular guns used by most gangs across the Western Cape,” the gang source said.
The gangster says they soon realised that their firearms and those used by rivals came from the same source.
“Firstly, you’ll notice that all the serial numbers were removed exactly the same way. You could see it was professionally done.
“(Police) ballistics tests will show that a lot of (gang-related) crimes are linked to the guns that came into the province.
“The other thing we noticed is that most of the guns were faulty. There were several cases where the gun would jam while you are shooting,” he added.
“When we realised the guns were faulty we knew it couldn’t be from the ANC,” he said. “As dit die ANC was, dan sal hulle vir ons regte guns gegee het. (If it was the ANC, they would have given us proper guns.)
“We then later realised it had to come from someone else.
“We knew it came from someone who was in control of the guns, we knew it had to be a cop,” he said.
A police source corroborated the gangster’s claims saying at least 500 guns were sold to gangsters in Cape Town in 2013.
“Some of these firearms were found in Valhalla Park, they were mostly sold to the 28’s gang,” he said.
“The guns found in Valhalla Park had their serial numbers professionally removed, that is how (Prinsloo) was linked.”
These guns could possibly be linked to more than 30 murders in Valhalla Park.
Meanwhile, the DA’s MEC for Community Safety says they are taking the allegations seriously.
Western Cape MEC for Community Safety Dan Plato told the Daily Voice he would be consulting with Premier Helen Zille about the matter before responding to the claims.
Daily Voice