LONG ARM OF THE ’LORD’: How ‘SA’s top gang boss’ represents a caving criminal justice system

The plan was to use drugs to lure a target to a specific spot where a colluding policeman would arrest them to get them into jail, where they would be killed.

This plan hit a snag because security in the jail meant the killing couldn’t go ahead.

So, the plan was changed – an alleged gangster paid the target’s bail to free them so that, unbeknownst to the target, they could be murdered outside.

The target’s life ended at a shebeen in the Western Cape.

Who ordered the killing?

Slain witnesses and pastor ambitions

A 2022 court judgment, from a case centred on gangsterism, identifies 28s prison gang boss George “Geweld” Thomas as allegedly having issued the deadly instruction. (His nickname means “violence” in English.)

While it is not clear when that specific murder was carried out, it must have been years ago.

Thomas was once based in the Western Cape, which is known as South Africa’s gang violence capital.

Back in 2015, he was sentenced to at least 175 years in jail for crimes that included multiple murders.

The trial that culminated in Thomas’s sentencing was pivotal – he had shared a dock in the Western Cape’s high court with about 16 other accused, and during those years-long proceedings, six State witnesses were murdered.

I interviewed Thomas in 2012 while he was still on trial and as he sat in the dock surrounded by police officers.

At that stage, he was 44 years old and said he had spent an intermittent 21 years in jail.

Thomas was soft-spoken, and when asked about his ambitions, he said: “I’m still trying to be a pastor.”

Heavy security and 33,000 calls in jail

Security during the Thomas trial was heavy – bodyguards closely monitored the prosecution team.

(Thomas’s advocate was Janos Mihalik, whose son Pete Mihalik, also an advocate who represented clients including alleged gangsters, was murdered in a shooting in Cape Town in 2018.)

When Thomas was officially jailed in 2015, a Western Cape government official’s statement pointed out that inmates’ unlawful access to cellphone access was plaguing prisons.

The statement said the Thomas trial had revealed that “more than 33 000 phone calls [were] made from cellphone numbers associated with him, from within the various prisons in which he was incarcerated”.

Despite his incarceration, Thomas’s name still surfaces in investigative circles.

‘The Lord – SA’s top-ranking gangster’

He was mentioned last week at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry, which is investigating whether a cartel known as the Big Five has infiltrated South Africa’s criminal justice system, politics and private security.

KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi first made these accusations in July last year, which gave rise to the Madlanga Commission.

National Correctional Services Commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale testified at the commission on Thursday, 17 September, about the worrying state of South Africa’s overcrowded jails.

He detailed how gangsters were still infiltrating the prison environment and how inmates had access to cellphones – nearly 40,000 phones were seized over a year.

While testifying, Thobakgale described Thomas as “the number one gang leader in South Africa, popularly known as the Lord.”

Thobakgale elaborated: “[Thomas] is referred to as the Lord because he’s the number one gangster in this country in the sense that all the gangs respect his rank.

“So, he’s the highest ranking in South Africa.”

This means that despite being jailed for decades, Thomas is the country’s top gangster, and prison seems to have given him what he needs to retain that title.

Issues surrounding Thomas’ continued influence ion gang activity point to the crux of what the Madlanga Commission is unravelling – infiltration of the criminal justice system.

The criminal justice system includes the South African Police Service (SAPS), prosecuting powers, the judiciary and prison authorities.

Let’s start with the SAPS because police officers investigate and arrest crooks – or they’re meant to.

28s infiltration and that judgment

A critical judgment relating to a gang case involving a range of crimes, including several murders, was handed down in the Western Cape High Court in 2022.

It is in this judgment that it was alleged that Thomas ordered the elimination of the individual meant to be murdered in prison, but who ended up being killed at a shebeen.

The judgment contained other alarming details.

A section said that evidence, in the overall gang case it was dealing with, suggested that the 28s and an affiliated gang, the Mobsters, had penetrated policing in the Western Cape.

“This includes penetration of and access to the sanctity of the reports by specialised units like the Anti-Gang Unit and Crime Intelligence, to the Provincial Commissioner,” the judgment said.

It added that prosecutors’ lives were at risk.

MADLANGA COMMISSION | DCS Commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale testifies about the flouting of standards in the transportation of George “Geweld” Thomas (aka The Lord) and other high-security inmates. pic.twitter.com/s0nRcJP3tL

— SABC News (@SABCNews) September 17, 2026

The section that referenced Thomas also alleged that through a gangster (who was murdered in 2016), “the Mobster[s] gang was receiving instructions from Geweld.”

This judgment reiterated how certain police officers in South Africa’s gang violence capital who were meant to be investigating crimes and arresting crooks had instead sided with those they were meant to bring to book.

Nearly four years have passed since the judgment, which is now a provincial version of the unfolding national law-enforcement scandal.

The judgment was essentially a warning about broader alleged infiltration.

But it is still unclear whether any implicated police officers have been found guilty of wrongdoing or held to account.

Back to Thomas

‘National security risk’

In 2024, it emerged that Thomas had been transferred from a KwaZulu-Natal prison to one in Helderstroom in the Western Cape.

This was highly controversial because there were legitimate fears the move would stoke gang violence.

Thomas’s transfer is what Thobakgale testified about at the Madlanga Commission last week.

Thobakgale explained that as national correctional services commissioner, he had to be informed about high-risk or high-profile offender transfers before these were carried out.

This did not happen in the Thomas saga.

“He was not supposed to have been transferred without my knowledge and without my approval… but it happened,” Thobakgale said.

He had only heard about Thomas’s transfer when a non-governmental organisation raised concerns.

Information about the transfer started spreading while Thomas was in transit from KwaZulu-Natal to the Western Cape.

Thobakgale told the Madlanga Commission: “That instilled fear in the communities, but it also unsettled the gangs in the Western Cape, because him being there is a statement on its own.”

He explained the gravity of what had happened.

“This was a serious risk for the security of the country, having such type of a gang leader, the Lord, to be transferred in the matter that he was… anything could have happened.”

Thomas was ultimately turned away from Western Cape jails.

Thobakgale said Thomas’s transfer was “inconsistent” with a standard operating procedure.

Disciplinary action was taken against the officials who had not complied with the procedure.

Thobakgale did not explain the reasoning behind why Thomas was moved to the Western Cape, where he committed several murders, some of which seem to have been ordered from behind bars.

Bigger grimmer picture

These scandals all point to gaping holes in the criminal justice system.

Thobakgale’s testimony about Thomas and the porous nature of prisons occurred on the one-year anniversary of the start of the Madlanga Commission.

Commission chair Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga also reflected on the year of testimony.

“Unfortunately, what is emerging from the evidence is that there are indications of serious criminality within the criminal justice system and that this is the result of the infiltration of, and undue influence on, the criminal justice system by elements of criminality,” the judge said.

“The fact that a number of players within the criminal justice system have been charged criminally, with some dismissed from their employment and others facing disciplinary charges, lends credence to these indications.”

Madlanga said that while it was commendable that apparent criminality was being exposed, it suggested that “for some time now, our criminal justice system has been populated by malleable, corrupt state functionaries”.

Evidence outside the Madlanga Commission also points directly to that. DM