The crime scene at Stoffel Park Informal settlement in Mamelodi east
Three gangsters who died during a shootout with the police on Tuesday evening at the Stoffel Park informal settlement were not members of the infamous Boko Haram bandits but we’re using the name to commit criminals activity in Stoffel Park.
The gangster from Stoffel Park informal settlement used to called themselves Boko Haram gangster. Community members fear them.
The gang been terrorising the community of Stoffel Park for a long time now, especially in the far East of the sprawling township.
A gangster member killed in hail of bullets by cops in Stoffel Park
This assertion was made by local residents of Stoffel Park.
Two gangsters members killed in hail of bullets by cops in Stoffel Park informal settlement in Mamelodi east
Several residents of Stoffel Park told Tshwane Talks about the plethora of shenanigans perpetrated by one of the bandits known as Nchabeleng, who they said was the boss of the Boko Haram bandits.
“This Nchabeleng chap started terrorising the community of Stoffel Park around 2021 after the Covid-19 period,” said a visibly relieved resident who spoke to Tshwane Talks on condition of anonymity.
“The community is happy because they will now live in peace and will no longer pay extortion fees to the gangsters and there’s hope that the police will eventually arrest the gangster who escaped from the shooting incident as well as all and any other gangster in Mamelodi,” he said.
Another resident told Tshwane Talks that the deceased Nchabeleng used to sell housing stands in Stoffel Park; was involved in incidents of hijacking and business robbery; brazenly demanded 30% shares from community projects and foreign-owned businesses and didn’t hesitate to kill those who refused to obey his instructions regarding the so-called protection fee,” said the resident.
In 2023 fed-up residents of Stoffel Park abducted him and his gang members and beat them up severely, and this led to them refraining from terrorising the Stoffel Park community as well as the neighbouring community of Riverside informal settlement.
Be that as it may, it later turned out that Nchabeleng had not completely stopped his “terroristic” activities but had merely restricted himself to Extension 15 of the selfsame Stoffel Park informal settlement, which is the section where he resided and continued with his reign of terror.
“Every tavern, every shacks paid for electricity, foreign-owned spaza shops and local community projects were forced to pay him some money whenever he happened to be broke; he collected money left, right and centre using extortion tactics and the community was fed-up with him, but at the same time it (the community) couldn’t do anything as they were afraid of him,” said yet another resident.
“He was also awarded several contracts in various projects taking place in Stoffel Park by a brow-braten Community Liaison Officer (CLO) because he demanded and threatened CLO and also got a sub- contract in other projects taking place in the broader Mamelodi township,” she said.
“The Mamelodi East Police Station used to receive lots of complaints against him from residents but no action had been taken against him up until Tuesday when he was gunned down by the police,” she said.
“Last month a project to install various networks was established at Stoffel Park and Nchabeleng habitually went there to demand a whooping R250 000 from the owner of the project and as a result the project had to be stopped abruptly because the said owner couldn’t pay him,” she said.
“The contractor and his workers had already begun laying the foundation for the network project with large amounts of concrete already poured onto the surface area of the envisaged project,” she said.
Residents opine that unlike other gangsters in the area who every now-and-then kill one another, Nchabeleng also killed innocent people who were not involved in gangster activities.
It has also emerged that at some point the dare-devil Nchabeleng was badly beaten up by a rival gang of gangsters known as Pharasae (name derived from the cynical Biblical Pharasees) and left for dead, but he survived miraculously.