In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the doors to Cape Town nightclubs were guarded by groups of muscle-bound men - the nascent nightclub security industry. It was on this business that a group headed by Cyril Beeka set its sights.
There are so many tales about Beeka that it's difficult to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. Aggravating this is that there were (and are) those who loved him, and spoke about him with affection and pride; and those who didn't, and had only disdain for him.
One source notes that Beeka went into nightclub security only to get a foot in the door of the drug trade, working on the orders of the then boss of the Americans gang, Neville Heroldt, better known as Jackie Lonte, who was believed to have been working for members of the apartheid police's Civil
Co-operation Bureau.
But others vehemently dismiss this version of how Beeka came to be a dominant force in private security, insisting he was against drugs. If Beeka had links to any gang, some say it was the Americans' rivals, the Hard Livings, which was then under the leadership of Rashied Staggie.
Born in Wynberg in Cape Town in 1961, Cyril William Paul Beeka was one of six brothers and two sisters.
At some point the family moved to Faure, situated between the winelands town of Stellenbosch and the seaside town of Strand, where their father was said by the source to have worked at a correctional facility for boys. Their mother worked in administration at the University of the Western Cape. The family later moved to Kuils River.
Beeka became a top martial artist, earning his Springbok colours and a reputation as a physical powerhouse.
Under apartheid, Beeka was reportedly linked to military intelligence, and later moved into other intelligence structures involving figures linked to SA's new ruling political party, the ANC.
The tale goes that, on the command of Jacob Zuma, Beeka had, in the late 1980s, helped to ensure the safe passage to Zambia of Dirk Coetzee, a commander of a covert police unit under apartheid, after he'd admitted to the existence of the unit - actually a hit squad based at Vlakplaas, a farm outside of Pretoria. Coetzee said "dirty tricks" emanating from this unit had "involved stealing cars, murdering people, harassing people, anything but legal police work or as indicated in the directive".
In the early 1990s, Beeka started a small city-centre outfit known as Pro Security, created, according to police officer Jeremy Vearey, as a front for the apartheid Security Branch.
Beeka initially had no office, working instead out of his bakkie and a little shop that sold snacks, including pies and chips. There he kept a book in which he recorded logistical matters - Beeka would often pop in to this shop and grab a samoosa to nibble on while he jotted down something.
One of Beeka's close friends had a Rhodesian ridgeback, which the friend started bringing into the city centre at night to help Beeka patrol the doors of certain clubs.
Beeka and this friend were remembered by a source as sharp dressers - they both wore waistcoats specially made for them from buffalo hide.
Beeka soon had five men working with him; and, at some point, two more dogs, a boxer named Satchmo and a rottweiler named Michka, and then yet more dogs and dog-handlers were added to the team.
"The quickest way to get rid of a skollie is to set a dog after them - not to bite, but to chase and scare them," a source said. Clubland legend has it that Satchmo and Michka wore specially made green-and-yellow jackets.
As more high-end clubs opened, drawing in celebrities, politicians and high-profile foreign patrons (some of whom would go on to pop up on police radar), Beeka's client base grew steadily. And while his bouncers pitched in to maintain peace when scuffles broke out between booze-addled partygoers, some police officers and other sources have a very different and more extreme view of Beeka's reign - that he ran an extortion racket, forcing establishment owners to use his services or he would send men, including a group of martial-arts experts originally from Morocco, to trash their venues.
One former club owner from Cape Town recalls how, sometime in the mid-1990s, he was visited by two or three Moroccan men linked to Beeka. Once seated in his establishment, which was full of patrons, they casually told him they could offer him prime security services at a specific fee. "If you said no, they would later send in people to pickpocket patrons, harass them and trash the place, and that's how they got you to use them."
MURDER ON THE WATERFRONT
Beeka apparently expanded his business, moving from club security to rich business people, whom he similarly forced to pay him "security fees". In 1998, he formalised his security-focused business and took on partners, including Yuri "the Russian" Ulianitski and Jacques Cronje, who went around to clubs "selling the concept of" providing them with a security service.
But then things started changing. In June 1998, as gang wars raged across Cape Town, a police armoury in Faure was broken into and a mass of weapons - including 32 rifles, 12 shotguns, 49 grenades and several rounds of ammunition - was stolen.
Rashied Staggie was among those arrested for this high-level burglary. One of his co-accused alleged that they had planned to use the weapons on members of the controversial organisation People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), who were constantly attacking them. Rashied's twin brother Rashaad had been set alight and murdered during an anti-gang and -drug march in Salt River in 1996.
On August 25 1998, a popular venue at the V&A Waterfront, Planet Hollywood, was bombed. Two people were killed and about two dozen injured in the explosion. And on January 1 1999, a pipe bomb exploded in a car park at the Waterfront, the second in what became over a dozen bombs to go off around Cape Town in the ensuing 20 months.
In 2000 in the Cape Town magistrate's court, Pagad's Abdus Salaam Ebrahim claimed that Beeka and Coetzee had been behind one of the Waterfront bombings because they wanted to control security in the area. Ebrahim's allegations don't seem to have been taken seriously, however.
Nonetheless, Beeka's name was around this time increasingly linked to serious allegations of crime. In May 1999, Beeka, together with German national Olaf Reucker, and Robert McBride, who at that stage was an official in the department of foreign affairs, were charged in connection with the assault of an escort, Jennifer Morreira, in Cape Town. The director of public prosecutions in the Western Cape ultimately decided not to proceed with the matter but, three months later, Beeka again found himself in hot water with authorities when a 23-year-old sailor, Hong Liang Wu, died of head injuries after a brawl. Beeka, Cronje and four others were arrested.
It was during the subsequent court proceedings that a curtain was pulled back to reveal hundreds of suspected crimes hinting at widespread brutality and violence, and it became clear just how overwhelming and dominating Beeka's security operations had allegedly become.
More than 400 crimes, including 262 assaults and 10 attempted murders, had been reported to police in Cape Town over three years, but these cases had all been closed because the complainants feared what would happen to them if they pursued the incidents.
All charges relating to the death of the sailor were eventually withdrawn, but by then Beeka had started working for Ram Couriers, a South African courier company, overseeing national security operations.
On May 21 2007, Ulianitski was assassinated in Cape Town. His four-year-old daughter Yulia was also killed in the attack. His wife Irina survived several gunshot wounds.
Recalling how Beeka and Ulianitski had once operated, a source said, "Ja, they'd walk around with long coats and long guns."
In the same year, Beeka's shadowy connections to government became more obvious when he accompanied Mo Shaik - a seemingly close ally of Jacob Zuma who would go on to head SA's secret service - to the ANC's national conference in Polokwane. Beeka was reportedly there as security.
In May 2010, another murder rocked underworld circles. The "king of sleaze", Emmanuel "Lolly" Jackson, owner of the Teazers chain of strip clubs, was assassinated in Johannesburg.
Cyprian national George Louca was arrested for the killing and extradited from Cyprus four years later to stand trial. He claimed it had been Czech national and prolific criminal Radovan Krejcír who'd pulled the trigger - and he put Beeka at the scene.
SEVENTEEN SHOTS FIRED
On New Year's Eve in 2010, Beeka told Cronje that Krejcír, as well as Mark Lifman, Andre Naude, and the Booysen brothers, Jerome and Colin, were planning to amalgamate all nightclub security companies to form one massive organisation.
By that stage, Beeka had managed to stay clear of courtroom dramas and legal wrangles for several years, but he hadn't shaken the image of underworld figure in the police's mind - the cops' organised crime unit in Gauteng was investigating him for murder, and for the trafficking of drugs and illegal diamonds.
Although Cronje and Beeka kept in touch by phone following the New Year's Eve they spent together, they never saw each other again.
On Monday March 21 2011, Dobrosav Gavric, a convicted Serbian hitman going by the alias Sasa Kovacevic, drove Beeka to a restaurant in Green Point, Cape Town. Leaving the Audi they'd been using in the restaurant parking lot, the pair left in a BMW X5 and drove to Jerome Booysen's home in Belhar on the Cape Flats.
Booysen, who had previously worked for the city council, was supposedly going to advise Gavric on renovating a venue in Parow and getting municipal approval to run it as a sports-betting shop and a pawn shop. After their meeting with Booysen, Gavric and Beeka drove away.
When Gavric stopped the vehicle at a red traffic light, two people on a motorbike pulled up next to the car and fired 17 bullets into it. Beeka was struck in the chest, arms and head and died on the scene; Gavric was wounded but nonetheless apparently tried to chase the motorbike. He lost control of the BMW and crashed it.
Jerome Booysen - the only person to be publicly named as a suspect in Beeka's murder (according to a Hawks investigator there was evidence and statements to back this up, yet nothing came of it) - was the first person to arrive at the scene of the crash.
On the day of the murder, [underworld figure] Nafiz Modack received a message on his cellphone that read "You next". A few people close to Beeka allegedly also received similar messages.
Beeka's funeral, held in the Cape Town suburb of Ottery the month following his assassination, was a grand affair and drew a vast and motley array of people who wanted to pay their last respects. They included uMkhonto weSizwe veterans, Jerome Booysen, former Springbok rugby players James Dalton and Percy Montgomery, and members of the Hells Angels biking group.
It's easy to overlook the fact that he wasn't just an underworld kingpin. He was also a father, husband and friend
— Caryn Dolley
Given all the stories and anecdotes that built Beeka into a near-mythical figure over the years, it's easy to overlook the fact that he wasn't just an underworld kingpin. He was also a father, husband and friend - a person with a multifaceted and private life. His gravestone bears the epitaph: "How little we knew that morning the sorrow the day would bring. Gone the face we loved so dear, silent the voice we loved to hear, beautiful memories left behind as solace for our grief."
Those first four words - "how little we knew" - encapsulate Beeka's broader public legacy and some of the unanswered questions that still linger about his role in the underworld and the previous and current governments.
It later emerged that on the weekend prior to Beeka's assassination, Krejcír had allegedly flown three Serbian assassins to SA to carry out hits - and at the top of the list of targets was Beeka.
There have been several theories around why Beeka was assassinated, including that he had to be eliminated so nightclub security companies could be amalgamated without him standing in the way, and that he was about to spill the beans about Jackson's murder.
Krejcír claimed that in 2010, Beeka had introduced him to the then president's son, Duduzane Zuma, who promised to help him (Krejcír) obtain asylum papers from the department of home affairs, which would shield him from the actions of politicians in his home country, who had it in for him.
In return for this help, Krejcír claimed he had been asked to pay Duduzane R5m, of which he had handed over more than half.
Krejcír claimed that his relationship with Duduzane had suffered a blow following Beeka's murder, which he said members of the controversial Gupta family had accused him of orchestrating.
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