Cellphones smuggled into South African prisons have turned correctional facilities into command centres for organised crime, and the fallout lands on every street corner where ordinary South Africans live, work and try to stay safe. That is the picture emerging from the Madlanga Commission, which has heard how incarcerated bosses direct drug deals, orchestrate assassinations and run the very empires they were locked up for.
For the public, the stakes could hardly be more direct. National commissioner of correctional services Makgothi Thobakgale told the commission in September 2026 that prisons had become operational bases for organised crime, and that devices were being used by incarcerated offenders, despite being prohibited, “to direct criminal operations, coordinate drug distribution, orchestrate the intimidation or assassination of witnesses and officials, and facilitate fraud against members of the public”. When witnesses can be killed and officials intimidated from inside a prison cell, the justice system’s promise of protection to citizens is placed under strain.
The October issue of The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime’s Western Cape Gang Monitor lays out how gang leaders continue to influence illicit operations while incarcerated, and offers rare insight into the prison contraband market. Thobakakgale told the commission that when gang members and leaders enter the prison system, their activities “are extended to the correctional setting to the extent of smuggling and selling drugs [and], to some extent, eliminating people or witnesses… even when they are still inside… through communication mechanisms that they smuggle inside”. He noted that prison and street gangs were colluding to sustain illicit operations.
The scale of the smuggling problem is documented in official figures. In May 2026, Minister of Correctional Services Pieter Groenewald said 1 010 cellphones had been seized in Western Cape prisons as part of the 2025/26 iteration of Operation Vala, the festive-season security crackdown that has run annually since 2005. Thobakgale had announced in February that nationwide seizures under the operation included 8 063 cellphones. Gang members in several communities have indicated that many illicit operations, including territorial wars, assassinations and the microdynamics of illicit markets, are influenced by senior incarcerated gang members.
A drug dealer for a gang in Hanover Park described the arrangement plainly: “I just make a quick call [to imprisoned gang leaders]… I tell them what’s happening here in the area and who’s trying to deal in our turf, and we come up with a plan together to sort it out.”
The influence of imprisoned leaders extends into some of the most serious crimes on the record. In Saldanha Bay, prison gangs are said to use their external networks to take advantage of the growing global cocaine trade, allegedly forging relationships with Colombian cartel members and fuelling an increase in cocaine dealing. Cellphone numbers associated with George “Geweld” Thomas, a high-ranking member of the 28s who was sentenced in 2015 to seven life terms, were reportedly used to make thousands of phone calls while he was awaiting trial. Thobakgale described Thomas, who remains incarcerated, as “the number one gang leader in South Africa, popularly known as ‘the Lord’”. According to media reporting, a 2022 court judgment identified Thomas as responsible for orchestrating a murder from prison, in which a man released after a gang member connected to Thomas paid his bail was killed shortly afterwards at a shebeen. Thomas was never charged for that murder.
Witnesses in gang cases have also been targeted. During the trial of Yanga “Bara” Nyalara, an alleged extortion kingpin operating in Khayelitsha, two of the three State witnesses were killed and the third allegedly survived two assassination attempts, contributing to the collapse of the case and Nyalara’s release. Extortion has also been coordinated from behind bars: a road construction contractor allegedly received a call from a gang member in Pollsmoor Prison demanding he abandon a project in Bishop Lavis because the site belonged to the gang member. The incident drew wide attention after Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said extortion syndicates were operating from Pollsmoor and called for signal jammers at the prison.
Meanwhile, the movement of people between the street and prison sustains this system. A Pollsmoor warder described “intentional incarceration”, whereby gang members deliberately get themselves arrested to connect with incarcerated leaders. Gang members call this flow “stimela”, a train shuttling people between prison and the outside, a practice rooted in the Number’s mythology and predating cellphones. It carries contraband as well as information. “The prison is like a fruit and veg market. Everyone is part of that ‘smokkelary’ (smuggling routine),” said a member of the 27s gang. The internal drug market is lucrative: Mandrax can cost R30 on the street but R100 in prison, and ecstasy and methamphetamine reportedly sell at more than double the street price inside. All gang members interviewed indicated that smuggling is accomplished with the collusion of warders. Thobakgale told the commission that 137 correctional officials were implicated in smuggling contraband during the 2025/26 financial year and subjected to disciplinary processes. In August 2026, a warder was arrested at Goodwood Prison in possession of 600 Mandrax tablets, 100 grams of tik and 300 grams of dagga.
What changed abroad: the report points to possible lessons from Italy, which introduced a specialised detention framework allowing the minister of justice to isolate incarcerated mafia leaders in a separate facility, restrict their visits and correspondence, and permit judicially authorised monitoring. South Africa, by contrast, detains inmates in standard facilities whose effectiveness depends largely on officials preventing contraband from entering. The report argues that reforms must be bolstered by intensified screening and search operations, prioritised investigations into corruption and collusion by warders, and, where justified, lifestyle audits of correctional service officials.
On the question of jammers, the department considered their implementation, and in 2024 Groenewald asked the National Treasury to fund the project. In February 2025, Thobakgale informed Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services that the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa had said the department lacked the authority to make such a request because it was no longer part of the security cluster. In August 2026, Groenewald’s office said legislative and regulatory hurdles had limited the viability of jammers, prompting a shift toward detecting cellphones and other contraband.
For citizens, the bottom line is stark. Previous research has recommended that police target gang leaders through intelligence-led operations resulting in successful prosecutions, but those efforts will come to nought if leaders can continue directing operations from behind bars. The need for a new approach, the report concludes, can hardly be overstated. Whether the state can close the gap between the prison gate and the street corner is a question that will define the safety of ordinary South Africans for years to come.