In the early years of South Africa's democracy, a small unit of police intelligence officers was fighting a war most people didn't know was happening — and that their own government didn't want to believe was real.

Mark Shaw speaks with David Africa, former ANC underground operative turned police intelligence officer, about his book Lives on the Line — an unusually candid account of the covert campaign against PAGAD (People Against Gangsterism and Drugs), a front for the militant Islamist organisation Qibla that carried out hundreds of bombings and at least 150 killings in Cape Town in the late 1990s.

They also discuss what happened to the generation of capable officers who ran that operation — and the challenges faced by South Africa's crime intelligence apparatus today.

Lives on the Line is available now.

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Chapters:

0:00 Introduction — David Africa & Lives on the Line

2:00 From ANC underground to police intelligence

6:00 What was PAGAD?

12:00 Why the threat was ignored

18:00 The ideology behind PAGAD's campaign

22:18 Building the intelligence response

29:51 Inside the operations

32:50 South Africa's policing crisis today

39:22 Closing reflections