The Most Insane Prison Gang Ever: South Africa's Numbers Gang

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 871 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

South Africa's secretive Numbers Gangs almost defy description; they're one part cult, one part religion, and all parts violent psychopaths. Emerging originally as bandits preying on gold miners and policemen in colonial South Africa, they took shape in the brutal prison system of apartheid, where sometimes the only way to communicate was through stabbing whoever was around. What formed was something more than a gang, it was almost a shadow universe where every single interaction was governed by the archaic and complex rules of the 26's, 27's and 28's. And when apartheid crumbled, and South Africa's drug markets opened up, the numbers gangs traded in their generations of rituals and rules to merge with powerful street gangs and bring the grim reality of South Africa's torturous prison out into the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:22.0	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:24.4	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
0:30.0	Ready to launch your business?
0:31.6	Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs.
0:34.8	Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business
0:38.9	with easy customizable themes
0:40.8	that let you build your brand,
0:42.4	marketing tools that get your products out there.
0:44.7	Integrated shipping solutions
0:45.9	that actually save you time.
0:47.5	From startups to scale ups,
0:49.3	online, in person and on the go.
0:52.0	Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you.
0:54.5	Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.
1:00.5	August 1978 in South Africa.
1:03.9	A jailhouse murder trial, the victim being a young inmate.
1:08.0	The man had been killed in December of 1977.
1:11.7	The night before he's killed, he's moved to a big communal cell in the prison.
1:16.9	South African prisons are no joke, especially during the brutal apartheid era.
1:22.3	Murder is dealt out like it's nothing, usually by one of the secretive factions of the so-called numbers gang.
1:29.3	The 26s, 27s, and 28s run things inside, through a rigid system of control where every aspect
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