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

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

2025/3/18
logo of podcast The Underworld Podcast

The Underworld Podcast
AI Chapters Transcript
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The Numbers Gangs in South Africa have a complex and brutal history, originating from harsh prison conditions during apartheid. They have evolved into powerful entities within prisons, controlling every aspect of life through their strict rules and violent enforcement.
  • The Numbers Gangs consist of the 26s, 27s, and 28s, each with distinct roles and rules.
  • These gangs control prison life with archaic and complex rules, leading to brutal enforcement.
  • Their origins trace back to apartheid-era prisons where communication was often through violence.

Shownotes Transcript

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.

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