Hundreds of people gathered on Taurus Street in Shallcross, Durban, to pay their final respect to suspected drug kingpin Yaganathan Pillay, commonly known as “Teddy Mafia“.
Pillay died in hospital after sustaining two gunshot wounds to the head. His two alleged killers were beheaded and their bodies set alight allegedly by the angry community.
The funeral procession was led by a Scottish bagpiper and a convoy of luxurious cars.
“If they say for the past 30 years, Teddy Mafia was a drug lord, what were the Chatsworth police doing about it? That is the question, but at the same time Bheki Cele is aware of what is happening in the country as a whole. The reason why the community reacted in such a manner, they are angry with police reaction in the area, especially Chatsworth and Shallcross. From 2019 to 2020, there were killings and shooting but up to now, there is nobody that has been arrested,” Pillay’s younger brother Ronnie said during his speech at the funeral service.
Pillay’s niece Nonicole also shared the same sentiments as Ronnie, saying Pillay was a generous man who cared about his community.
“There is a lot of hate speech that is going around at the moment with regard to my uncle. He is a human being, he was a generous person, he was kind and caring. He looked after the community. The evidence of this is the number of people who have came out in numbers to bid him farewell today, but who of us have not done anything wrong and for us to rightfully condemn him at the moment. It’s painful as we lost a person that we loved dearly”.
Police say they are still investigating three counts of murder.
In the video below, hundreds of people came out to pay their last respects to Pillay:
