Kataza already had a lengthy rap sheet with Cape Town authorities, so when he organised a band of others to raid a series of suburban homes, he was captured. Now he sleeps at a local prison, although there is a social media campaign for him to be returned to his old stomping grounds.
Kataza is a baboon, one of a few hundred urban baboons who live around Cape Town and are often a nuisance when they invade properties looking for food.
They knock over trash cans, steal fruit and vegetables from gardens, and generally cause trouble.
Kataza's story is the latest in Cape Town's ongoing dilemma over how to deal with the baboons, who live in the craggy mountains that surround the city but often jump at the chance to roam through residential areas and scavenge for anything edible.
Wildlife rangers chase baboons away from some neighborhoods by shooting paintball guns at them. The most persistently troublesome primates are sometimes euthanized.
