- Gang violence on the Cape Flats is rising, with children being recruited as young as 6 years old.
- Community members, including former gangsters and policing forums, cite factors like poverty, lack of positive role models, and the legacy of apartheid as causes.
- Authorities agree that a multifaceted approach is necessary to address gangsterism.
Once colloquially described as the dumping grounds of apartheid under the group areas act, the Cape Flats is a collection of vibrant and diverse communities.
However, along with its historic existence and high prevalence of overcrowding, unemployment and poverty came the a long list of societal ills including addiction, crime, fatherless homes, teen pregnancy, truancy and gangsterism.
In a recent gang-intervention dialogue hosted in Mitchells Plain by the local community policing forum (CPF), authorities identified that a combination of many of these factors are some of the leading causes of gangsterism.
In a 2019 research essay published by Mark Holden on the root causes of gangsterism in South Africa, apartheid segregation was identified as a main catalyst for gangs among non-white populations as a “human reaction to enduring the brokenness of human spirit, the result of having to live under a long-term psychological as well as physical poverty.”
Norman Jantjies, Mitchells Plain CPF chair, said there is a feeling of hopelessness in the area. This so particularly around the increase in gang violence.
“This hopelessness is not going to help us,” he said. “Gangsterism, for some reason, is engrained in our society. I grew up in Heideveld and there were gangs . . . Unfortunately, this thing is not going away, it is getting worse. When I was growing up, you heard about stabbing. Now there is no stabbings, there are shootings.”
In a statement prepared for provincial minister of police oversight and community safety, Anaroux Marais, gangsterism was described as “a terrible problem here in the Western Cape” that requires a multi-faceted approach.
“It is important to remember that gang identity is only one social construct among many, which means it can be replaced by another social construct like rather fitting into a healthy family unit or a sports team or a church or an honest legitimate job,” she says.
Historically, larger organised and structured gang groups were responsible for the control over other smaller affiliate groups.
But with gangsters getting younger and more brazen, the battle for territory, money and control has evolved.
Pastor Craven Engel, founder of the Ceasefire Project currently operational in Hanover Park, said it would not be possible to identify an exact number of gangs on the Cape Flats, following an increase in splinter groups.
“In the last five years there have been more splinter groups than actual gangs,” he said.
“Most of these splinter gangs are being operated by members between the ages of 14 and 17.”
He said this has had an adverse impact on traditional gang leadership and structures, which makes interventions more complex.
This is so especially since minors are protected under the Child Protection Act, which requires a social approach.
Engel explains that on occasion when caught, officials would be called to deal with children involved in gangsterism, but not approach them in them as dangerous criminals, but rather as a child who was misbehaving.
“They would approach that child as someone who just smoked dagga, when I know this is a killing machine,” he says.
In a February 2019 presentation made to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Police, 16 hot-spot stations were identified for deployment of the anti-gang unit in the Western Cape.
According to several sources, gang and crime priority stations have since increased to more than 20 in the province alone, including stations such as Mitchells Plain, Bishop Lavis, Steenberg, Philippi and Manenberg.
Living with gang violence
Over the past three months TygerBurger conducted both formal and informal interviews with mothers living and raising children on the Cape Flats.
With the increase of gang recruitment of children as young as 6 and 8 years old this has created direct concern for mothers, especially those raising boys.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, one mother said raising children among gangs created incredible mental strain.
“We have to be so hard on our boys to drill into them to keep away from joining gangs,” she declared. “It is very difficult. I can’t find the words to describe to you the worry you have in your heart every day. They go to school with gangsters, they interact with them on the streets. One has to worry they are seen by rivals and targeted just for where they live or whom they speak to. You have to worry about them saying the wrong thing or ignoring them and then being targeted because they are seen as rude or offensive.”
A grandmother who has two young grandsons living in her home said times have changed so drastically since raising her own sons.
“The gang leaders are people who grew up in front of us,” she said. “People from good homes and you think ‘what went wrong’? But, you can’t think that. That is the scary part. You can try your best, but the choices they make are theirs.”
Both women confirm the prevalence of young children in their respective communities, groomed and involved in gang activity from primary school age.
“Out here, you can’t think that is an innocent child. The respect for adults is gone. A child is willing to stab you, shoot you, hurt you, rob you or even kill you,” the grandmother says.
The allure of gangs
For Mark Jeneker and Pastor Cecil Isaacs, both reformed gangsters now working in different fields in their respective communities, the allure of joining gangs started at a very young age.
After the divorce of his parents, Isaacs became vulnerable at the age of 11.
The youngest of nine children, his home environment was difficult.
“I was looking around for friends. Sometimes you get bullied and hassled on the street, and for that reason, I had no alternative other than becoming friends with and joining them.”
Jeneker was exposed gangsterism at 7 years old by his older brothers, who were both gang leaders and had brought it into their home.
“What happened to me those years is also happening now, just worse,” he says. “When I was in Grade 8 I already belonged to a gang. In grade 8, you are still a child.”
Retired police Brig Cass Goolam, former station commander at Mitchells Plain Police Station, involved in Operation Kombat and the first tactical response team (TRT), pointed out that children are recruited to gangs from an early age to be used in criminal activity. This directly as a result of their protection from prosecution under the Child Protection Act.
Bullying, lack of positive role-models, fatherless and loveless homes, poverty, grooming and exposure have all been identified as reasons for children joining gangs
