The horrific murder of a child at the hands of his peers has seen a community grappling to come to terms with itself. Gaye Davis reports
The people of the working-class Cape Flats suburb of Factreton are no strangers to death and violence. Turf wars between two local gangs, the Americans and the Casbahs, have all too often kept residents locked in their homes while battles raged in the streets.
Events on July 20 saw blood spilt and urgent voices fracturing the Sunday evening calm. But 15-year-old Jonathan Settie, who died in the ambulance taking him to hospital after he had been stoned, kicked and beaten with sticks a few blocks from his home, was not caught in the crossfire of a gang fight.
His death has rocked the community not just because his was a young life snuffed out but because the 11 suspects rounded up by police within hours of his last breath are all aged between 10 and 14 years. Some were still wearing the Sunday “best” they had worn to church that morning.
Details provided by police are sketchy but describe the 11 boys as part of a group that insulted Jonathan – who was walking past with two friends -by referring to his mother as “‘n poes” (a cunt). Jonathan chased them, but stumbled and fell, and was then set upon.
Making the arrests posed few problems. There were several witnesses, and all the boys live on the same street – not far from the Settie family’s home.
Locals call the long, cramped rows the “treintjies”, or little trains: they are built end to end and offer about as much space as a railway carriage. A few streets away is the WD Hendricks Primary School, where most of the 11 are pupils. It overlooks an open field with makeshift goalposts, where the 11 boys, who make up a local football team, the Stars, would play matches and train in the days before bail conditions meant being home by 6pm.
Apart from the field and a glass-strewn playground, there isn’t much else going for the youth of Factreton. Gangsters, with their flash cars and ready cash, offer a status much more alluring than that of fathers diminished by unemployment and alcohol – if they are around at all.
Little wonder, then, that the local social worker, Anne Peters, is outraged at the “glorification” of gangleader Rashaad Staggie, whose memorial service elsewhere in Cape Town last weekend drew about 2 000 people to mark his killing a year ago by members of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad).
“Children in this community see the gangs fighting on a regular basis. There are no positive role models – to them, it’s a big thing to shoot or kill someone,” she says.
If making the arrests was easy, police inspector Gerhard Lammerinks found himself in difficulties when he tried to convey to the boys just how much trouble they were in. “In the charge office I was trying to explain the situation to them and they were laughing. I couldn’t believe these kids were laughing about it. And when I took them down to the cells, they were asking me, where’s the TV?”
Stationed in the area for five years, Lammerinks has grown “used to gangsters shooting and killing and stabbing”. But he never imagined he would find himself arresting children in connection with murder.
“Nobody expects such a thing from their children,” says Peters. “Everybody is very shocked.
“These aren’t problem children – their teachers say they’re obedient, regular schoolgoers, not involved in gangs – though we must still investigate the personal circumstances of each child.”
She has arranged counselling to help the boys’ parents: most are single mothers, and all but two are unemployed. Schoolteachers have attended meetings to discuss ways of avoiding having the boys labelled as murderers or picked on in the playground.
As the community grapples to come to terms with the killing, Peters has been struck by the support she has found for the boys’ parents that has come in place of blame: “People think it could easily be their child.”
Elaine Settie (49) has also set aside blame. Reaching for another cigarette “for my nerves”, she says she has forgiven “every mammie and every child” for her son’s death. As she talks about her last- born her eyes fill with tears. “He wasn’t a gangster child that I had to go looking for at night,” she says. “No one ever came knocking on my door with complaints about him.”
Employed for the past 15 years by Cape Town’s city council as a public toilet attendant, Settie believes the matter is now “in the hands of the Lord”. But while she has forgiven, “there is still hurt inside. It’s still raw – and it burns.”
Her hurt was eased, though not assuaged, by the presence at Jonathan’s funeral of Factreton’s most famous son- the Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel. The former United Democratic Front activist was born and raised in the area. Settie, who once campaigned for the UDF, named her son Jonathan Trevor in honour of Manuel and fellow UDF activist Jonathan de Vries.
At the funeral, Manuel’s message for the community he now lives a world apart from was: “Take back your streets”. But the people of Factreton are already a step or two ahead of him down that road.
Spearheaded by Peters and her colleagues, plans are afoot to set up street committees to monitor crime, while a campaign for better housing and for places for children to play has also been given new impetus.
Jonathan Settie’s murder was a horrific event, Peters acknowledges. But it also acted “like a wake-up call”. Too late to save him, it is true, but one that could yet see the community coming together in a way that echoes a rallying call the finance minister will remember from the 1980s: “Don’t agonise, mobilise.”