Marianne Merten
The recent murder of a 15-year-old boy sparked a cycle of violence in Heideveld on the Cape Flats that has hit schools amid community fears that gangsters are randomly killing teenaged boys to stop them joining rival gangs.
For almost a year the Americans and Junky Funky Kids gangs, and occasionally members of the Cat Pound, have clashed in a series of turf battles and revenge killings.
Shootings happen nearly every day: early-morning commuters are attacked in taxis, shots are fired near schools during classes and at least once police have come under fire.
On Sunday March 11 Waleed Abrahams a grade nine pupil and eldest of three siblings of a working-class family and a younger friend decided to ignore the Americans gang curfew on Katberg Road and warning that everyone on the streets would be shot dead.
His mother Virginia Abrahams says he slept at a friend’s home the night before. “Waleed called to say he was going to play soccer. Soon after that came the message he was killed. I didn’t think it was the truth. But it was.”
Waleed Abrahams and his friend had gone to a shop to buy cooldrinks. Abrahams played outside with a puppy while the friend went inside. A man, identified by witnesses as a known member of the Junky Funky Kids gang, entered the shop and started shooting. Waleed collapsed and another teenaged boy, who had just come from church, was shot though the foot. The gunman ran off.
“I feel very, very heartsore,” whispered Abrahams. “My child is not a gangster. He is a quiet child. He listened when I talked at home.”
Dagbreek Primary School principal Leon Jones and some teachers attended his funeral. Jones still remembers him as “never a rude child”, although the boy had moved on to high school. “We know that he was not a gangster,” he said.
Abrahams was raised by his grandmother in the family home of more than 40 years in Katberg Road, where neighbours know each other by name. But Americans gang leader Mogamat “Gamie” Solomons lived in the same road and proclaimed the area his “turf”.
Katberg Road runs parallel to the N2 highway, separated from it by a strip of plastic bag-strewn, patchy grass. There is a weather-beaten playground, improvised soccer fields and a few dilapidated basketball hoops.
Gangsters cross this field to reach their rivals’ turf on the other side of the highway. The Junky Funky Kids gang holds sway in Bonteheuwel on the other side of the N2.
The day after Abrahams died, Junky Funky Kids gang leader Neil Adams was gunned down outside the Athlone Magistrate’s Court after a confrontation with the Americans gang.
Heideveld residents are speculating that the Americans were angry about the invasion of their “turf” by the member of the Junky Funky Kids, who allegedly murdered Waleed.
Police detained three members of the Americans gangs, including Solomons, for questioning but released them.
Last Thursday several members of the Junky Funky Kids fired volleys of gunshots outside Dagbreek Primary just after the bell rang at the end of the school day. Panic-stricken children fled inside, crying and traumatised, while teachers quickly closed the gates.
The Junky Funky Kids gang threatened to kidnap Solomons’s child and the children of his relatives who attend classes there. The school was closed last Friday. Some pupils only returned to class on Tuesday.
This week the gates in the barbed wire-topped fence remained locked; so were the classroom doors and windows. Two private security guards provided by the provincial Safer Schools Project kept an eye on the children playing in the school grounds during interval. But the guards will not be there next week.
Jones said teaching is difficult under these circumstances. He says on Monday a group of “suspicious-looking” men made their way towards the school just before closing. They left after spotting the security guards.
Last Friday police and soldiers attached to the anti-crime campaign Operation Crackdown raided some of Heideveld’s three-storey blocks of flats.
On Saturday Adams was buried without incident. But as usual during gangster funerals, residents were stranded as taxis stayed off the road just in case there was trouble.
On Monday another Heideveld resident was killed in the crossfire between the rival gangs.
Virginia Abrahams hopes her son’s killer will be arrested. “It will make a difference. It will make me feel better to see justice done.”
There are two suspects. Community members, outraged by the murder, gave names to police. There is at least one eyewitness. But police say they have no statements to make arrests.
“Why don’t the police go pick them up?” asks Waleed Abrahams’s aunt, Roslyn Manoek. We tried to call the investigating officer, but he went to a meeting. He never returns our calls.”
With each passing day the Abrahams family loses hope that the killer will be brought to book. Instead there remains the memory of a police officer offering them a “keepsake” the post-mortem photos of their boy’s corpse.