With his heavy Afrikaans accent, bristle-short hair and moustache to match, Sam Doubell looks like the stereotypical apartheid-era policeman that he once was. Now, instead of wearing the dreaded uniform of the old South African Police and arresting criminals and anti-apartheid protesters, Doubell is an assistant probation officer who comes to work in sandals and shorts and gives young offenders a second chance.
Five years ago he started the Youth Development Programme, run from the Bellville district office of the provincial department of social services and poverty alleviation. Half the participants are “at-risk” students from a local high school, the other half have already been arrested for serious crimes — rape, murder, armed robbery — and are awaiting trial.
Instead of locking them up in a juvenile detention centre while they await trial, where most would be raped and be further steeped in gang culture, the Child Justice Bill allows a judge to place first-time offenders under home-based supervision.
Doubell enrolls these teens in his year-long programme, where they receive counselling and family support, and gain skills in communication, conflict resolution, self-esteem, art, music, literacy and sex education.
Doubell is not a qualified social worker, nor is he formally trained in dealing with delinquent youth. But during his 15 years as a policeman he experienced the conditions that turned many youngsters to gangs and crime.
“I saw how parents would abuse the kids, how they would then turn to gangs for some kind of structure and belonging, and how very quickly they got caught up in a cycle of crime and drugs that they could not escape. I couldn’t handle it. But I stayed in the police force because I needed the money. Then in 1998, when I became an assistant probation officer, I put all my pent-up frustration into creating this programme to help these kids.”
I asked how an Afrikaans former cop can have such a strong influence on these young people. “I see each one, not as a criminal, but just as a young person. Besides, I was once a ‘problem child’, just like them,” Doubell said, “so I know what they think. I form deep bonds with each one, which they feel. But I’m also very strict. They know exactly where they stand with me. They need the structure and discipline as much as the love and support.”
When a youth offender is sentenced the judge will take into account his or her participation in the programme. Of the nearly 500 young people Doubell has worked with over the past five years, only 12 have dropped out, and three ended up in jail. The rest have been able to get their lives back on some sort of track.
Early in the morning I drove with social worker Ellen Meyer as she picked up teens in a white, government-issued VW bus with a “For official use only” bumper sticker on the back. The land is sandy and flat, in summer brutally hot and dusty, in winter the rains come, and always the wind blows.
Meyer stopped at a corrugated iron and wooden home and hooted her horn until a sleep-dazed youth stumbled from a lilac door. He mumbled a greeting, slumped in the seat, and went back to sleep. His eyes twitched under lids, his lips, slightly parted, showed upper gums devoid of front teeth.
At a block of flats we stopped to pick up another teenager. Three toddlers played between drying laundry. Young men, looking tough and cool with flashy shades, leaned against a smoke blackened wall. A woman with curlers in her hair shouted down from the third storey: “Pieter can’t come today. He’s got the flu. My whole family is sick.”
At an unfinished cinderblock house, Dillin got into the bus. His once black hair was bleached blonde like his favourite soccer star. He joshed and joked with the others, did not let on that over the weekend his mother had died from an asthma attack. His father is long dead. Now an old aunt has to try to raise him.
As the bus filled with bodies, the township smell of burning rubbish was overlaid by the funk of pubescent hormones, sweat, old shoes and cheap cologne. We made it out of the maze of streets, got briefly on to the N2 highway heading east, before turning off to Driftsand Nature Reserve. Here the programme is run in a brick and tin-roofed building next to the fenced-in forensic branch of the police.
During the lunch break, the elderly woman who runs the takeaway at the reserve complained that the youths had stolen sandwiches and crisps from her shop.
After lunch Meyer talked to the participants about the incidents of theft. She never raised her voice, laid no blame, simply emphasised that what one person does reflects on the whole group, and that they could all be banned from the centre.
They listened, chewed on their burgers, asked questions and pondered.
After lunch a youth empowerment group called Latreuo conducted a self-esteem class. The group was strangely subdued, relieved to be held again in a form they trusted.
They sat in a circle. Doubell separated troublemakers simply by pointing, and they complied with sheepish grins. All listened and engaged and behaved like the people they want to become. Meyer walked around, touching shoulders, gently reprimanding when necessary, holding a hand, asking for silence, stroking a head.
“When I feel down or discouraged,” Doubell said, “I go to Ellen. She lifts me up again.” He was sitting at the back, against one wall, watching. His cellphone vibrated; a probation officer from Kimberley wanted to imitate the programme. Word was spreading.
But Doubell was reluctant to let his baby go. “I’d prefer to wait another year or two before we share what we do here, make sure we get this one just right. But so many youth need help. Maybe we can’t wait that long.”
The question is how to replicate something that depends on the chemistry and caring of two individuals.
Last night one of the girls called Doubell, desperate. Her father was trying to beat her. Doubell drove out, talked to the father, calmed the girl, bought a brief reprieve.
A lot of what he does is teaching parents how to parent. “This is where the problems start; the poverty and alcoholism at home. The key is to respect everyone, no matter who they are, even if they are gangsters or the worst alcoholics.
“I try to set an example, model what I expect from the kids. It’s tough. They test you all the time. Once I was telling a boy to lay off the dagga. He said to me, ‘But Sam, you are always smoking cigarettes; dagga is just the same.’ I told him, ‘Okay, I’ll make a deal with you: If you stop taking drugs, I’ll stop smoking.’ We both quit.”