Boys play football in front of a small memorial to a man who was shot dead. Photos: David Harrison
Over two weeks this month, 11 alleged gang members or affiliates were murdered in Manenberg, one of the City of Cape Town’s impoverished neighbourhoods. The killings were allegedly retaliatory, committed by members of the Hard Livings and Clever Kids gangs.
On the morning of 14 March, in Khayelitsha, less than 20 minutes away, five alleged gangsters were gunned down. Gunfire continues to echo in Bonteheuwel, Hanover Park, Lansdowne and Athlone.
Many more killings have taken place since the flare-up. Most names do not reach the media. The most recent reported killing took place on Wednesday. A man was shot four times. It was a hit, sources told the Mail & Guardian. Another one.
Outbreaks of violence are not uncommon on the Cape Flats, and the result is always the same: mothers weep for their children. Families deny their sons were ever part of organised brutality. More police are deployed. Authorities call for residents to be accountable.
“[O]ur position is clear, we will not relent in pursuing consistent joint operations between our law enforcement agencies, nor will we stop holding SAPS [South African Police Service], Correctional Services and the very community harbouring these gangsters accountable,” said Bonteheuwel’s ward councillor, Angus Mckenzie, and the community policing forum (CPF) chairperson, Graham Lindhorst.
Community accountability is often overlooked in reporting on the violence, or is at best offered as a throwaway line. Inefficiencies in policing and glaring failures from the same tend to take the spotlight.
Authorities make regular calls on residents to report criminal activities but people living in these areas say gangsterism is so ubiquitous that it is part of the blanket of survival that children are taught to wrap themselves in from an early age. How else to escape poverty, unemployment, poor or no education and unstable households?
Kensington, in Cape Town’s southern suburbs, is unaffected by the flare-ups.
CPF chairperson Cheslyn Steenberg says that rips in the social fabric, such as absent fathers and those who are bereft of “the basics” of parenting, contribute to gangsterism.
“We need to empower our community to empower themselves, instead of them having to depend on gangs,” he says.
It’s a mantra one hears often, but in the case of Steenberg’s CPF, it appears to be bearing fruit.
“As a society, we need to offer our young people what gangsters offer them. If we don’t offer [for example] employment opportunities, the gangsters will give them an opportunity”.
The opportunities offered by the criminals come in several forms, one of the more popular being hush money. Others include the chance at forming an identity, an opportunity of belonging, a sense of purpose — as bloody as it may become.
Steenberg says the Kensington CPF focuses on dismantling gangs and disrupting the cycle of poverty and unemployment.
On guard: A Duinefontein Neighbourhood Watch member walking the streets at sunset.
To outsiders, some of the methods used — such as digitising handwritten CVs and an opportunity to obtain a driver’s licence — may seem too simple. But in neighbourhoods where these small stepping stones to “being someone” are distant dreams, they allow gang members to step away from their former lives.
It was such opportunities that led to the successful dismantling of the Corner Boys and Okka Boys gangs, according to Steenberg.
Clever forever
In Manenberg, where the roots of gangsterism are as strong as those of an oak tree, breaking the desire to be part of a gang — or to leave one — will be harder.
Farook, a name he chose for purposes of speaking to the Mail & Guardian, has been a member of the Clever Kids since childhood. At least four of the Clever Kids were shot during this month’s flare-up, including prominent criminal Naem “Linky” Williams.
Linky was found guilty alongside gang boss Faeez “Faizy” Hendricks, 50, for the 2019 murder of Angelo Davids, an alleged Hard Livings member. Both men successfully appealed their convictions and were released from prison in January.
“It is mos about old grudges,” Farook said when asked about the motive for the murders. “But the Hard Livings shot first. We are fighting them mos for years. Look, we are not innocent, but we are not as ruthless as them.
“We don’t fight about drug turf. We don’t want anything from them. We have our turf. It is also not because of smuggling and that sort of stuff. It is all about old grudges.”
Linky’s mother, Fatima Benjamin, said that Linky’s son, who is 21 years old, was shot and wounded earlier in March. Fatima is convinced it was the Hard Livings that did the shooting.
“My child is not one for trouble. He was the same every day. Helping other people. He was a lovely person,” Fatima said of Linky.
He was 41 when he was murdered.
Outside the block of flats where Fatima lives, another grieving mother, who asked that her name not be printed, spoke about the murder of her son — a Clever Kids member — less than a year ago.
He was unemployed and 36 years old when he joined the gang. He had been a Clever Kid for a few months before being shot six times.
A hard living
As the M&G moved from the Seven’s side — the turf of the Clever Kids — to the Box, where the Hard Livings operate in that part of Manenberg — gang members were more reluctant to speak about the events that played out during the flare-up.
Finally, a “Mr Baseline” was given permission to speak. He, too, did not want his name known, but said he runs a nonprofit organisation involved in dancing.
“It is community upliftment from the streets to the stage. Everyone is involved, the gangsters, adults and children,” said Mr Baseline while standing next to television screens connected to cameras monitoring the streets.
The “dance initiative” was brought to the area by a Hard Livings member before he “took it forward”, he said.
“[The] Hard Livings are different. They look after the community and its people. They are focused on money, not violence, they want peace.”
Old grudges: Recent murders linked to gangs in Manenberg (above) have left mothers weeping for their sons.
Children of school going age filled the area while this weekday interview was taking place.
The Hard Livings “just want peace”, said Mr Baseline, but everyone around them is fighting and they “are caught up in the middle”.
Hard Livings members are “community protectors”, he says. They warn residents to be indoors before 8pm if there is the possibility of gunfire between rival gangs.
Hard Livings members in other parts of Manenberg also offer protection to their people who are “working the streets”. It was Hard Livings that assisted residents with food parcels throughout the Covid-19 hard lockdown of 2020, Mr Baseline said.
Standing with the Hard Livings members is Jerome “Korkie” Davids, who made sure to distance himself from any gang activity, a statement that elicited raucous laughter from the gathering. Davids was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2005 for murder.
Soon, the group starts complaining of government “neglect” and how difficult it is to find decent employment. Like a choir, they conclude that coloured people are forgotten in South Africa.
A mother presses a five-month-old baby to her hip, a cigarette firmly clutched between the fingers of her hand. This is her sixth child, she says. She is unemployed and the government is to blame.
She is momentarily distracted as the group starts dispersing, and warns us about a boy in his early teens dressed in shabby clothes who is approaching. He is a pickpocket, she says. “Be careful.”
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