End gangsterism rule urgently
RUNNING SCARED: Manenberg residents flee for cover after gunshots rang out during a gang war which has been raging in the area for the past week. Photo: Leon Knipe RUNNING SCARED: Manenberg residents flee for cover after gunshots rang out during a gang war which has been raging in the area for the past week. Photo: Leon Knipe
On Monday, we carried a front-page photograph of panic-stricken chaos, in which dozens of mainly young people are seen scrambling to avoid bullets during a shoot-out between rival gangs in Manenberg.
This, dear reader, is a snapshot of what it means to live in a township – and what living in South Africa’s “best-run city” means to hundreds of thousands of Capetonians.
Monday’s chaos is nothing new for residents of this city’s miserable, gangster-plagued townships. Violence between gangs in places such as Manenberg, Bonteheuwel, Lavender Hill, Lotus River, Parkwood, Elsies River, Nyanga and Philippi is an everyday occurrence.
On any given day, someone’s husband, father or son is killed in gang warfare. Virtually every day, someone’s child will be caught in the crossfire. But sadly too, not a day goes by without a son or daughter of the Cape Flats opting to swell the ranks of the area’s estimated 130-plus gangs.
What is happening in our townships is a crying shame – a disgrace, in fact. Nowhere else in South Africa do gangsters blight the lives of communities as much as they do in Cape Town. Every province has gangsters, but nowhere else are they allowed to act with the same impunity as they do in this city.
Frankly, we’re tired of hearing glib promises of action from the Western Cape government, the City and the police. Let’s be clear about this: we’ve had a gutful of JP Smith, the Mayco member for safety and security, bragging about his clever crime-fighting gadgets. We’re not interested in, and we believe the people who live in townships are not interested in, devices that can count the number of shots being fired in clashes between rival gangs. Neither are we interested in what the police commissioner plans to do in the coming months.
What we want, and what our law-abiding citizens want, is for action to be taken – now! Gangsterism must be crushed. Our townships must be taken back – street by street.
At the same time, the City and the province must be forced to start dismantling the apartheid spatial policies that they happily continue to maintain and implement.