[imagesource: Leon Knipe]

Gangsters in Manenberg are completely trouncing law enforcement in the battle to control the streets.

That’s the gist of what Manenberg community policing forum (CPF) deputy vice-chair, Venicia Adriaanse, said earlier this week in the wake of a particularly brutal few days.

Officially, at least eight people have been gunned down in a matter of days this past weekend, and terrified residents fear for their own and their children’s lives.

Speaking to IOL, activist Roegshanda Pascoe says rival gangs are spilling blood because it’s lucrative to take control of the area:

“What’s currently happening is that one of these gangs wants to be the Hard Livings gang by taking ownership.

“We have the new gangs, which are the Fancy Boys, operating in Manenberg and Tambo Village, and from day one they have started to kill the Americans, trying to wipe them out, followed by the Hard Livings, which are the two strongest gangs in Manenberg.

“If you overthrow them you automatically step in and take leadership because the smaller gangs like the Dixie Boys, Jesters and Clever Kids do not have the manpower and fire-power to take leadership and therefore the Fancy Boys, which I believe are connected to the other big gangs, are providing them with guns to carry out this fight and infiltrate Manenberg,” Pascoe said.

The most heartbreaking stories come from parents, cowering in fear as they can’t go to work and children can’t go to school.

Mushfeeka Abrahams describes such a scene to News24:

“I was supposed to leave for work about an hour ago,” Abrahams told News24 angrily by phone as the sound of people screaming, and terrified children calling “Mommy Mommy!” filtered in from outside her house.

“I was dressed already, but as I walked to my front door I heard people shout ‘hier kom hulle’ [here they come] as gunshots started in Aletta Court.”

When the bullets start flying, residents know to crawl to safety inside their homes.

Abrahams crawls under her bed when the gunshots ring out.

The violence has become so normalised that bodies sometimes lie on the street outside schools, and children can now differentiate between different types of gunfire:

Children in Cape Town townships & Cape Flats can tell the difference between a gun fired in the air and the one that is fired and hit a person. Do you know how bad of a situation is if children are perfectly capable of knowing this? It’s normalised

— Veve (@LudidiVelani) March 15, 2022

You have to feel for law enforcement on the ground, who are simply outmuscled, but then you have the theatre of it all.

Police Minister Bheki Cele is heading to Khayelitsha and Manenberg this week, no doubt wearing his ridiculous wannabe gangster hat, where he will deliver another volley of empty words that mean absolutely bugger all to those most affected.

He will have a heavy police presence protecting him. Elsewhere, the violence will continue.

The Manenberg community has totally lost trust in law enforcement. Earlier this week, activist Glynith Wessels spoke with CapeTalk’s Lester Kiewit:

“We have lost trust in the police because there is a lot of rotten apples… in the system… The police at Manenberg, not all of them but most of them, are too lazy to do their job… most of the time the majority of them are under the influence while on duty…

You can’t even let your kids play outside, your kids are hostage, we are also held hostage in our households because of the gang violence… It’s inhumane for our children to live that life on a daily basis.

We all know who the naught kids our community are but we as the community are scared of them because they are trigger happy and we all know that there is not enough protection even for whistleblowers. How many people have lost their lives due to whistleblowing? There’s not enough protection for us.”

You can listen to the full interview below:

To finish, a reminder that this is taking place in Cape Town, not “on the outskirts”.

This is taking place in the same city we call home, and the City of Cape Town and its ruling party need to prioritise helping these communities so that they no longer live in terror.

A thread.
1/ About the 13 people that were killed in gun violence this past weekend in Cape Town.
They were killed in Cape Town – not the “Cape Flats”.
When the City talks about “the Cape Flats” they make like it’s another city that’s not part of decent Cape Town.

— Lorenzo Davids (@UrbanLo) March 16, 2022

[sources:iol&news24&capetalk]