[imagesource: YouTube / Dan Mace]

It’s tough not to feel a little guilty when writing about Cape Town’s ongoing gang wars from the safety of suburbia.

Parents of terrified children and activists trying to bring about change speak of “all-out war” in places like Manenberg, with a recent spate of shootings rumoured to be the result of a war between two gangs, the Clever Kids and the Hard Livings.

These stories are familiar to Capetonians but for tourists who jet in and spend a week on the Atlantic Seaboard, they can fly under the radar.

South African YouTuber and filmmaker Dan Mace, who has amassed a massive following across multiple social media platforms, recently uploaded a video featuring Turner Adams.

The reformed gang leader, who was once Kaptein of commanders of the 28s Military Wing inside prison, takes Mace into Lavender Hill and other areas many Capetonians read about but don’t often visit.

Last year, Adams spoke with TimesLIVE about his arrest at the age of 16 and his subsequent rise in the gang ranks:

In prison he was quick to become a 28, supposedly the oldest known camp in the Numbers gang. The history of the gang and the story of Adams’s rise in the ranks are scrawled in tattoos across his body. His high rank made him not only the punisher, but a conflict mediator inside prison walls, often enforcing vicious discipline or sentencing inmates to self-discipline — disguised in the repercussions for stabbing a prison guard.

Adams took an interest in psychology in the latter years of his sentence. This helped him to understand his fellow inmates and to better communicate with young gang members out on the streets who strive to become a Number, just like him.

He now works with Rise Above Developments, which raises money for community projects and activities for Lavender Hill’s children, saying he wants to “give back what he once took from his community”.

[sources:youtube&timeslive]