This has to stop
WHEN releasing the Mortality and Causes of Death in South Africa report in February this year, Statistician-General Pali Lehohla said deaths due to non-natural causes were highest among the youth, with young males being the most vulnerable.
Recent reports we’ve published attest to this and it really is saddening. Our communities are battlegrounds and if young men like former ANC Youth League secretary-general Sindiso Magaqa are not victims of political killings, it is promising youngsters like Dumi Masilela who are killed for their cars.
But then there are many others killed in senseless turf wars.
A day doesn’t pass without a shooting, usually fatal, in one of Cape Town’s gang-ravaged townships. Often the victims are not gang members but children, the most innocent of the innocents.
The city’s deadly gang culture is actually being exported. Just a stone’s throw from the Johannesburg city centre is a community at war with itself – Westbury. So intense is the situation that one of the gangs, the Fast Guns Gang, resolved to hire hitmen from as far as Cape Town to come sniff the life out of their rivals – the rival gangs being the Majimbos and the Varados.
While the constitution clearly states that South Africa is for all who live in it, these gangs have created enclaves within their small township and those who dare to step into forbidden territory to sell drugs are taken out.
It is a case of survival of the fittest and since the township is not big enough for all three gangs to thrive, they’ve resorted to killing each other. So bad is the situation that residents live in fear; fearful to such a degree they don’t even want to be seen talking to journalists lest they get killed. This has got to stop. Taking to Twitter yesterday, Police Minister Fikile Mbalula said his “message to all criminals is that we are coming for you our people can no longer live in fear”. Honourable minister, it is perhaps time to stop tweeting promises and deliver. People are dying and their families need answers.
How about reviving the specialist gang units immediately?