The grim shadow beneath Table Mountain

Dear DM168 readers,

On 17 October a judge stuck his neck out and, in a judgment, warned of police corruption linked to hitmen, the taxi industry and gangsters in the Western Cape.

Judge Daniel Thulare’s unprecedented judgment revealed how rotten cops – right up to the upper echelons – collude with murderous drug lords and gangs.

Daily Maverick crime reporter and author Caryn Dolley WhatsApped me this week saying that her phone had been beyond busy with unsettling details from the judgment that had not been published. I did not hesitate to say: “Yes, please, let’s do it for DM168 this week.”

The details are unnerving and speak to the heart of darkness that makes Cape Town one of the most violent cities in the world.

While many people from my neck of the woods in Gauteng leave for the chocolate-box idyll of Table Mountain, the reality that lies in the underbelly of our Mother City is much more malevolent.

My parents lived in the then low-income inner-city areas of Salt River and Woodstock from the 1930s to the 1950s. They told stories about gangsters who hung out at the bioscope but were protective and would not let anyone touch the kids from their streets.

Gangs have been a part of the inner city since before World War 2 but became more violent and lethal after the forced removals of the 1960s to the barren Cape Flats.

I lived in Cape Town when I studied at UCT and later taught at schools in Khayelitsha and Steenberg, near Lavender Hill.

I saw first-hand how young boys, boxed in concrete courtyards with nothing to do, surrounded by violence, gunshots and screams, joined gangs for a sense of belonging and purpose as well as income. I saw how talented girls were assaulted and sexually abused.

One of the worst horror stories I heard was from a boy who watched his best friend’s head being hacked off. This is the other side of that Cape Town chocolate box that has made me never want to live in the city of my parents’ DNA again.

This week Western Cape Premier Alan Winde announced that the police ombud’s investigation into Judge Thulare’s judgment had found that it was probably true and a fragment of a much broader problem.

It is high time that the top brass at SAPS catch a wake-up and stop trying to play down the rot. So much needs to be done. Orange overalls for crooked cops and their mobster friends. And then, the complex slog of making gang life unviable for the next generation of boys on the Cape Flats.

Tell me what you think by writing to me at heather@dailymaverick.co.za

Yours in defence of truth, Heather