Reformed gangster leaves 28s behind to bake for poor kids
WHEN Ralph Haricomb rolls up his sleeves he unwittingly reveals his faded green 28 gang tattoos.
Then he reaches for a spoon and starts mixing muffin batter in a plastic bowl. “My speciality is actually banana loaf,” said the father of three, who has spent a total of 33 years and nine months in jail for an assortment of crimes.
But that life is behind him. Now he works to save others from falling into the same trap. Ralph, 56, his son Sebastian, 24, and wife, Martha, 55, bake to buy school shoes for the poor.
This year they raised enough money to buy 124 pairs of shoes and transport them in a taxi. This week, 60 pairs were delivered to children at Downeville Primary School in Manenberg, in a neighbourhood where the casualties of gang violence are a common sight.
“We don’t aim for a lot of money, because everyone struggles. We do it for the children. We do not want to be rich, because every cent goes towards the shoes,” said Martha, standing in the tiny kitchen of the shipping container they call home.
Martha said they baked dozens of cakes, muffins, snowballs, hertzoggies, cupcakes, tarts and biscuits every week. “Muffins cost R4 each and round cake — which has two layers — is R30. I decorate it with chocolate spread or caramel.”
Just a few years ago, father and son were more likely to share drugs than work together in a kitchen.
“We used mandrax and tik. I taught him because I wanted him to become a number [Numbers Gang member] just like me,” said Ralph.
“I started drugs when I was 12,” said Sebastian, who has an elder brother and a younger sister.
“When their father was in jail and I was visiting him, the boys would stab each other with a knife because they had so much anger in them and they did not have a father in their lives,” said Martha. “The neighbours would come clean up the blood.”
The family lived in abject poverty and for months Sebastian lived on the streets. That was until, he said, God, came into his life a few years ago. He has been on the straight and narrow ever since, and convinced his father to change, too.
They have been baking for school shoes for three years. In 2013, they managed to buy 18 pairs of shoes. Last year they donated 40 pairs.
Their aim is 200 pairs by the end of this year. It will be hard work as Sebastian, who does the cake deliveries via taxi, has a part-time job.
On Monday, when Sebastian and Ralph delivered the shoes to Downeville primary, they pleaded with the children not to become drug users.
They showed a video of youngsters smoking mandrax, and a little girl remarked: “My daddy does that.”
School principal Edmund Treu gave the child a hug and spoke to her privately. “Many children reveal such things to me,” said Treu. “It is heartbreaking. All we can do is encourage them not to follow the same path.
“Sebastian and his father are proof that it is never too late to change. And if we can change the mindset of just the children in Manenberg for the good, we would have succeeded.”
Treu said many of the children at his school came from single-parent households or lived with foster parents. About a third of the pupils were in need of clothing or shoes.
Sebastian was one of those children. He left school in Grade 6 — “yes, but now he is a miracle from God”, said Ralph, as he watched his son grease the baking trays. HEART AND SOLE: Ralph Haricomb, his wife, Martha, and son Sebastian bake sweet treats to raise money for school shoes