Gang horror has to be stopped

AS his shattered family prepares to bury five-year-old Lucin Pieterse today, residents of the Bay’s gang-stricken northern areas continue to feel the chilling breath of death on their necks. Most members of these communities have zero affiliation to gangs and yet they are constantly held to ransom by fear. Every unexpected noise heard might be a shot fired – a bullet whizzing in their direction. The culture of angst is so pervasive that many parents are too terrified to let their children play outside.

A principal this week shut his school’s doors when a police officers’ chase after a suspected gangster – who turned out to be an innocent barber – spilled over into the classroom. Ironically, the barber had fled when he saw the plain-clothes officers’ guns and feared were the gangsters.

A quick scan of the past week’s newspapers reveals reports of a double gang shooting; the tragic gunning down of little Lucin and the wounding of an 11-year-old; another school closing its doors in fear and, more encouragingly, two arrests made in connection with last week’s double murder.

Even on the letters page of our sister paper, The Herald, a Summerstrand reader wrote that gang violence kept her from visiting her parents and family who still live in Helenvale.

What Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa had to say while visiting the Pieterses and other families of gang victims on Thursday is nothing they don’t know or have not heard before – that there is an urgent need to stabilise the area so the killings will end.

But his presence did bring comfort and a signal the problem is not going unnoticed nationally.

Now all that residents expect – and deserve – is immediate follow-through on his promise the police presence in the area would be radically stepped up.

But, as Evaluation and Monitoring Minister Collins Chabane pointed out elsewhere in the city, police cannot do it alone. Society as a whole needs to work together to understand the complex, age-old grip of gangs in order to break the hold once and for all.

Constantly seeing the horrors unfolding around them means children’s innocence is being lost.

The tragic consequence is many of them might then inevitably be drawn into the gang culture themselves.

Let us do all in our power to spare them this horror.