generalspeaking

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Soaring South African Murder Rates via Criminal Gangs

"As soon as the army leaves, a lot of these gangs are going to uncover their weapons and drugs and go back to business as usual."
John Stupart, military analyst

"This is what we need [the intervention of armoured military trucks patrolling the township]."
The people are shooting here every night."
"This is how we're living [gangsters murdering people at will, spraying bullets at homes]."
"For us, this is normal."
Nasser Myburgh, radio technician, Cape Town, South Africa

"The gangs still feed on state neglect and social dysfunction."
"But the territorial control, the profits and the violence are vastly greater than they have ever been before."
Simone Haysom, Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Members of the South African Police Services (SAPS) are shown in November 2018 after the launch of a new SAPS anti-gang unit in the Cape Town suburb of Hanover Park. Now the country's Defence Ministry has approved a battalion to deal with the city's crime spike. (Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images)

"Everybody was elated when they heard the news that the army was going to come in because the situation was so dire that anything to improve the situation would have helped."
"[People had expected a roll-out of large-scale lockdowns with specific targeting of well-known criminal hot spots and gang leaders, but ] there’s been none of this."
"The people aren’t seeing any major changes or improvements in the area."
Kader Jacobs, head, community policing forum, Manenberg township

"They send in the army but the army can’t do anything."
"The army is here but I don’t know how far they can go to minimize the killings on the Cape Flats."
Sally-Anne Jacobs, 50, mourning son and cousin to gang violence

Cape Town, South Africa Picture: Matthew Jordaan/African News Agency (ANA) Archives

Police recorded over 2,800 murders in 2018 in Cape Town, making it one of the most dangerous cities in the world, approaching numbers seen in the most violent cities in Latin America. Escalating turf battles between gangs trafficking in drugs, weapons, illicit goods like abalone, prized by poachers, are cited as the precipitating points. On July 12 South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, in recognition of the crisis, ordered military intervention to try to put a halt to the escalating murder rates.

He was warned that the military could accomplish little when the underlying issues of corruption and unemployment that spurred gang affiliations to reign over the townships remain unsolved and unaltered. The Cape Flats, an expanse on the border of the city where black and mixed-race people during the apartheid era were forcibly moved, represents one of the worst-hit areas for violence. The neighbourhood is divided into gangs.

The very presence of military patrols on the first weekend of action resulted in a noticeable drop in the murder rate on the Cape Flats where the Hustlers, Rude Boys, Ghetto Kids, Spoilt Brats, Hard Livings and Americans all vie for gang territory. On the weekend that followed, 46 people were murdered, and a few weeks afterward bloodshed had returned to its normal pace.

Mitchells Plain saw killings less than 48 hours after a military patrol had vacated the area. A young man who lived in a Hard Living area visited his girlfriend and their son on the turf of the Americans gang, and was shot to death while walking between the two homes. Nyanga, also in the Cape Flats, had 308 murders, as the police precinct with the highest number of killings in South Africa.

According to the mayoral committee member for security, the last year, the murder rate was "about twice as bad as what we've seen before" with officials claiming the military deployment named Operation Prosper would help stabilize Cape Town's ten most dangerous neighbourhoods. There are supporters of Operation Prosper who are members of local community policing forums, happy that the central government is taking their concerns under serious consideration.

Mr. Myburgh locks his family indoors each evening, taking as his cue gangsters spraying a nearby house with bullets the night before the military arrived. The gangs began their appearance in the 1960s and 70s, when families in their thousands were evicted to make way for whites in neighbourhoods so designated. Now, in Mitchells Plain, fewer than 37 percent of the population is employed.

Following apartheid, gangs morphed into crime enterprises, consolidating their power structures. "You know how it is, you hurt me, I hurt you back", said Ronald Hermanus, 28, whose brother's funeral took place on a recent Saturday only a few hundred meters from where the funeral of another man belonging to another gang other than his brother's took place.