The children of South Africa are living in a war zone. This is no exaggeration. With the latest statistics released by the Department of Police and the Western Cape’s Department of Police Oversight and Community Safety, no child is safe in the Western Cape.
Nor anywhere else. No child trapped in black, white, coloured or Indian poverty and who lives in one of poverty’s hell holes is safe.
The Western Cape government’s recently released statistics show that since September, 1685 children have been treated for gunshot and stab wounds. That’s an average of 17 children admitted to hospital per day due to guns, knives and other weapons. Twelve children died from their wounds.
The latest crime statistics released by Police Minister Mchunu state that 96 children were murdered in the Western Cape between July 1 and September 30. One child is murdered every day in the Western Cape.
Why must the poorest children of the Western Cape continually be the sacrificial lambs to test whether the system is working? How many times must we scream at the State that whatever the safety plan is, it’s not working? The gangs are blamed, and rightfully so. But it’s the system that allows gangs to exist and thrive. The poor who are trapped in these ganglands are blamed for not reporting crime in their neighbourhoods.
At what cost, Minister Mchunu and Premier Winde, at what cost? Do you want the gangs to hunt them down and exterminate those families who report them to the police? Will they be awarded a photo-op with the minister or premier when their homes are burned down because they exposed gang criminality? Or will we call them brave active citizens when their children are mowed down in drive-by shootings on their way to school because their father reported a gangster’s criminality? At what cost?
The system is broken. We can continue blaming townships for being breeding grounds for crime.
But we fail to understand that the reason crime breeds there is because the system that polices crime and helps communities grow legal economic activities, is broken. It’s also deeply corrupt and compromised. It cannot be fixed.
How are unemployed people to earn money? Do we understand how rapidly poverty will increase in the Western Cape if we take out the money that is earned and donated to the poor by the gang economy, albeit an illegal economy?
Do we understand that gangs are keeping households alive by being generous when poor people are desperate? It’s easy to lament that gangs should not be tolerated.
It’s a different story when your child is sick at 3am and the only car or taxi available is owned by a drug dealer who generously takes you and your child to hospital for free because the ambulance takes hours to arrive.
That is why the Grade 3 learner recently wrote on his classroom activity sheet “One day I am going to be a gangster and hold a gun in my hand. I am going to be a gangster and smuggle guns in my house.”
Gangs are an economy. We will never undo that economy if we don’t replace it with dignified work and salaries. This is known but not admitted to by the State.
Arrest the man selling drugs on the corner. Tomorrow there will be another. There is no shortage of unemployed youth who want to earn income from that work.
The broken system is the reason they are queuing up. They and their families are desperate.
Unless the government becomes intentional about building an economy for people that replaces their gang income, this war won’t stop. But perhaps the State’s shallow power resides in allowing this war to continue.
* Lorenzo is a leader and veteran in the social development space who has worked for decades to address SA’s stark inequities.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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