GOOD PROGRAMMES CAN SAVE KIDS

GOOD Party leader Patricia de Lille says only investing in making the lives of Cape Flats mense will end the cycle of violent crime.

After sharing a shocking stat that showed that 208 of the 240 gang-related murders committed nationwide from the beginning to 2025 to the end of March were committed in the Western Cape, De Lille called on politicians and community leaders to span saam and change the mense’s daily lived experience. 

In a statement she says: “The breeding grounds for Western Cape gangsterism, which are the ghettoes on the Cape Flats and on the fringes of towns across the province, were deliberately created by forced removals and other apartheid policies. We must just as deliberately un-create them.

“Every couple of months, there’s a spike in gang violence, which sometimes makes the news. There are calls to send in the army, or extra police. But, for residents, it’s a daily ordeal. 

“We must address the causes of crime, not the symptoms. 

“We don’t want to keep having to call in the army; we need an army of social workers and school psychologists, sports administrators and NGO programmes, to intervene where required and steer our children away from alcohol and drugs, away from crime, away from gangs.”

This comes on the back of a report that gangs are recruiting laaities as young as 12 into the ranks and setting them on the path to become hardened criminals.

According to the latest Western Cape Gang Monitor by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC), more than one child was murdered every day in the Western Cape over a three-month period in 2024 - either caught in crossfire or recruited into the gangs themselves.

Members of the anti-gang organisation Ceasefire told the report: “Children are being recruited into gangs more frequently and are being exposed to the most violent and extreme elements of their activities. This is not only potentially fatal but also perpetuates the generational trauma.”