SHARON VERMAAK confronts uneasy questions on youth and gang membership in the Cape Flats, and looks to democratic tools and processes as strategies for healing communities.

Over the past few months gang-related violence has gripped communities in the Western Cape, traumatising communities such as Manenberg and Hanover Park. Often with front page headlines, the media has been quick to sensationalise – and to draw broad conclusions about – what ‘coloured’ people are doing to each other in the so-called Cape Flats. My neighbours in Hanover Park have been variously described as drunken, disorderly, misguided and poor. While I admit that these problems do exist within our community, as they do throughout South Africa, the majority of the people residing here are decent, hardworking, and wish to live in a Hanover Park that is peaceful and safe.

Unfortunately, gang-related violence is often reported without any real interrogation of the reasons for the social ills in communities such as Hanover Park. Instead, readers are left to believe that the situation in the Cape Flats is hopeless, helpless and a virtual war zone.

Sometimes it is not hard to succumb to this belief. I write this article at close to 3am on a Saturday morning. I can do so tonight because I don’t have to cower in fear of bullets raining down on my house. Hanover Park has been quiet since the police arrested many of the Mongrel and Americans gang members over the last few days. My household can sleep … but I can’t. I am sure my neighbours’ sense of security has been as badly shaken as my own. Cape Flats communities have always had a history of violence, but the degree to which it has escalated in the past few months has been more than we can endure.

What keeps me awake at night are questions of how we can bring about a lasting and meaningful change in Hanover Park, beyond the temporary peace in the streets, and when gang members are again released by a justice system that can only contain them for so long.

I am trying to work out how the problems that lead to the violence can be solved and our communities healed. I have spent the past week debating this problem with my IJR colleagues as well as with those fellow community members who are working hard to improve the social situation in Hanover Park.

I don’t think anyone should take this violence at face value. Why are bullets flying between the brilliant and capable young men and women around us, and why are they holding their own communities to ransom? Why does gang membership still hold so much appeal? Where are we failing these young people?

Conversations with my neighbours brought up several opposing views. One young Hanover Park resident felt that gang members in the area should all be arrested and imprisoned, particularly given their central role in the local drug and sex-work trades, as well as in frequent incidents of violence.

Her husband, however, had a somewhat different view. Gang members have met the needs of community residents in ways that sometimes public and private service providers are unable to do: some employ residents to keep local streets clean and create community gardens. They provide loans and financial assistance -and for some, an opportunity for income. They operate informal security networks and area patrols. And they have their own systems of justice.

In a way, both are right. Young men and women in Hanover Park and across the Cape Flats have found acceptance within gangs when few other opportunities are available to them. Many face long-term unemployment, and lack resources to access further education. They have knocked on endless numbers of doors looking for employment and other productive opportunities. Like many South Africans, the young people of the Cape Flats believed that hard work and good matriculation results would secure them a decent job or higher education. Instead, they encounter a saturated system. What choices do you have if, never mind your own ambitions, you simply want to help pay the rent or feed your brothers and sisters who are still in school?

One thing is certain: this is not a one-dimensional problem with one simple solution. Is the violence of today the result of our unresolved past? Will the cycle of violence end only when the past is dealt with and, in the words of Mamphela Ramphele, our ghosts are laid to rest? Is it an economic issue that needs addressing in South Africa as a whole? Or should economic empowerment and development be specially tailored for smaller communities like Hanover Park?

Through this untenable violence comes an opportunity to discuss these questions as a community. Our democratic tools and processes – dialogue, workshops, storytelling and listening – are our only hope. If we do not make use of these tools, our democratic system will fail, much like the previous system failed our whole nation.

Like the majority of people in Hanover Park, I am not drunk, drugged or disorderly. I have a sober mind and I am willing to use it to help heal my community from the inside out, for the sake of our youth. And in these quiet moments, while the gangsters are off our streets, I dream of a better future for us all. Let’s work together to make my dream a reality.

Sharon Vermaak is project officer for the Ashley Kriel Youth Project of the Building an Inclusive Society (BIS) programme at the IJR.