Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities in the world
It’s also one of the most dangerous
We’re taking a closer look at a wave of deadly violence...
...sweeping across Cape Town, South Africa
Over the past decade, a lethal mix of gangs and guns...
...has caused a surge in the murder rate
Certainly, in many areas there is a crisis
The lid has just been taken off the boiling kettle...
...and it’s boiling over
Last year, more than 3,000 people were murdered here
The number has doubled in a decade
In some areas, the situation is so volatile...
...that emergency services refuse to enter
How did Cape Town reach crisis point?
So guys, we are just going to quickly do the update of the weekend
Seven people were shot
Five males, one female and one child was shot
Pastor Craven Engel runs a pioneering project called Ceasefire...
...based in one of the most violent areas of the city, Hanover Park
It’s happening now, where civilians get shot...
...this can happen to anyone
Craven and his team monitor gang violence in the district...
...and, where possible, step in to calm things down
On a busy day there can easily be like...
...17 incidents of violence in the area
And multiple shots of more than about 60 shots fired here
The team is made up of reformed gang members
We started out by using guys that we recruited from the street
And we help them to recover
We train them strategically to go and help their own kind
They’re known as the “interrupters”
A violence interrupter, he’s at the front end of the violence...
...but he must also be a credible messenger in the community...
...and credible with the gangs
Just down here, we had a shooting here about five minutes ago
And there, another shot’s been fired
The interrupters use a technology called ShotSpotter
It employs sophisticated acoustic sensors, set up across the area...
...to detect and locate gunfire incidents in real-time
There’s a shot coming in here, we can go to the area where it’s been fired
And this is how it is in our community here
Shots get fired, incidents happen, life goes on as normal
Craven’s project is based in an area of the city known as the Cape Flats...
...a patchwork of townships south-east of the city centre
Last year, nearly 2,500 people were murdered in these townships...
...almost 80% of the city’s total homicides
In other parts of Cape Town, particularly the wealthier, middle-class areas...
...the murder rates has remained relatively stable or is non-existent
It’s highly unequal in terms of the distribution of murder
It’s been estimated that there are 93 gangs in Cape Town...
...with 100,000 members
These criminal gangs are particularly well-organised...
...but also particularly violent
They are rooted into the community...
...with a system that’s in place
What’s been happening in Cape Town in the past few years...
...has been an intensification in gang conflict
Over the past decade, this conflict has been fuelled by deadly weapons
The key issue in South Africa in terms of the murder rate...
...has been the influx of high-powered firearms into Cape Town
Many of these guns aren’t coming from criminal networks, but from the police
In 2016 Chris Prinsloo, a former police colonel...
...pleaded guilty to selling 2,400 guns to an arms-dealer...
...who sold them on to gangsters
It emboldened specific gangs...
...and those gangs then started to take on others and really...
...escalated the gang conflict to the stage of a war
Investigators have linked more than 1,000 murders to these firearms...
...including 261 cases in which children were victims
Under previous president Jacob Zuma, police corruption became endemic
On the ground, gangs recruit corrupt officers, who provide tip-offs about raids
This is taking place in the context of high-level corruption
Senior police officials indicate that there has been some form of collusion...
...between individuals within the ruling party...
...and those in the criminal underworld
In Cape Town, the murder rate has risen from...
...44 to 73 people per 100,000 in ten years
It’s now more than twice that of Johannesburg
One study found it was the 11th most murderous city in the world...
...not including places that are too chaotic to count the bodies
The crisis in Cape Town is the result of a toxic mix of factors...
...the roots of which go back more than half a century
Violence in Cape Town also has particularly strong historical driving factors
The city is particularly divided socially and spatially
In the 1960s the apartheid regime forcibly removed mixed-race people...
...known in South Africa as “coloured”, from the inner city centre
The forced removals saw them being dumped in the Cape Flats...
...and having to establish new communities
Police rarely investigated the murders of people who weren’t white
Their neglect allowed criminals to terrorise...
...these black and coloured townships
In these particular contexts you saw gangs flourish
Conditions in many of these communities haven’t changed that much
Today the area still suffers deep-rooted, socio-economic problems
In one precinct, Phillipi East, 93% of households were victims of crime in 2016
You can never cluster so much people in such a small space together...
...with no economic development, with no recreation, with no job creation
That’s a recipe for self-destruction
40% of young South Africans are unemployed
President Cyril Ramaphosa calls it a national crisis
Apartheid is still happening in its own way
The “whites only” sign has disappeared...
...but the violence, the negativity, the opportunities...
...nothing has come the way of this community
Gordon was in a gang from the age of 12
After spending almost a decade in prison...
...he left the gang seven years ago to become an interrupter for Ceasefire
Today he’s returned to the township where he grew up
This is my world
This is where I come from
You can see, there are no opportunities, no privileges, no nothing
The only survival key inside of here is be a gangster, become a drug dealer
At the age of 12 years old, they shot my one brother there in front
The other one, they shot him inside
Right there is where I did my first murder
We grew up with a heart of stone, like we got nothing to lose
When he was a gangster, it was Gordon’s job...
...to recruit children to join his gang, known as The Mongrels
This was the only way to make the game continue, to recruit kids you know
But since he started working for Ceasefire...
...he has focused on preventing children from getting involved in gang culture
Now, rolling with these little kids...
...I just want to be an example to them, make them believe...
...you don’t need to be a gangster, a drug dealer, you can travel the world
If I can be the example, you know, show an example to all the kids...
...that would be amazing
Ceasefire has so far helped 700 gangsters like Gordon...
...to leave their old life behind and become community activists
But there is only so much a small charity can do
Programmes like ourselves and many others will make a dent...
...but that dent will soon disappear
Ceasefire is one of the tools for bringing down violence...
...and it can be particularly effective if it’s linked to other sorts of interventions
The problem, certainly in Cape Town, is that there...
...has been an absence of those sort of interventions...
...they have sort of been scattered across the city
And so, they aren’t particularly effective
South African authorities are taking steps to tackle the crisis
In 2018 they set up a specialised anti-gang unit...
...tasked with bringing down violent gang crime in the city
I want to give a very clear and stern warning to gangsters...
...your days are numbered
Last year, with the death toll escalating...
...they even sent the army onto the streets of Cape Flats
Under Mr Ramaphosa, the South African government...
...is also trying to replace corrupt police and prosecutors with clean ones
Yet, the murder rate continues to rise
Bringing law and order to a place like Cape Flats will take time
South Africa is continually creating perpetrators of violence
Particularly young men, who will use violence against each other...
...or use violence in intimate relationships, against their wives...
...against their girlfriends, against their children
We need to do something very seriously...
...about trying to prevent violence against children...
...and work with families, particularly families that are...
...at high risk of this violence happening
South Africa needs more jobs, better policing...
...and a cultural shift among young men
Apartheid left a legacy of violence
It may take South Africa decades to overcome it
If you enjoyed this film and want to see more...
...then take a look at our film on Mandela’s legacy in South Africa
You can find that linked in the description below
For more Economist coverage...
...then click the link opposite for our special report on Africa
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