Deprived youth in Heideveld - Cape Town
Francis, 76 years old, a woman living since 40 years in the impoverished area of Heideveld, Cape Town, RSA. She thinks the situation is getting slowly better in the area compared with the lawlessness experienced during the 1980s. Her grandson, who was part of a gang in the area has been shot three times in front of her house by the common drive-by-shootings carried on by rival gangs in the neighbouring areas. She is scared to walk to the shops in Heideveld because she could find herself in the middle of a gunfight on the streets, but she also acquired some confidence after the government decided to build a large police station just on the area's outskirts. She laments the increasing problems due to drug dealing and abuse amongst the youngs and, like most of the people I spoke to, the soaring rate of unemployment. "If the government helps us with jobs then the situation would b better" she believes. The US style 'war on gangs' protracted since a few years by the government of South Africa is not showing its fruits; on the contrary, critics has been made to it for the excessive penalties suffered by alleged gang members that overburden an already instable prison system, whether in many advocate a better development and education policy and programmes, rather that an open fight, clarly ineffectual on the long-term. In the mainly 'coloured' area of Heideveld, where unemployment is rife, gangs are flourishing.
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