Must more die, Mr Zuma?

A gang-infested Cape Flats community is counting the body bags as politicians continue to butt heads over whether the army should be called in to help stop the bloodshed.

Residents of Manenberg, just a few minutes' drive from Cape Town, say they are besieged by feuding gangsters. Gang violence has forced the closure of 16 schools.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille this week said that more than 50 people had been injured or killed in the area in the past few weeks.

On Wednesday, the Western Cape education department closed 16 schools for two days as the violence intensified.

More than 12000 children have been affected and 300 teachers were unable to go to work - barely two months before the start of matric examinations.

Education MEC Donald Grant said he took the threat to teachers and children seriously and had decided to close the schools.

Bronagh Casey, Grant's spokesman, said: "Our pupils and teachers' safety is our primary concern, along with the long-term loss of teaching and teaching time."

Pupils in school tracksuits played on the streets yesterday, some leaning against walls festooned with graffiti.

Just a few metres from Sonderend Primary School - its caretaker, Graham Jaftha, was recently killed in gang-war crossfire - pensioner Robert Smith is at his wits' end.

Only 200 of the school's 900 pupils attended classes last week after Jaftha's death.

Smith's garage door has seven bullet holes in it, and his window and front door are shuttered. His wife is too afraid to leave the house and has not been to work for the past two weeks.

"Every time the gangs shoot each other they shoot at my house. I can't even sit in the lounge and watch television; it's too dangerous," said Smith.

"The government must just bring in the army now because no one is sure any more that they will return alive when they leave their homes. My wife is too scared to leave for work because the shooting sometimes starts as early as 5am."

Across the road, Diane Cornelius was making arrangements for her 16-year-old son's funeral. Dylan was shot at a block of flats not far from his home on Saturday afternoon, ending his dreams of becoming an engineer.

In July last year Zille asked President Jacob Zuma to deploy the army to curb gang warfare on the Cape Flats. But Zuma refused, saying the police would deal with the scourge.

Zille reiterated her call for the deployment of the army this week.

"We are not requesting a permanent deployment but, in this spike [in] gang violence, which I have been told might be connected with the recent release of a senior gang leader from prison, we urgently need a peacekeeping force to free the police for their urgent duty of collecting evidence, effecting arrests, and ensuring convictions in court," Zille said.

Many believe the government's inaction in Western Cape is a result of the DA victory in the province in the last election.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa will meet Zille next week, his spokesman, Zweli Mnisi said. He said gang violence required the same strategy as that the police used in Eldorado Park, south of Johannesburg, recently.

"South Africans want solutions, not political wrangling," said Mnisi.

"The root cause lies in the socioeconomic challenges and we are looking at resource allocation, police training, good investigators. The army will come for a month and the violence will subside and when the army leaves they will come back again and do this thing."

The ANC in the province marched on Zille's government offices yesterday. In a memorandum, the party said there had been a "surge of gangsterism, violence and crime", as well as "drugs and substance abuse", since the DA came to power.

But all this was cold comfort for Albert Turner, whose son was shot dead four years ago.

"The government has a constitutional obligation to bring stability to this community and should stop playing politics," said Turner. "How many kids must die before they realise this?"