Violent gangs rely on territory, money, guns, young recruitment, inquiry hears

Extortion, gun violence and the recruitment of children at a tender age emerged among the key concerns raised during the portfolio committee on police’s inquiry into gang-related violent crime.

The portfolio committee on Wednesday heard that gang violence had not only claimed lives, but also left families and communities living in fear, while gangs continued to expand their influence through territorial control, the drug trade, firearms and the recruitment of young people.

The committee held a solutions-based summit on Wednesday as part of its inquiry into gang-related violent crimes.

The summit brought together victims of gang-related violence, civil society organisations, community-based organisations and individuals working on a daily basis to combat gang violence.

Mothers shared how they had lost their sons due to gang violence.

Jane Douglas, from Atlantis, who lost her two sons to gang violence in 2014 and 2021, said she still had pain from losing her two boys.

“Life outside there is so cruel. By a gun, you lose your children, and the space that they filled is no more. It is so hard for a parent to deal with,” she said.

She said she hadn’t heard an update in both her sons’ cases to date.

Douglas said her sons were both breadwinners.

Another mother, Louis Solomon from Atlantis, sharing how the death of her son affected her, said sharing her experience was like reliving her trauma.

She said her son, who was a drug user, had changed his life before it was brutally taken from him.

Solomon believes that safety should be a priority.

“We plead for justice, we plead for protection, and for partnership in fighting against gangsterism. We live under the shadow, the scourge every day,” she said.

The executive director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime, Mark Shaw, said gangs increasingly recruited children as young as seven or eight and thrived on extortion.

According to Shaw, the gang ecosystem revolved around turf, guns and drugs and was sustained by the continuous recruitment of members.

“Extortion remains an important part of the gang economy,” he said.

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The chairperson of the portfolio committee on police, Ian Cameron, said the gang violence problem had reached far-reaching proportions and the daily killings were testament to the problems.

“In the Cape Flats, the daily murder rate has increased and will continue to increase if no action is implemented. Violent crime is difficult to address but the current policing trajectory exacerbates the problem. Without a collaborative policing strategy, crime intelligence that is functional and communities that are engaged, then this violent crime will not be overcome,” he said.

Also, he said another significant challenge was the proliferation of illegal firearms, which continued to fuel gang-related violence.

Cameron said the current capacity and skills constraints within the SAPS continued to complicate efforts to effectively address gang-related violent crime.

He said the committee remained concerned that the response by the SAPS to gang-related violent crime had not been adequate.

Cameron said the committee had previously raised concerns that the SAPS’s approach appeared to follow a standard policing model based largely on general crime trends, rather than a targeted and intelligence-led strategy specifically designed to disrupt and dismantle gang networks.

Shaw said the gang ecosystem in Cape Town, the Western Cape and more broadly could be understood as a triangle with three key elements: turf, drugs and guns.

At the apex of each side is turf, referring to the control of geography and space; with the drug market remaining the main driver of the money gangs earn; and guns, which enable gangs to enforce and maintain control.

Shaw said, by their count in the Western Cape, there were 110 gangs.

Further, he said while there was a slow reduction in violence in the Western Cape, at least in SAPS statistics, there was an increase in gang violence, which could be seen from 2020 through to 2025.

According to Shaw, gangs were about money and that gang leaders had become highly professional at money laundering.

“There is an enormous amount of money being made, an enormous amount of money, and so people benefit from people dying to make money. Your children may die, and people make money over their dead bodies, and that is the truth of what we are dealing with,” he said.

Llewellyn Macmaster, from the Cape Crime Crisis Coalition, said focus had to shift from gangs as entities to addressing the gang ecosystem.

He argued that gang violence could not be addressed through enforcement-only approaches. “Past responses have failed because they misunderstand the nature of the problem. All three levels of the state can contribute towards weakening the gang ecosystem in terms of their current powers and constitutional obligations. We are sick and tired of political gains.”

Macmaster said the failure was not merely a policy failure but a constitutional crisis. “Every life lost, every child recruited, every community terrorised represent a violation, not just by criminals, but by a state that has abdicated its responsibilities.”

He argued that gangs flourished where the state was absent or compromised.

Macpherson recommended that the terms of reference of the Madlanga Commission be extended to include gang violence.

Cameroon said the scale of gang-related violent crime required an all-of-government and whole-of-society response.

“This must include effective co-operation between the SAPS, municipal law enforcement, prosecutors, forensic services, intelligence structures, communities and other relevant government institutions,” he said.

The committee intends to finalise its findings and recommendations and submit them to the National Assembly by the end of the current financial year.

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