The final chapter: Gangsters and boxers of Westbury

Alister Fortuin was a kid when he saw a man getting killed with an axe on the streets of Westbury, presumably for being in an area he shouldn’t have been.

Fortuin joined the Aca Joes, the youth arm of the Varados, the effective offspring of the now-defunct Spaldings, to ensure protection from the Boys of Colour, the age-group equivalent of the Fast Guns.

Alliances are often determined by which street one lives in.

At 13, after smoking drugs with a friend, Fortuin got a gun and robbed and shot a passer-by.

Looking back he believes he felt his family needed a hardcore male protector — his father died when he was five — but he kept his street life hidden from his mother and aunt at home. They had no idea until he confessed everything to them while serving a 22-year sentence for murder.

After serving seven months in jail for housebreaking in 1998, Fortuin wanted to play soccer. The only nearby team was Chesterfield, which was in Fast Guns territory.

'It was beautiful'

He was living in a Varados area and playing soccer among the sworn enemies, and the situation soon became untenable. One day a man he knew as a killer for the Varados fired a volley of shots at him, but he managed to escape without getting hit.

But now he needed protection from his former gang, so he went to the Fast Guns, entering their headquarters in a section called Dead Valley.

He was welcomed and given a gun which he used to shoot a Varados member that same day. In 1999 came a major peace deal between the Fast Guns and Varados, in which Pastor Peter Faver played a major part.

Fortuin, who had been in detention awaiting trial, was released as part of that pact. “It was beautiful, you could walk anywhere in Westbury,” he recalled.

But in late 2001 a friend of his who was a Varados was playing dice with a Fast Guns member and they got into an argument, after which the Varados shot the Fast Gun dead.

Fortuin was sitting with another Varados member when Fast Guns attacked them at the Big Tree, a Varados area that, as the crow flies, is not far from Dead Valley.

They got away and went to lay a charge at the police station, having caught sight of the shooters. The cops took them to Dead Valley and they identified the shooters.

But when the police failed to find any weapons, they drove off, leaving the two complainants deep in Fast Guns territory. Fortuin and his friend ran for their lives.

After that Fortuin says he got “swallowed into the kingdom of darkness”, going on a crime spree that eventually saw him being charged and ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004.

In 2015 he became a committed Christian and after 22 years he was released last year, having studied theology and most of a civil engineering qualification he still hopes to complete.

Fortuin, who was married two weeks after his release, is still trying to find regular work, but he serves as a pastor at a church in Soweto and works with “problematic” children at a local school through his Building Better Leaders for Tomorrow programme.

Marrying to keep the family together

He believes his calling is to bring the gangs of Westbury together.

Faver, the head of the Fast Guns who negotiated the 1999 peace deal, told TimesLIVE in 2021 that he had a comfortable childhood where joining a gang wasn’t on his horizon, being raised by his grandmother though his mother was also actively involved in his life.

At the age of six he suffered a terrible injury to his leg on New Year’s Day when the pillar of a gate fell on him. The doctors wanted to amputate his leg, but his mother refused.

He spent 18 months in hospital, forcing him to delay his start to school, but his leg healed fully.

Then on Christmas Day of 1968 his grandmother died, followed by his mother the following day.

He and his three siblings were set to be taken in by social welfare and split up. To keep them together the oldest sister, 18, got married. But that brought another problem — her husband was abusive.

When they got divorced a few years later the ex-husband sold all the Faver’s family furniture, leaving them with only a metal spring bed base when they moved into a new home in Martha Street.

Faver, the youngest of the four, was forced to sell newspapers from the age of nine to help raise money, though he worked a popular spot in Hillbrow, catching the nightclub revellers and movie patrons.

He started school late, at the age of 9, but his maths was better than anyone else his age.

The first thing he bought his sister was an aluminium kitchen table and matching chairs, followed by a couch.

Living the street life made it easy to join the Fast Guns, where he worked his way up from the bottom. He was also a useful boxer, engaging in a handful of professional bouts, mostly at lightweight.

'It’s over'

But everything changed for him on New Year’s Day of 1999. He was at a picnic spot in Pretoria, standing by himself far from the other revellers when he heard a voice saying: “It’s over.” He looked around to see who had said it, but saw nobody.

Faver interpreted that as a divine message and when his birthday rolled around on January 15, he shocked his family by arriving home in the evening stone-cold sober.

Then he headed to church on the Sunday and committed his life to Christianity, to the surprise of many. The next month came the peace deal and he went on to become a pastor, preaching to the residents of Westbury.

There’s no shortage of churches in the area, and while there may be a lot of people with faith, hope is a far rarer commodity.

I’ve spoken to some former residents who believe there’s no hope for Westbury.

There are many problems, but they commonly raised the issue of the police, who they believe are complicit with the gangs; whatever weapons and drugs are confiscated from one group gets sold to the other.

Those who were around in the 1970s and 80s remember a more effective police force who made it almost impossible to possess a gun. If they got wind that somebody had a firearm they went bursting through the front door at any time of day or night.

Most crimes in Westbury back then were committed with knives, unlike today.

Irvin Khoza, the owner of Orlando Pirates, is a big boxing fan. I once asked him why the sport in South Africa was going down.

“This may sound crazy, but in the old days boxers used to use their fists to defend themselves from tsotsis, who all had knives. That helped them learn their skills. But today the tsotsis all have guns.”

Back then gangsters used to do occasional good deeds for community members, such as escorting the children of working mothers safely homes.

'Closed casket' assassinations

One shouldn’t romanticise the notion of good gangsters, but quite a few of them seemed to have a sense of community.

The gang leaders of old used to live in Westbury, being part of the daily lives of the community. But these days they stay in luxury abodes in fancy suburbs while getting their soldiers on the ground to do their dirty work.

According to one former gangster, minors are often intentionally recruited as assassins because they can’t be detained indefinitely by police.

As young as they are, they can be callous, feeling nothing about carrying out a hit “closed casket” style. That means firing so many bullets into the face of the victim that their corpse cannot be viewed at their funeral.

The hoodlums of the past even had a level of respect for the police and men of the cloth. A group of church leaders went to visit one of the Westbury gang leaders a couple of years ago to address a spike in violence at the time. They were told unceremoniously to f... off.

What does one do about Westbury and many other areas like it?

Samantha Toweel-Moore, daughter of Olympic bronze medallist and top trainer Willie Toweel, runs an organisation, Growing Champions, which gives hope.

Toweel had trained Bruce McIntyre when he fought Cameron Adams in 1979, the bout being named Fight of the Year.

After Adams had been sentenced to death, Toweel went to visit him on death row. Toweel didn’t have to do that, but he possessed rare levels of compassion and empathy that allowed him to find humanity within every person he met.

His daughter inherited those genes.

Toweel-Moore began her work in Eldorado Park, particularly the section dubbed Kersiedorp, so-called because of the lack of electricity, though her organisation is also present in Westbury.

Growing Champions has put children through school and into tertiary organisations, using soccer as a vehicle.

The older beneficiaries have since started their own outreach programmes to help kids in their areas, providing key elements that, in some cases, were missing in their own childhoods.

After 50 years Westbury deserves more

Children need love and security as much as they do food and a healthy environment. Instead they’re surrounded by criminals, violence and murder.

The Varados and Fast Guns have expanded into Eldorado Park, they say.

Toweel-Moore believes the long-term reach of her programme, with an increasing number of beneficiaries paying it forward to others in need, is what will ultimately save such communities.

Westbury stands in the middle of western Johannesburg, neglected and decaying, like a beggar at the traffic lights that the rest of the city drive past every day.

It has a massive derelict sports field that lies unused and many of the buildings are looking old and tired. The backdrop to where Vincent Stuurman killed Freddy Hollander 50 years ago and Cameron Adams shot Glen Nelson in 1981, along Ruben Avenue and Steytler Road, is almost unchanged. Driving through there is like travelling through time.

One can almost see their ghosts.

People should be able to live in the hope that things can turn around.

After 50-plus years of a constant downward slide, the residents of Westbury deserve the promise of a good future.