Cape Town - Gangsters and drug dealers, in an attempt to intimidate anti-crime activists and community leaders, have turned to targeting their children and families with at least four youngsters killed during the past few weeks.
In Balvenie Estate in Elsies River on Wednesday, the community mourned and remembered the life of 17-year-old Dylan Pypers, who was shot dead on Sunday.
He and another 17-year-old, Darren Rhoode, were both shot execution-style. Both of their mothers are community activists.
Alessandro Heynes, the 23-year-old Leap Law Enforcement officer shot dead last week in Salberau, Elsies River, and who will be buried tomorrow, was apparently also killed because his mother was a community activist.
The Elsies River Community Policing Forum confirmed that his mother was also a community worker.
In Delft, Tasneem Visagie, 32, the daughter of a Voorbrug neighbourhood watch member, was also shot last week, initially thought to have been caught in gang crossfire.
Meanwhile, the son of the outspoken Manenberg activist Amina Abrahams was brutally attacked last week.
Imraahn Mukaddam, spokesperson for the Elsies River CPF, said these parents go the extra mile to build a better society but they were losing their children despite their best efforts.
Mukaddam said it was difficult to connect the three separate incidents to the work that the parents of the victims were doing. He still believes it was coincidental that the victims were children of community workers.
However, Manenberg anti-crime activist Roegshanda Pascoe, who herself has been threatened and whose family was attacked, said the lives of activists are constantly under threat.
“Targeted or not, the lives of children of anti-crime activists are constantly at risk or under scrutiny,” she said.
Pascoe added: “This is a dangerous path that we are walking as we are vilified from all fronts, including the community we are fighting for, despite putting our lives on the line, filling the gap the government has left vacant.”
Action Society community safety director Ian Cameron said what was frustrating was that the people that encouraged activists to speak out about the violent crimes in the community were unable to protect them. He said it was also worrying that these activists didn’t trust the police.
Mukaddam said that the proliferation of firearms was unprecedented, with the area often resembling a war zone. He said young boys were playing war games with live ammunition, resulting in disastrous consequences, often for no reason but squabbles over drug and extortion turf.
“What is happening on the Cape Flats on a daily basis is a low-intensity civil war with armed militias engaging in urban warfare,” he said.