Photo by Pharie Sefalie. (edited to obscure face)
22 September 2013
Sipho [name changed] is 18 years old and a hardened gangster. He has lived his whole life in Nyanga, the Cape Town township with the highest rate of murder in the country.
He is part of a family of five children raised by a single mother, who he thinks might be pregnant. “We all have different fathers,” he says. “I do not know who my father is but that is not an issue now because I do not feel his presence. My mother is uneducated and she has tried all she can for me.”
His older brother is in prison, charged with murder. He has a sister three years older than him. She has two children and lives with her boyfriend. “We all dropped out of school,” Sipho, who dropped out in grade 11, says. He also has two younger brothers, one 12 and one 9.
“Life is hard. I decided to be a bread winner in my house, because my mother does not work. She is HIV-positive and sick. My sister gave up on school and couldn’t find work due to her lack of stability,” says Sipho.
Sipho used to live with his family in a shack. They depended on government grants of about R450 per month to sustain the whole family.
“As a young man I had to move out and to make a way to live out of poverty. I had to learn things that I was not taught at school but in the street.”
Sipho claims that over the last two years he has learned to rob. He says he has killed at least two (as part of a group) and raped one girl. He was also arrested and jailed for a few months for the rape.
“I do this because it’s what I chose and it gives me pleasure,” he says. “I moved out of home because we were too poor and it was crowded. There is no hope there. So at least where I am I get respected.”
He now lives in his own shack by himself.
“When I am with my boys, I feel like I am in a family and I am listened too. I do not drink alcohol but I smoke weed. Since I stopped school all I do everyday is smoke and rob people for money to feed my family. I like good quality clothing. I regard myself as a skhothane (gangster who like clothes).”
His words are often chilling, “Smoking and being in a gang makes me feel like I am a man. I hurt people for the fun of it. I feel pleasure by stabbing people. They look at me and I see my father beating my mother as if she does not have children and she is an animal.”
Sipho once had hopes. “Before I saw myself as a teacher and I liked economics and business studies but that was only a dream.”
“I eat as I rob and wear as I steal. I do not lack much in my life.”
Sipho explains that he is now in a gang war. He boasts that he will kill those who “come in front of me” and that he will do whatever he can to survive.
“I did not chose my circumstances, but it chose me,” he says.