Cape Town - Two women and three children wounded in crossfire have become the latest victims of violence on the Cape Flats.
The most recent police statistics show 2 300 murders in the Western Cape between April 2011 and March 2012 - an average of more than six people murdered a day - and the past week’s tally has mirrored this.
In the latest incident, two women were shot and wounded in what appears to have been a gunfight between Manenberg police and members of the Americans and Hard Livings gangs on Monday night.
Manenberg Community Police Forum spokesman Kader Jacobs said the gangs had confronted each other at about 4.30pm and when the police arrived, the gangsters turned their guns on them.
“The gangs started shooting at the police and burning tyres. It’s extremely bad at the moment,” he said.
In a second incident in Beacon Valley on Monday night, police reported a seven-year-old had been shot in the shoulder. A five-year-old girl was shot in her upper leg at the weekend.
On Saturday afternoon at about 2.15pm, the Mitchells Plain Police had been called to Honolulu Street, Tafelsig, Mitchells Plain.
Police said the child was apparently playing outside in the street when her mother heard a gunshot and discovered that her five-year-old daughter had been shot in the leg. No one had been arrested and the motive for the shooting was not known.
A 13-year-old boy had a testicle removed after being shot on the outskirts of Manenberg on Sunday.
Residents believe Xolela Majokweni of Tambo Village was a victim of violence between the Americans and Hard Living gangs.
He was shot on his way home after playing with friends.
Police said they responded to a call at about 7.30pm in Ray Alexander Street in Tambo Village but Xolela had already been rushed to GF Jooste hospital. He was later transferred to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital.
Police spokesman FC van Wyk said they found Xolela in the emergency room at GF Jooste, with a leg wound. An attempted murder case was opened.
Although the police would not confirm that Xolela was a victim of gang warfare, Tambo Village residents were adamant that he had been shot by a member of the Americans gang.
A resident, who did not want to be named, said the Americans and Hard Livings had been at war for the past two weeks.
She said: “Our kids are too scared to go outside now after this because these gangs are just shooting at anyone. They stand on the railway bridge and hide behind bushes.”
Xolele’s father, Hlombe Majokweni, said he and his wife, Noxolo, had been told by a neighbour Xolela had been shot.
“When we got to Red Cross the doctors said they would need to remove one of his testicles.”
On Friday, an 18-year-old man was shot dead by gunmanin a minibus taxi, while he was chatting to a friend on the corner of Renoster Road and Manenberg Avenue.
Several days before that a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed, also on Renoster Road, while a 12-year-old girl was wounded in crossfire.
Jacobs said 20 to 30 people were arrested daily and profiled to see whether they had pending cases or warrants against them.
“If they have cases then they will be held and, if not, then at least they are on our system. This is just a way of getting most of them off the streets so we can try to manage it a bit.”
Between 4pm on Friday, June 28 and 7.30am on Monday, July 1, 44 people died violently.
A total of 29 people were stabbed to death, 12 were shot and three were victims of assault and blunt trauma.
Of the 12 shooting deaths, four are believed to have been gang related. They died in Mitchells Plain, Lavender Hill and Valhalla Park.
The figures were confirmed by Professor Lorna Martin, head of UCT’s Clinical Laboratory Services’s forensic medicine division. Martin said the figure was slightly higher than this time last year.
Cape Argus