Pretoria - The police and parents in Eersterust brought two rival groups of teenagers together at the weekend to put an end to developing gangsterism before it led to the deaths of the youngsters.
Fearing that someone was going to be hurt during the weekend, parents contacted interim Patriotic Alliance spokesperson Virginia Keppler to bring the youngsters and their parents together to end the conflict that was getting out of hand.
The community was concerned that the tension that allegedly started with a conflict over a girl escalating to a point where the boys attacked and insulted one another, and made threats to beat and stab each other if one of them was found on the wrong side of the community.
There were also unconfirmed reports that one of the boys had allegedly pointed a firearm at one of the others, which scared the parents, mostly single mothers.
This prompted them to ask for urgent intervention from Keppler to prevent a situation where the youngsters did something that could not be undone, like stabbing someone and subsequently throwing their future away.
Keppler said the reasons behind the conflict were “actually silly”, but with time the tension escalated to a point where the boys were making threats to one another and telling each other not to talk to those on the other side of the community. “Eersterust does not need gangsterism right now. We already have some serious things to worry about like unemployment, poverty and substance abuse. We want these young people in school and working towards building a good future for themselves,” she said.
Sergeant Thomas Rasivhetshele told the youngsters that the police were not going to tolerate gangsterism in the community and if they heard that any one them laid a finger on another they would make an immediate arrest, and ensure that person was convicted.
He said: "They need to know that they have a whole future ahead of them and they should not throw that away over nothing. Imagine you have a criminal record for 10 years because you simply could not control yourself.”
Social worker Raylene Jacos of the Community Oriented Substance Use Programme at the University of Pretoria said they were going to try to understand other factors that could affect the psychology of the boys such as their situation at home, which could translate into them wanting to express their anger by fighting. “Most of the time it is petty things that escalate if we don't intervene. It is important to find the root cause of the conflict. Sometimes it is things like peer pressure, wanting to fit in and be part of a group. Sometimes it is the situation at home that leads to things like this.
“I know of a 7-year-old in this community who is already part of a gang. The boy carries a knife to school and idolises the drug dealers here. We were able to establish that the boy has nothing to eat at home so he looks up to drug dealers because they always have money for food and things like that.”
Pastor Ivan Fredericks of the Eersterust Ministers Fraternity ended the meeting by making the groups of boys hug and shake hands as they agreed to put their differences aside and live in harmony or face imprisonment.
One of the parents at the meeting was Bertha Jacobs, who is also a warder at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Services Centre. She said she would have the boys taken to prison to see for themselves that life was much harder in prison than they thought.
“I work in a male prison and I can tell you, you will not like prison one bit. In there you are on your own and you have to hustle for everything for yourself. You wake up and have breakfast, then comes lunch of just seven slices of bread, and by 3pm you are already having your last meal and then you are incarcerated until the next morning," she told the youngsters.
Pretoria News