WITH the lure of fast cars and gifts, young girls from broken homes are easy targets for gangs, says a former woman gangster.
Kim Daniels, not her real name, recalls how she became involved with the gangs of Cape Town when she was in her teens. Daniels now 42, grew up in a neighbourhood where gangsterism was rife and the norm growing up.
“We saw the gang fights because we lived on a street where all the action took place. We witnessed how people were murdered as kids, which made us numb to it.”
Daniels said gangsters knew which women they would target.
“As girls, we were already targeted. They would point and say, ‘I want that one,’ ” she said.
“In their eyes, I was ripe and ready,” Daniels added.
Stellenbosch University Master’s graduate, Imanuella Muller, has done a study into the recruitment of girls into gangs. Her Master’s thesis titled “The Recruitment and Initiation of Girls into Gangs in the Western Cape” looks at how gangs exploit the needs and vulnerabilities of girls in their communities.
Muller said girls as young as 12 -years old were drawn into the underworld.
“Women play various roles in gangs. These include being information carriers, hiding and handling contraband, ‘trapping’ rival male gang members, selling drugs and taking part in robberies,” she said.
She added: “This clearly shows that women are in fact part of core gang activities, and do not just exist on the periphery of gangs.”
Daniels was one of these girls. She started doing drugs in her teens and peddling drugs in the early hours of the morning which later led to robbing children and breaking into homes.
When she was in her final year of schooling, her mom put her out of their family home. She was invited into the house of a gangster. She remembers being driven around in expensive cars that made her and her friends feel special.
“That was his way of pulling us in. We’d get free stuff and be taken out,” she said.
She and her friend had started sleeping over at the gangster’s home, along with other young girls.
“One evening he raped me. I saw things in that house that no child should ever witness. We were punished by being hit and forced into gruesome sexual acts,”
She added: “We saw people being tortured and nearly killed.”
Daniels, still haunted by her experience, described that time in her life as terrifying. They were often searched by police.
“We were stripped naked by the police so that they could search us. We were used to doing certain things, even against our will,” she said.
“It was as if he (the gang leader) owned us and we had to do everything he said.”
Daniels believes most that women or girls who end up in gangs come from dysfunctional homes.
“I come from a dysfunctional home, and the women who stayed with me in the gangster’s house, had been victims of abuse within their family,” she said.
She added: “They can tell what girls need, and that’s how they get the young girls involved. There’s the promise of a better life that quickly becomes your worst nightmare.”
She recalls how growing up, she experienced physical, emotional and verbal abuse in her family. A man who lived with her family had abused her.
“He raped me and guilted me into silence. I walked around with that secret as a child,” she said.”
There was a time she recalls thinking she would never make it out of the gang. Daniels said they tried to escape.
“He nearly beat us to death for trying to run away and reminded us that he owns us.”
Daniels managed to escape when the gangster ended up in hospital after he was attacked in a gang war.
“If I didn’t leave, I might never have gotten out. That was the only way out,” she said.
Daniels believed it was divine intervention that she managed to escape 15 years ago because gangs don’t let people leave.
Today, Daniels tries her best to contribute to work that motivates young girls to choose what’s best for them and their future.
“To anyone who is inclined to get involved in gangs, know that you have too much worth to throw away for a life in a gang. There’s nothing but heartache and pain there.”