Gewld By George Thomas

I live in a very dangerous area as some people might call it but to me it’s where home is, I lived in Mitchell’s Plain all my life. Mitchell’s Plain was never this dangerous as I was growing up but got worst over the years with gangsters wanting to protect and guard their territory for selling drugs and robbing people of their hard earn money. Gangsterism became very interesting to me when I started following the trial of the most dangerous gangster in the Western Cape known as “Geweld” George Thomas is his real name. His trial started in 2011 him and his18 co-accused in the Western Cape High court. The crimes he committed included, murder, attempted murder, racketeering and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. In the trial Viljoen

Not receiving any blessing from their fathers and having no father –son bonding. This absence has many causes, when the father is absent during the day and returns home at 6 o’clock his children don’t receive the attention and teaching they require. When a son does not see his father as his hero or as a fighter it is possible that he replaces his father with a gang leader as the role model. When their situations is complicated by poverty, racism, broken homes or drugs it can seem a trackless waste. “The language used by gangsters is one of the most typical features in the nature of gangs” (Pinnock D, 1997, P9). It is certain specifically used by gangs to differentiate between those who are part of a gang community or not. Their favourite topic of conversation is about gang fights. They talk about the battles, types of guns, styles of fighting, demonstrating their toughness and daring. The gangsters think the nicest thing about the gang is the sound of the gun. It makes the enemy scared and it makes the gangster feel brave when you see the enemy running for his life. There are the different styles of fighting; the one gang can be identified by their technique. The Americans gang don’t fight in the daylight; they fight at night and split themselves into teams of three or four. They would then send two guys without guns as look outs and

“They followed and cheered their boys to athletic successes, tried to hold their meetings on the same night as the boys and mostly their meetings would be about feminine topics as cooking, dress code, parties and gossip” (Campbell, A, 1984). There is a girl’s gang structure which included a president, prime minister and war counsellor and the girls dressed in men’s shirts, baggy pants and ankle boots with pointed toes. The ranking leader had achieved her position by fighting and defeating the former leader. They have a “clubhouse” which is an abandoned apartment or house which they used for meetings and hanging out with the male gang’s members known as their brother gang. “The girls who joined the gang’s independent of a male were required to have intercourse with any male gang member who expressed an interest and girls were expected to be completely heterosexual” (Campbell, A, 1984, p78). If it is discovered that a girl has betrayed the gang she is gang-banged and thrown out of the gang. There is a high rate of teen pregnancies as girls feared for cancer from contraceptive pills and the males refused to wear condoms on the grounds that it’s diminished their sexual pleasure. Girls were not allowed to sleep with outsiders; if they were guilty they were beaten by the gang. Both male and female means of making a living is robbery, extortion, burglary, Hi-jacking or selling of drugs and for some girls it