Welcome to Khayelitsha 
It’s become increasingly rare to find a Londoner born and raised in the capital and I’m proud to be a card-carrying member of the minority. Lauded for the endless list of positives, the big smoke has so much going for it but we all know the city isn’t perfect. Knife crime in the capital is one of the many problems that seems to keep rearing its ugly head.
When I was a teenager my school life was dominated by bravado. I attended Central Foundation Boys’ School in east London, which was a twenty-minute bus journey from my block of flats in Holloway. With that many teenage boys in one building it’s a wonder the testosterone alone didn’t blow the roof off the place. Looking and acting tough was essential for survival as gangs dominated the playground.
It was the mid-nineties and gentrification was only just beginning to hit my area and definitely hadn’t swallowed east London yet. Populated by working-class kids from the neighbouring London boroughs of Islington and Hackney, my school sat just behind Old Street roundabout and was full of runts like me from council estates.
In my early teens it was impossible to go a day at school without encountering gang culture, as it was rife in the areas my classmates and I were from. Daily we’d deal with racist gangs like the White Cross boys and the Junior National Front, as well as the expected butting of heads that happened regardless of race.
In my first few years at Central, I saw my journey to and from school as the best and potentially worst part of the day. On my way in, sharing the top deck of the 43 or 271 bus with the burgundy-skirted girls from Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Girls’ School was a dream. They smelt better than us boys and occasionally smiled back. Occasionally. The worst part was the journey home. Remember, this was a time before smartphones and iPods so distractions were minimal.
If it wasn’t a fight on the bus, it was the emergency alarm being set off. If it wasn’t the alarm, it was a window being smashed. I’m definitely guilty of moaning about today’s teenagers being obsessed by their smartphones, but for anyone reading this commuting into work on the 43 or 271 bus, be thankful kids today are staring at screens and not smashing bus windows like my mob.
In my first couple of years at school, the thing to carry making you instantly tougher was a glass hammer. The plastic tool would be clipped to the internal walls of the public bus I’d ride to and from school as a safety measure. Within the first few weeks of term, every bus had theirs stolen. By the time I was thirteen, the thing to carry stopped being a glass hammer and overnight graduated to a knife.
I stayed out of trouble but was always around it as, whether you welcomed it or not, violence was a part of school life. Things were so racially charged that games of blacks v whites football at lunch break became a regular occurrence.
By my mid-teens, knives were increasingly present, as they’d fast become the accessory of choice. This unfortunately wasn’t just the case with the harder kids that always seemed to be in some kind of trouble or have some rival hard nut ‘after them’. Some of the quieter, normal boys who happened to live on a bad estate would see the weapon as a necessary evil, just in case something happened on the way home.
I never carried a weapon in my teens, but I definitely saw so many that now, with hindsight, I see just how dangerous those times were. Getting older and taking more of an interest in the changing face of the place I call home, to see knife crime as an ongoing problem particularly with teenagers haunts me.
Travelling all the way to South Africa in making the Knife Crime ER film, where I was confronted with similar issues of violence but on a whole other level, forced me into an uncomfortable corner. I’d go on to face the actuality that everything I saw might have happened to me, but the toughest question I’d have to ask myself was, why didn’t it?
I was back in Cape Town and the beauty of the city was still able to catch me off guard; Table Mountain still had that magic about it every time it caught my eye. The picture-perfect views, sunsets and beaches led me to make the classic embarrassing Brit abroad statement … ‘I reckon I could live here’.
But South Africa had an impressive gift of slapping me with a reality check whenever I found myself getting too comfortable. The beauty of Cape Town had my attention for all of five minutes before I was reminded that I was in the country’s murder capital. Twelve miles from the city centre sits Khayelitsha, one of the biggest townships occupying a sizable chunk of the Cape Flats. Partially illegal, the predominantly residential township continues to grow, housing millions.
It was my first time driving into the township and I hadn’t even realised we were in. My limited experience told me townships were essentially shantytowns. I was expecting rows and rows of badly built walls and corrugated iron roofs. I was quickly corrected as Khayelitsha was not only huge, but it might as well have been a city in its own right. Street lamps lit the route and the perfectly paved roads made getting to our destination a lot easier than I’d expected. Excited to see how people lived while being slightly embarrassed of my naivety, I arrived in this chunk of Cape Town I didn’t know, but was desperate to experience.
It was payday weekend and it was buzzing. I was twelve miles from the centre of the city but the streets here were just as busy. Music seemed to come from every passing car and kids wouldn’t take no for an answer washing windscreens at traffic lights. The night had just begun and the taverns were opening. Khayelitsha was clearly a place full of life, but how could somewhere so vibrant carry such a reputation for violence?
My first port of call was the newly built hospital situated right in the heart of the township. At the time of filming, the shiny new facility was only a year old but already had one of the busiest emergency centres in Cape Town.
As a kid I’d spent much more time than any child would ever choose to in a hospital as my mother worked in one. The Whittington Hospital in Archway was and still is an impressive group of buildings overlooking the whole of London. When I was around five or six, my mother worked as a medical secretary in one of the taller buildings. I ended up spending some of my half-term and Easter breaks with mum at work because, well, why would you pay for childcare when there was a fully functioning children’s ward? I’d hang out with kids dealing with all manner of conditions, but all I saw was new friends to play with and an endless stream of toys. I’d go on to have health issues of my own as a child, but I’d never dealt with anything that made hospitals a scary place for me.
Walking into this hospital felt strangely familiar. I was on the other side of the planet, but the smell and feeling was instantly recognisable. It was just like being back at work with Mum, even if outside the building was another kind of life entirely.
It was a Saturday night and beyond the colossal car park, you could hear the parties just getting started. Music was in the air and steadily getting louder from the streets of Harare, the nearest residential block just beyond the hospital. Known as one of the most notorious parts of the township, the whistling and cackles coming from the bars and clubs sounded like undeniable fun.
Unfortunately, given its proximity, once those bars and clubs had closed for the night, their tipsy patrons would hang out in the street. Any violence would see their night end right where I was stood. In the hospital.
Over the next few days, I was set to shadow the junior doctors. Being in a hospital I was totally good with, but I hadn’t really thought about just how much I’d see in the presence of the medical staff.
Welcome to Khayelitsha
The weekend shift staff change was under way and it was busy in the emergency room. There was already someone being stitched up after a fight and another man who’d lost a leg. The staff were from all over the world and predominantly young with a hunger to learn.
I met Lauren, one of the junior doctors who was beginning her shift, and so full of smiles you wouldn’t think she was surrounded by blood and bandages. Totally in her element, Lauren grabbed a clear plastic bag and handed me a foot severed at the calf muscle. I stared in a panicked awe as Lauren pulled and twisted the limb exposing tendons and bone talking me through the intricacies of anatomy. She was fascinated and excited from a medical standpoint; I was trying my best not to throw up.
Lauren went on to explain that the inebriated patient had stumbled onto the train tracks and not got away quickly enough as the fast train approached. She described it as a traumatic amputation; all I could think about was the poor bloke arriving at the hospital holding his severed foot.
This was my first two minutes in the ward and Lauren happily chewed gum, describing what I’d just seen as a typical start to the weekend. This was apparently the calm before the storm. The drunken man would wake without a foot, but thanks to the junior doctors he’d be alive.
Lauren worked every patient in the room alongside Amy and François. Buzzing from bed to bed, they were just getting started but had a fantastic shorthand and rhythm. All under the age of thirty, it was all they could do to cope with the frequency and extremity of cases coming through the door.
Amy saw to a young man who’d just come in. She marked a diagram indicating the various wounds he’d received across his entire body from being attacked with a panga blade (a type of machete). The thick and heavy blade had left the back of his skull soft, and Amy injected his scalp and tended to the three-inch gash on the back of his head. Totally nonchalant about the severity of the case, Amy had seen this before and assured me I’d see lots more that very same night. She wasn’t wrong.
‘Welcome to Khayelitsha’ was her dry closer before being called away to help with another patient. I’d been introduced to new parts of the world in so many ways over the years, but for victims of knife crime to act as a fitting introduction was a chilling first.
The shift continued and it wasn’t long before the floodgates opened. Quickly, young men covered in stab wounds filled every bed and were queued up side by side in the hallway. The stench of blood began to fill every corridor managing to overpower that strong chemical hospital smell.
A man with bright pink blood pouring from his head sat slumped in a wheelchair while an older man clutched at his chest in pain. It was so much to take in. I was taken aback at how the group of young doctors buzzed from case to case while I watched, totally overwhelmed. In a typical weekend, the emergency ward would see over 100 patients; 90 per cent of those cases would be stab victims. Blunt force trauma was another cause of young men coming through the door and the numbers were astounding. One of the most common causes of death for young men under the age of twenty-five from Khayelitsha is violent crime.
After an hour of blood, stitches and pain-fuelled moans, the room felt less like an emergency ward and increasingly like a chop shop. People were being wheeled in, repaired and rolled out, with a similar case filling their spot as soon as they’d gone. It was incredible to watch but completely understandable given the circumstances. These doctors had to work fast as their speed, or lack thereof, could affect a life for good.
Relax, Booti
At twenty-six, François was an incredibly assured doctor who jumped from patient to patient. Filling the bed in front of him lay a man with internal bleeding in need of immediate treatment. Wiping his sweat away with his elbow, he called me over to help him with a chest drain.
I jumped at the opportunity to help and shrugged off my bomber jacket, throwing on an apron and gloves. I was on camera doing what I always do, and getting stuck in here felt like the best way to bond with the doctors. I figured helping might just stop me from being an annoying, question-asking obstacle and even make me useful.
We were in a hospital surrounded by people in need of serious medical attention and I had absolutely no right to administer any medical help, but François felt differently. I was worried my involvement would create another foot-in-a-bag situation or worse. Given no choice in the matter, I was holding the terrified patient’s arms and desperately trying to keep him still while François made a small incision between his ribs. ‘Relax, Booti’ was said repeatedly in an effort to calm the patient down. Booti, meaning brother, would become a term of endearment I’d hear repeatedly over the next few hours.
Aggressively working the cut open with a steel tool, François needed to drain the chest cavity of blood or air that had built up around the lungs because of the stabbing. Blood trickled out of the new opening and a loud sharp hiss of air spat its way from the gap between the man’s ribs. Acting quickly, François snatched up a tube and inserted it into the gap to prevent a lung collapse.
Stood with my eyes impossibly wide, I couldn’t believe what was happening right in front of me and totally forgot about my role of holding helper, instantly becoming a gawping idiot. My mouth was wide open but I wasn’t even close to my soundman Joe in the race for stupidest facial expression. Joe held a huge boom mic above the entire procedure and every squelch and spit was in loud stereo sound booming into his ears from the huge pair of headphones he had to wear.
Joe looked like he was going to be sick as I decided to focus on the doctor who was making light work of what might have been the scariest thing I’d ever witnessed. François explained that the way he’d gone about the procedure, was neither the best or his preference. It was an unfortunate necessity due to the time pressure of saving the man and being able to get to the next in-need patient. My squirming wasn’t helpful, but the incredibly polite doctor found time to thank me before rushing off to save another life only two beds away.
As the night went on, the stream of injured men was constant and the cause hardly varied. Frustratingly, it was one stab victim followed by another. A knife wound, regardless of its severity, is an awful thing to witness but, after the first few hours of the weekend night shift, those reporting a single stab injury, I began to consider lucky. Many victims had multiple cuts and wounds and, more often than not, huge gashes on the head.
Pulled from a car covered in blood, Lukanio was wheeled into the trauma room. Mugged and stabbed on his way home from a tavern, the 21-year-old didn’t look good. Quickly tended to by the pack of international doctors, he was being helped but with the amount he was wailing you’d never think it.
He’ll survive … to come back next week
At the time we were filming in South Africa, UK statistics recorded around seventy-seven stabbings countrywide in a week. In Khayelitsha, that number would usually be matched if not beaten in a single weekend.
The phrase ‘Relax Booti’ calmly uttered by François earlier would continue to be said for the rest of the shift, but in the case of Junior Doctor Nicole, it would be shouted. Taking no prisoners, Nicole was broad, stern and an incredible presence in the ward. She didn’t suffer fools gladly, and abruptly explained that most of the knife fights arose out of drunken disputes over women.
Sewing up bright red bloody head wounds, Nicole explained that the scalp bleeds a lot more than most other places in the body so an injury can usually look a lot worse than it actually is. I wasn’t desensitised to the blood just yet, but as the night wore on I became so used to seeing bleeding men doubled over drunk I had to check myself. I hated the constant thread in every story being poverty, the release of alcohol-fuelled partying and the inevitable violence as a result.
Nicole had seen it all before – as recently as the previous weekend to be exact – and was in a strange place of acceptance. Working on her patient’s prescription, Nicole looked up to watch the man lying unconscious with a head ridded with lumps. ‘He’ll survive … to come back next week.’
The night continued, as did the flow of drunken stab victims. One doctor described the combined smell of blood and alcohol as unbearable and I understood his position. It wasn’t an easy environment to be in the middle of and I’d only spent a few hours there. For the junior doctors, this was school and term was far from over.
One of the senior consultants, Dr Henny, arrived to oversee the work of the young team. I followed him into a curtained-off cubicle where he explained the young man lying on his side had been stabbed in the head and his skull might have been fractured in the process.
He injected the man’s scalp and began to stitch the wound while talking me through his process of assessment. With no time to waste and lacking specialised, sophisticated medical machinery, he slipped his little finger into the second and bigger gash on the man’s head. Sliding it under the skin and rubbing the bone was the quickest and most effective way to rule out an underlying skull fracture.
The man was conscious but pain free due to local anaesthetic. Dr Henny grabbed my hand and launched my finger beneath the skin, guiding it up and down the smooth skull bone. The thickness of the skin was strange and heavy while the skull bone felt like the perfectly smooth stone to skim across water that I’d spend ages searching for at the beach.
It was fascinating but a first I won’t be repeating anytime soon. If you catch me fingering some random bloke’s skull, pull me aside and have a word. Thanks.
The nine-to-five for these doctors was doing everything in their power to tend to whatever came through the door. They were doing amazing work but they were literally just doing their job. The truth was that the medical staff in Khayelitsha Hospital were the most positive part of a crime cycle. Every young stab victim they patched up was half expected to make a return visit in the not too distant future.
The emergency ward was only one side of the story; what was causing so many young men to end up as victims of shockingly similar knife attacks? I saw so many casualties on my first night that I wanted to see where they were coming from, so the next day I headed into the township.
In Khayelitsha, the scars of a troubled history were everywhere. Built in the late eighties, the township was situated on the fringes of Cape Town during Apartheid. Twenty years on, the place was alive and home to millions. Signs of regeneration were visible as small pockets of houses built to a high standard stood proudly side-by-side. That being said, there was still a 61 per cent unemployment rate and many of the township’s residents were still bound by poverty.
I hopped in a local taxi and was ferried around by Zuka. Filling his seat and then some, the mountain of a man pointed out the skinny alley ways that criminals would flee down after altercations. Muggers could hide between buildings and pounce whenever they saw fit, making the atmosphere shift dramatically as soon as night fell. A breeding ground for violence, the living conditions seen in the majority of the township that was home for so many was also the perfect place for a career in crime.
Speaking to Lukanio who I met in the hospital, it was clear that his brutal mugging not only left him covered in stab wounds but also hungry for revenge. Describing the police as inactive, Lukanio explained that many people would take justice into their own hands. He stressed that drugs and alcohol usually lay at the root of any violence.
He’s gonna kill our children
While talking on camera to a small group of teenagers, I had no idea I was about to be given a first-hand experience in the effects of substance abuse.
A car roared its way towards us and a small group of children playing in the road. Wild and clearly out of it, the drunk driver was pulled from his car by the quickly forming mob. Local men and women surrounded his car pulling and dragging the man in different directions. The keys from his car were confiscated and what was about to happen to the inebriated driver looked like it was going to be anything but positive.
An angry man screamed, ‘He’s gonna kill our children,’ as things became suddenly more menacing. I feared the mob might take matters into their own hands, exerting what was commonly known as Community Justice.
In an environment where an underfunded police force struggles to get to corners of the sprawling townships across the country, over the years the communities themselves have increasingly become police, judge and jury. Lukanio explained that had the man hit a child or injured someone, the mob might decide to punish him there and then using the most extreme version of force imaginable.
That level of extreme punishment would be the case for his attacker, causing Lukanio to keep his stabbing quiet and manage it without any help from the police or community. One such punishment used in community violence was known as necklacing. The guilty party would be trapped in a stack of tyres, have petrol poured over them and then set alight.
In the twelve months leading up to my arrival in Khayelitsha, there were nine incidents of necklacing. Thankfully community justice doesn’t always lead to death. Back at the hospital, the night shift had seen four men turn up accompanied by the police. Stripped naked and beaten, their punishment was humiliation, hammering home the fact that the township was home to so many, but also a world operating within its own brutal rules.
On the night shift, I joined paramedics Ata and Ricardo. The minute a call came in, we dashed for the ambulance and I was made to sit up front with Ata. I did a terrible job of hiding my excitement, as a flashback to a fire station school trip caused immediate regression. The day I wore that fireman’s hat and got lifted into the driver’s seat of the shiny red truck was happening all over again, only this time it was probably for the best I didn’t press all the buttons or pull at every switch.
En route to a call, the sirens wailed as Ata ripped through the streets. Ricardo sat on the patient bed flipping through a battered book of maps trying to figure out where we were going. There was a new sat nav that hadn’t yet been completely installed, leaving Ricardo and Ata no option but to go old school.
Scooping patients from every corner of Khayelitsha, each shift saw the two men inundated with young victims of knife crime. Practically on the frontline, ambulance crews were not just the first to respond to an incident, they’d put themselves at risk of attack every shift.
Eventually arriving at the address, a man with a T-shirt wrapped around his head emerged from the doorway. It wasn’t until he stood in the red and blue lights of the ambulance that I could see just how much blood was pouring from his face.
I spotted deep stab wounds on his arms, chest and head but couldn’t work out why he wasn’t doubled over in pain. As he called for his screaming mother I could smell the alcohol on his breath. Between the adrenaline and booze, the pain hadn’t hit. Yet.
Appearing from the open doorway to the small house, a boy no more than four stood silently among the chaos. The kid was totally blank faced, not knowing where to go or what to do. I ushered the child inside and regretted doing so as soon as we walked in.
The house was a compact three-room building with concrete walls. Upon entry, the harsh light from a single bulb revealed just how brutal what had happened actually was. The doorway to one of the two bedrooms was covered in blood. There was a small pool of blood in which a bent screwdriver wrapped in bloody fingerprints sat waiting to be collected by the police. Given what I’d been told, chances were they wouldn’t be arriving any time soon.
I tried desperately to pick out the story from the noise, but the random faces barking different versions of what went on were just too confusing. What was clear was alcohol had been consumed and a fight ensued. The bleeding guy in the ambulance had been attacked with the screwdriver but to what degree I had no idea. It was impossible to tell exactly how bad his injuries were as his head was so tightly wrapped in the T-shirt that was now sopping wet with blood.
The small boy cowered at my legs holding my hand while shaking uncontrollably. He’d seen everything and was clearly struggling to process it all. I headed back to the ambulance to check on the man in the van as Ata attended to the bleeding. The shaking boy reappeared at my side taking my hand not wanting to be left alone. With no idea who the child was or the severity of what he’d seen, I was in over my head in a situation that continued to provide no answers.
Handing the child over to a neighbour, I said my goodbyes and returned to Ricardo and Ata in the ambulance standing over the now bandaged man. Counting out six stab wounds, who knows what would have happened to the guy had Ricardo’s map reading been as awful as mine. Working furiously on his wounds, Ricardo explained he’d been stabbed in the nose and just above his eye hence the relentless flow of blood.
Ata pulled away, dodging potholes, and the rush was on to get him to the trauma unit as quickly as possible. Led by Nicole, the trauma team pounced on the man working furiously as Ata and Ricardo quietly returned to their ambulance to wait for the next call. Suddenly much calmer and quiet, the back of the van felt like an entirely different place.
Nicole got to work removing the bandages and a huge flap of skin fell covering the man’s eye. I had to turn away as the stitching began, I flicked my eyes back to the treatment periodically as I couldn’t really take it.
For my sound man Joe, not so much. Holding the mic on a long pole, Joe was covering the sound of the stitching but couldn’t keep his eyes on the procedure continuously dropping his boom into shot. Shouted at repeatedly, Joe’s hilarious squirms ruined a solid 70 per cent of everything shot. To be fair, I was fine, as I could turn away. If I had no choice but to watch an eyelid being stitched closed, I’d probably have been just as much of a mess.
Ata had explained to me that in the past, he himself was no stranger to drunken brawls. Pointing out his own set of scars across his face and body, Ata spoke of a past filled with drunken fights and constant close calls with serious danger. His first-hand understanding of the young men he continuously picked up didn’t make his past a hindrance, it in fact made him better placed to do his job.
The loud barks of ‘Relax Booti’ dragged me back to the trauma room as Nicole tended to bed after bed of drunk and bloody young men. Slumped on his chest, a man coved in deep slices to his back was being stitched up by Nicole. Every time the half-asleep patient roused himself to moan, she loudly told him off.
Growing up nearby, the ten months at the hospital had begun to wear on her. Her bedside manner had become short, sharp and full of tough love. Getting the job done and fast, Nicole hated the constant stream of violence she would see daily, especially as it was so close to home. ‘This is the most trauma I’ve seen, this is frontline stuff.’
Softening, Nicole explained how she used to have nightmares but now blocks what she witnesses out. The more staff I met, the more I heard versions of the same story. The tireless team spending their working hours patching up victims of violence had all found their own ways to deal with what they’d see. Nurses saw their own sons in the men they’d treat, while I was still overwhelmed with it all not quite knowing how I’d process the images now burnt into my retina.
It was Sunday, the last night of the shift for François. Running through the fully stacked trauma room, the patients filling the beds were all there for reasons that had become sadly usual. Pointing as he went, François listed two stab victims, a man with heart issues, an overdose and gunshot victim without even flinching.
A twenty-three-year-old stab victim had sixteen bloody wounds to the back after a mugging. He kicked and moaned during treatment but was happier to have survived and be alive than in pain. The man squeezed my hand as his chest was drained and the doctor repeated the procedure I had previously helped François with. The speedy procedure had saved the man from a collapsed lung. Once the bellows were over, the tears and gripping of my hand were followed with an unexpected and very macho ‘I love you, no homo.’
Between the nature of my surroundings and the occasional minutes where even the staff looked like they’d seen enough, there weren’t many moments of laughter that night. But in that silly break in all the seriousness, we all laughed and it was needed.
The night shift ended and Amy and François gave me a lift back to my hotel. Heading home as the sun came up, the quiet roads became busier the closer into town we got. Looking into the passing cars headed into work as we were leaving reminded me of the unreal nature of the junior doctors’ work day in comparison to that of the average commuter.
Believing neither him nor any of his work colleagues would survive a day in the township, François saw the majority of the community they served as no different, bar their resilience to endure. Believing the community shared the same values and intolerance for crime, he put their situation down to a lack of support from the police and government.
We’re there to kill everyone, rob everyone
Despite being so close to Khayelitsha, the city of Cape Town could have been a new country entirely. This was home to the doctors and a world-class tourist destination, but left me feeling uneasy. With the night’s activity still fresh in my mind, a walk around the affluent city made the infrequent black faces I passed stand out as anomalies.
Young black men just like me were earning six times less than their white counterparts. I was walking through what felt like a place overflowing with opportunity, yet the township on its doorstep had generations of people living in a world that had been left behind.
With my time in Khayelitsha nearly over, I knew I needed to confront the issue that continued to come up, but came with so much fear attached. Gangs ran the streets of the townships and, according to the doctors at the hospital, were responsible for a large part of the injuries they’d spend the nights patching up.
At the township’s busiest junction, a roadside cluster of stalls selling barbecued meats pumped smoke into the sky. The sun was setting quickly and that inner carnivore demanded I purchased a serving of beef for the team and myself. I talked to the twenty-one-year-old girl manning the grill. The sun was setting and she was scared of gangsters mugging her for the day’s take, so she made my order the last of the day. The vibrant and busy pocket of people would go dramatically silent the moment the sun had gone down.
Threatening the women selling food with knives and guns, the gangs would rob and steal while getting a free dinner but this would only ever happen in the dark. As dangerous as it felt, hearing from the men accused themselves felt like the only real way to truly understand their motivations and reasoning for such behaviour in the place they call home.
Five main gangs were responsible for the majority of crime seen in the township and the key reason for the continued bloodshed was a battle for control of the corners. Split by a long bridge, the township was divided into east and west territories. Conveniently carved up and easily claimed, the gangs fought for their own areas but aimed to be the biggest and most powerful. Local papers reported the usual entrance age for new members could be as young as fourteen.
The team made contact with the Vatos Locos, one of the most known and feared gangs in the area. I was due to meet them and told to wait at a staircase by the bridge.
I was on camera while my director collected shots of me waiting and the obvious trepidation I couldn’t hide. I had no idea what to expect. Would they be carrying weapons? How many would show? I didn’t even have the time to send myself into a panic as the Vatos arrived as if from nowhere, surprisingly punctual and eager to chat. A pack of men bounded toward me confidently introducing themselves, all carrying huge machetes as if it was the most natural thing in the world. I held eye contact and tried to focus on the people, not the rusty blades.
Wearing an electric green baseball cap and walking with a noticeable limp, Mark was one of the first to shake my hand. He was softly spoken but looked me dead in the eye in a way that demanded respect. My plan to keep it all about the eye contact was totally scuppered as a huge greeting from one guy caused his massive blade to catch my knuckle breaking the skin.
In a moment I was right back to noticing all of the weapons and the reality that I was surrounded by gang members who I probably should stay on the right side of. A new internal briefing was repeated and loudly inside my own head. ‘STAY ON THEIR GOOD SIDE REG, DO NOT COCK THIS ONE UP.’
As we spoke, it quickly emerged that Mark was their leader. He held no weapons but had a quiet confidence and was the most intense. As I felt the mood slowly relax, I began to look around and take in the detail. The men I’d just met had suddenly changed in appearance the more I looked at them. They were kids, all baby faced, but their faces were covered in tattoos and scars. All still teenagers, their leader Mark was only eighteen years old.
The gang members pointed towards the area on the other side of the bridge. The boys identified the small cluster of houses as home to their rival gang the Vuras. Calling the area ‘Ghostland’, Mark explained that when they ventured into their enemy’s territory, ‘We are like devil in hell.’ They had no remorse for anything they did while on the other side of the bridge. Mark was crystal clear, ‘We’re there to kill everyone, rob everyone.’
What sounded like the most cold-blooded attitude seemed to come from a place of twisted and bloody honour. The boys operated on a reactionary basis and justified their behaviour as retaliation for actions committed on their side of town by their enemies. ‘If you kill my brother and I see you walking on the road, I’ll never leave you. You must die.’ Retaliation was a huge driver for kids hoping to avenge the death of a loved one. As we spoke, the group of young men began to sound less like a gang and more like kids fighting for honour in the most violent and at times brutal of ways.
The conversation was abruptly interrupted as several members of the gang sprung up, spotting their rivals approaching on the bridge. Weapons were suddenly pulled and everything changed in an instant. Anything I had to say was suddenly a whole lot less interesting as the group of teenagers ran at their enemies. The shouting gangs kept some distance between them, and cars stopped as rocks were thrown and machetes were waved.
The rival Vuras gang suddenly began to swell in size causing the Vatos to retreat. It felt as if things could spill over into something far more serious at any moment but, as it was, the fight happening in front of me was a tad embarrassing. What was unfolding was two groups of shouting teenagers throwing rocks. Yes, they were all armed with knives but for whatever reason, no one was getting close enough to cause any real damage.
Pulling the handbrake for a second, this isn’t me making light of an awful situation. These young men were defending their homes and what they saw as the honour of their friends who’d lost their lives. For them, this was a war. Yes, in that moment it was thirty people throwing rocks on a bridge, but later that night it could be one on one with knives in a dark alleyway.
Stood at a distance, I was able to remain calm while watching the rocks fly. Then out of nowhere, everything jumped up a gear. One of the Vuras pulled what looked like a gun from a blue plastic bag and the Vatos began to run. My nonplussed demeanour went out the window as I made for our nearby crew car and we screeched away as fast as we could.
In a matter of seconds, the kids throwing stones had become men with guns and I wasn’t sticking around to find out who might win.
Revenge … It’s the only thing I think about
They were so young with so little remorse and it was scary. Luckily, the fight had ended with nobody seriously injured, so Mark asked to finish the conversation and I agreed. I met Mark and the Vatos less than an hour later as they walked us through their corner of the township. As we made our way through the streets, kids ran at the boys cheering and waving. Women stopped and patted them on the backs as they passed.
To their neighbours, the Vatos were heroes and I couldn’t understand why. Mark beamed proudly. ‘Everyone around here knows us, because we protect them, and the things we’ve done to save them.’ Idolised by everyone, the teenage gang were celebrities and they knew it.
Mark wanted us all off the streets as the rival gang had threatened to retaliate in Vatos territory. I followed the boys along a narrow walkway into a small shack as Mark continued to educate me on their world and just how much he’d been through, while cradling a small knife.
With some sort of reprisal imminent, Mark advised me to leave as it wasn’t safe for me in the township. I challenged him about his own safety but Mark saw his wellbeing and future as out of his own hands. With no fear of death, the boys saw themselves as soldiers, but the more we spoke, the less convinced I became. Their age started to show and the idea of not backing down in front of the pack was clear. They were scared, just like everyone else, and through a combination of factors out of their control they’d ended up on the frontline tackling the violent end of the darkest of circumstances.
Stripping off his shirt, Mark showed me his tattoos and scars. He had more stab wounds than ink as a victim of twenty-eight stabbings. The severed nerves in his back caused him to limp, but he saw it as part of his journey. He had several scars around his heart as he’d been stabbed in the same area time and again. Believing he’d survived for one reason, Mark looked right into me and said, ‘To get my revenge … It’s the only thing I think about.’
My last night saw me back in the ambulance with Ata. We picked up a young woman in the first stages of labour who’d collapsed on the side of the road. As the ambulance pulled in, I noticed we’d arrived at a different section of the hospital. It was the first time I’d seen the maternity ward. The mood was calm and Ata was in good spirits, laughing and joking as he wrapped up his shift for the night.
Standing in the maternity ward, surrounded by newborn babies, it felt like the first time in days I’d seen anything positive and life-affirming in Khayelitsha. It was a reminder of the beauty that existed in a township that seemed more attuned to pain, fear, violence and death.