Wentworth becomes a war zone again

THE shots rang out soon after 1pm on Saturday last week, and many of us ran out of the barracks – blocks of flats next to the Engen refinery – to find yet another teenage corpse: Zukz MacDonald. He joined Tersia Heslop, Roman van Schalkwyk and Sebastian Roskruge as some of this year’s victims of Wentworth violence.

A growing epidemic of drug usage and gangs is causing the death of too many of our youngsters. Violence is raging out of control. Nightclubs seem to be the main site, and gangs the main source.

With a population of 27 000 residents and a 40% unemployment rate, Wentworth is desperate. The area was designated as coloured during apartheid-era racial planning.

We catch the bulk of pollution emitted in the south Durban industrial basin. Factories line Wentworth’s northern, western and eastern perimeters. The huge oil refinery, mockingly called the ship that never sails, is a constant threat, with leaking pipes, toxic gas emissions and periodic infernos.

Our location and working-class or poor status give Wentworth the reputation of a difficult community. Environmental pollution, drug infestation and an epidemic of gangsterism plagued the area during the 1980s-1990s, and we are now suffering a rebirth of all three.

A huge increase in oil refining is expected, thanks to the planned R50 billion pipeline that will carry petrol to Gauteng. But affected
communities object that the path chosen reeks of environmental racism.

Pattern
As for gangs, the pattern is familiar. “We done the time, they done the crime,” says a rueful Peter Usher, who 25 years ago was a member of the local Wentworth Trucks gang. He and four others were sentenced collectively to 79 years for the murder of a crippled member of the rival Woodstock Vultures gang.

To this day the Trucks passionately proclaim their innocence and seek redress in the new political dispensation.

Younger gang members seem to carry the legacy of the 1980s and quite bluntly live for revenge. So the cycle of violence, drug usage and prostitution has been kickstarted, reminding residents of the early 1980s when gangs were rife and people were afraid to walk the streets at night.

It is here that I was born and raised by my grandmother in a bleak, dilapidated council housing unit. “The ’80s; it was like a war zone,” she tells me.
“After five in the afternoon, violence erupted. In the morning it was quiet, except for mothers who were crying, week in and week out, standing in front of open graves.”

For decades that was the story of Wentworth – a small community under siege while gangsters openly conducted turf wars in the streets. About the year 1999 members of the community rose up and changed that.

For the past eight years it seemed as if the peace was holding, but then the nightclubs scrambled back into town.

A decade ago, the late Catholic priest Father Cyril Carey, the prominent environmental activist Des D’Sa and many others dedicated their services to the community. They arranged peace negotiations with gang members and the closure of places which fostered violence. But it now seems that the peace they worked so hard for is over.

D’Sa himself nearly lost his life in January, in a petrol bomb attack on his family’s own small council flat.

Who should we blame? And who has the power to make a difference here?

The situation in Wentworth got out of hand when nightclubs were allowed back into the area by city manager Michael Sutcliffe.

Violence broke out seriously at one of the clubs a year ago, when six murders were traced to the nightclub within a month, according to D’Sa. Last month there were five murders and a number of other shootings and stabbings.

Abuse
According to D’Sa the level of drug abuse was very high, even in primary schools.

“No school is untouched. This is why the gangs have sprung up, to control turf around these sites,” he said. D’Sa believes that organised crime has migrated from the Point and West Street region to Wentworth because of changes to liquor licensing regulations.

Representing the Wentworth Development Forum, he sent Sutcliffe appeal after appeal but to no avail. Last week he read that the city manager would crack down on liquor licences, but this is yet to happen in Wentworth. Sutcliffe was quoted in the media as saying: “Regulation of liquor licences should be dealt
with firmly.”

The problem, according to D’Sa, was that a clean-up in the city centre meant that “all the rubbish is transferred to our area”.

“The cops cannot handle it, even if they are straight. The senior police are scared of these gangs,” D’Sa said.

Rape and HIV incidence are rising rapidly. Kids are high on drugs and are more promiscuous. There are unlicensed firearms everywhere.