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I have such respect for this journalist. He is a real gentleman and am impressed.

Carteblanche constantly reminds me why I enrolled to study law. Even in these long nights I know one day I will help young people who go through things like this.👌🏾❤

I'm born and raised on the flats. As a 40 year old man. I still cry every time I see the kids and mom, grandmas in these documentaries. It's like I see my own family. Soul wrenching stuff.

I used to be a social worker working in Lavender Hill and Hanover Park. The conditions there were and still are really terrible and dangerous. I used to be stressed every day - dealing with poverty, gangsterism, domestic violence and abuse even animal abuse became too much for me. Life is worth nothing there I'm glad I got out of that environment.

My brother & I are proof of surviving those living conditions 50yrs ago, vicious killings, pangas, knives, gang rapes, drugs etc were the norm then. Guns are the new norm every day now, but the basics still apply. Parents should help to get their kids out of that environment to save them. PTSD catches up later in many forms in later life unfortunately. Save ur kids please. All the best.

This is so heartbreaking. It sad to see young people go through this.

My heart bleeds for these children. You have to be so morally bankrupt to initiate a child into this. You have to be someone who's so far detached from any sense of humanity to do this. There was no voice, no conscious, nothing that said we are taking it to far.

My cousin died 2 months back. He was black though. He was arrested and after his release denounced the gang life. I got a call he’d been killed in Cape Town and by people he knew because he was called outside by someone he knew and had a “friendship” with. That person was never identified but the neighbours said when he was called out he approached them happily and they just shot him and ran. He had called me while in prison asking to come stay with me, I refused because he had gone in to deep with the gang life and wanted no part of it. He chose his fate, I wasn’t going to endanger my life because his past was chasing him. I have a 7 year old to provide for. He wasted his 21 years of life. I’m not wasting my 29.

This breaks my heart so much. Growing up as a colored South African is hard and when you grow up your back is sometimes up against a wall of challenges that seem insurmountable at times

Problem starts with adults, single parents , no responsibility. Don’t have kids if you can’t take care of them!

thanks for doing this story with compassion. Its sad that our Government has nothing in place to break this cycle of abuse and violence in the Cape Flats.

It's so true, you don't stab your social worker without having some serious anger issues.

We are loosing another generation through drugs, gangsterism 😢😢😢😢

Thank you Govan Whittles and your team at Carte Blanche. My mom worked for 30 years there with CAFDA Grassy Park, Lavender Hill area. She lost a colleague ... shot. He was a social worker.

South Africa needs gang laws like in other countries. It must be illegal to recruit children in a gang . A database of all street gangs and there bosses must be developed

🎉🎉🎉 Dankie Govan, telling the Brown man story! We need help. 😢❤

Thanks for this piece Govan 🙏 Breities is proud of you.

SAPS needs to be completely overhauled. And gangsterism needs to be completely outlawed as has been the case in El Salvador. By cracking down hard, the current generation will be lost, but all of the next generations will be free and the Cape Flats can start to prosper.

Shame, you can see this hits Govan harder than a lot of the other stuff does

The so called GNU or coalition should deal with this issue once and for all!

I love this channel I am mainly watching it to educate myself especially my communication skills

But if Gayton Mckenzie highlights this and avocading for a plan of action, people call him an ex convict.

Sadly these kids are killing little ones. It's a really hard one. Do they need psychological help or prison? I hope the new government is able to change these slum areas to liveable areas where children have better opportunities. I'm sure poverty and boredom play a big role.

Tnx for posting this

Children need their fathers in the home ( structure)

Problem starts with Government not giving back proper services, dignity and respect to community instead of empty promises

The thing is these kids are indoctrinated by social media and influencers. Children have no concept of the danger and they are utilised to the max. Although they kick up against their parents, teachers, police. Their need to be tough, looked up to, and their admiration for the big talk, and the power of a gun is so very hard to avoid when it’s in your face 24/7. In suburbs where there is no gang warfare, there are groups of gangs who meet at shopping centres, shoplift, bully other kids, and generally control an environment subversively. Everyone is so caught up looking at their phones they’re not aware of what’s happening around them. For kids in the Cape flats - going to juvenile detention is the worst thing that can happen. They come out with a need to be tougher and better than the worst, with new skills in cruelty and illegal dealings. How do you clean a crime haven up? I wish I had the answer.

This is a systemic issue, created by men. Those who see the light is the ones who survive and outgrow this system. Hard Truth.

Lord be with these kids. Protect the ones who do not want to join and open the eyes of the ones already in too deep in Jesus name🙏

this makes me so sad,where is his parents this child need lotsa love ,

Why must our people suffer like this😢😢

How do we help? How can we help? Children deserve a life, a real life of safety, security with a future to look forward to in awe of the possibilities they can create. We must put an end to this! I don't care about the colour of any community, I simply care about the people of my country.

It all starts with the fathers...

When I was 14-16 I just couldn’t understand how people my age became gangsters. It’s obviously so hard to sympathise with people who’s shoes you can’t be in & that’s probably the toughest disconnect between us and them. When you’re in the same living conditions but a different mindset it becomes even harder to understand how these minds work.

That poor young lad Deurico and his Mum. Heartbreaking

Under age kids shouldn’t recruited to gangs same as it’s illegal for under age kids to drink alcohol or gamble or employed. DA is doing well in cape town but gangs are left unchecked and regulated. DA is the problem in cape flats that’s why is being voted because gangs know that DA will do nothing with gangs.

What Sad times we live in😢😢😢😢

How can we help these kids? How can we help these families? For starters, these gangs need to be removed from these communities

Can you please upload full episodes

I grew up in lavender hill ,we were taught to steal ,deal & k...ll just to fit in with what we thought was real

Very sad ❤

This just made my day so sour. How long have these gangs been operating for?

It's a vicious cycle.. it's truly sad!

I actually don't even know what to say about this, it's a very sad situation.😢

So SAD

They must be charged and sentenced as adults.

Western Cape DA ruling party knows welk about this gang and drugs in the township but they dint have any tactics to stop it

This piece was very personal to the team😢😢😢.... I look at this long standing problem and wonder how the amazing DA doesn't seem to make any serious progress. And now, they shut out important voices in the so called GNU which might have helped fix these issues...

This is so sad that gangsters can rule towns like this and nobody can stop them

heart breaking for real, i would like to know from the people who were able to escape this reality is what would be the solution to this?

Such communication have adults who are using drugs and drinking alcohol. Families are dysfunctional

😢😢😢

😭😭😭😭 stabbed 57x this is sad y don't the President send soldiers to restore order

Frightening and shocking I would never visit there that's for sure 😮

why don't you show a DA Mayer that suppose to make life better for that community?

I come from Moray Court opposite the Terminus and went to Blomvlei Primary and the Our Lady of the Rosary Church. What they are talking about now is the same things we went through 45 years ago. It's really sad to see that nothing has changed there. One would think that those who had to live through gang violence and apartheid would want better for their kids.

The problem starts with parents who never wanted to be parents

Fatherlessness. 😭

They are, too a large extent, severely neglected children.

This is DEFINITELY not a place to bring up children. I don't understand why people still make babies in poor, violent, hopeless communities like these. Can someone please make me understand why people still make babies in such communities.

How do you reach 60 years without bullet wounds in Cape flats? Looks like the average lifespan is very low shame

Great

How come it's always previously disadvantaged people....

Does anyone think that if alternatives was offered and communities like this was was developed these kids would have chosen the gang life start with the core of the problem ,we are not gangsters we have been abandoned ,abused, targeted from the beginning because the blood of the true custodians of this land runs through our veins , point !

😢

This country has failed in so many ways

Sports grass roots level!!!!!!! Where's the money for our children's sports grounds, teachers etc... Social ills needs an outlet, and The answer is sports!!!!!

I work in these places, but itsnt bad like the media tells us.

Young women are pregnant, living off social grant , no ambition to complete high school and better their circumstance, community and parents are to blamed what happening there

😥😥😥😥

give our laaities more options and opportunities to heal all this .

PA boys

That one my homie, breities and shows no fear. 😅😅😅

As a white man, I will admit that colored people are the most marginalized group in South Africa

The adults in those neighbourhoods are to blame for the downfall on their children. They can easily take down the gang bosses if they stand together as a community, but instead nothing is done and their children get driven into these gangs, and the cycle repeats over and over, generation after generation.

This is said

Some of our Coloured brothers fights wars abroad..like the 1 of Libya.. Government say nothing..

Build the army and send them in.

If there was a political will this could be minimized.

Ntho tse etsahalang lefatsheng,,ekae DA,,look DA doesn't care about black people, why they don't stop this,,including useless ANC

That stats are true in prison by 25 years or dead by 25years sad reality in cape flats

A result of a failed and biased ANC of 30 years

Why

I think cloured have a problem with blood because mix masala problems always

NP…DA.

Child soldiers???!!! No!!! Criminals!!!!

😢😢😢😢😢😢🌍🇿🇦😭😭😭

This is because of so much youth unemployment. Sort out jobs for the youth and this won't happen.

How I thought you were investigating the school children being recruited to go to Israel from Cape town

It always the best run province what a joke

FAKE THUMBNAIL

ANC government

All this in the best run city in South Africa?

#wideawakepodcast @wideawakepodcast