The victims were caught in cross-fire in Cape Town

The disturbing father pointed to two small bullets holes in a narrow, single bed and house wall.

This is the hard evidence of a moment that the family’s life is shaking eternal.

Davon’s four-year-old son of Africa Davin was dead in February, and was caught in the intersection of a single shot among criminals.

Cape apartments, Cape Town’s camps – a legacy of separate cities, an inherited inherited from the center of the non-white population, which was transferred to the unmantial city center.

“This is a bullet hole here,” he says. “This is where it is sleeping.”

The family had already tolerable terrifying.

Davin’s older sister Kelly Kober, was killed two years ago, hit each other as an opponent. He was 12 years old.

Now Devon and his wife, the YEYEE, only the youngest daughter was left.

“He asks me: ‘Where is my brother?'” He said. “Therefore, I told Jesus in Jesus’ heart and in my heart.”

These crimes occurred in an area known as WESBANK, but many other families among the apartments of more wider hoods have tolerate similar nightmares, although the growing patrol police are guaranteed.

Numbers tell a terrible story. West Keypvay province – Cape apartments seated – according to the police, see a great majority of crimes related to gang in South Africa.

Officially, this is a police priority for the government. President Cyril Ramaphosa has established a special unit to combat the bunch of bunches in 2018, and the army briefly placed the region in a short place, but the problem continued and the killings continued.

Gareth Newham, head of the Justice and Violence Prevention Program in the Institute of Security Research in Johannesburg, “There are all of these groups.”

“(They) flourish in areas indifferent or developed by the state.

They are so difficult to solve them to society and “so the police are so difficult … that drugs can use poor members to maintain drugs and weapons.”

But there are people trying to resolve the issue.

Wesbank is fifteen kilometers away (nine miles), Pastor Craven Engel is a Hanover Park, which is attached to a mobile phone every day when looking for peace.

His task is to mediate the fuel of profitable trading in drugs to prevent this violence and crimes. He and the team tries to follow a basic formula: detection, break and variable mentions.

“Hanover Park doesn’t really have an economy,” says Pastor Engel. “Most of the economy comes out of drug culture. It is the largest economy.”

Pastor Engel says that apartheid’s influence cannot be deprived of the area, but generation trauma can not be trauma – drugs and then not a violation of the family.

“Item (medicine) creates unemployment, creates the item and creates battles because of the lawns. Thus, the substance sits in the middle of the atrocities,” who estimates that about 70% of the local children live with a kind of dependence.

This community of 50,000 people should endure almost daily shooting and knives. And are often killed and killed.

“The police approach is unlikely to solve the problem, because people will be able to be network members, weapons and tremors and murders.

“How is a child shot three times in the top of the beginning or three times in his back? How did a little bullet hit a child?” Pastor asks Engel.

On his phone, he calls for community leaders and gang kingpins, constantly visiting and leaving violence. While visiting the BBC African eye, the two-war groups are able to reach a ceasefire and reach the arrested leader of one of them.

“If I want something to happen, it’s still happening. Do you understand the pastor?” Network bosses down the line. “But I can say something to you. I’m a guy who loves to reflect if I’m on fire.”

Threats. Even from the back of the bars.

But Pastor Engel is ruthless. In a parishioner’s house or on a Sunday, in the pulpit, the house of a large and loud community seems very much in his society.

“I think that the gangs are horrific in the networks between eight and 15 years old, because the gangs are involved between eight and 15 years of age,” he says.

The government used to get money, but was dried. Sacrifices and sinners will meet everywhere and anytime to cut off supply lines and protect innocence.

It is also sent to negotiations with direct warfare of the rehabilitated groups. Those who live a life on the edge of death are knowing how important it is for peace.

Glenn is a man of such a person. He meets opponent groups to convince them to honor ceasefire. “I was in this game. As long as you want to be a better person. This explains a group of group members.

We kill again, the more we killed, so much, and there are so many places, so much, so much that I can’t make this decision so that I will talk about peace. “

The ceasefire lasts for two days, the two days were shaken by the killing of two people.

However, some of the conflict were sufficient.

Fernando – or Nando – Johnston is in a bunch named Mongrels and wants to try and find a way out with the help of Pastor Engel.

Pastor describes Mr. Johnston and the “born” because of the entire family of Mr. Johnston’s family.

“There are only two options in this game – or goes into the trick or die, or die,” Mr. Johnston.

“I really want to change the direction and I believe there is always a way. That’s why I’m close to pastor – to ask if a plan or road.”

Pastor will join a six-12-week rehabilitation program financed by philanthropic donations that are fleeing and made to drugs and employment.

“Work can start to restruct yourself now,” said Pastor Engel says to him. “You will be able to get yourself a job and make money for yourself. Then you should hurry around once again and you should be a grass.”

“I’m ready to go

The closest to him gathered to wish him well. His mother, Angeline holds back the tears, hopelessly, this time will choose the life of his son. “Please do the best of this opportunity, Nando says.

“Yes mummy, I always do the best of a situation.”

But it has never been easier.

“Fernando’s father was a gangster, but the father of my other children was a gentleman,” said Mr. Johnston’s mother.

“But because of a gangster, the children were constantly warning them, the children were constantly winged. I love him very much because I love him so much I love him so much I love it

So good for Mr. Johnston. From starting with the program for two weeks, he still has.

“Nando is stabilized. He is in a business program. He is busy to see his family. Yesterday did a home visit.

Hope is a rare commodity here, but sometimes it is sometimes spring from cracks on the streets.

Though not all the streets. Devonian Africa and Ledean Koopman sitting in the middle of the battlefield is very little hope.

The period of killing and revenge in the areas fighting in the edges of this beautiful city of South Africa exceeds most of those who struggle to live.

And those detained in the middle often have to make an impossible choice.

“Although community members are different from the gangs, the police are not ready for two reasons,” Mr. Newham.

“Someone do not know that the police would actually come. If police officers are corrupt, there are no imagination. People do not understand the scale of the problem in South Africa.”

The feelings reflected by the peacekeepers in the front of this war. “No one will come from anywhere to help us or save us. Not from our local government. No one intends to come with a magical stick to treat the lid apartments,” said Pastor Engel.

“We must be so determined to build our people, to create hope and grow our people. Politics has openly failed.”