The victims caught in the crossfire in Cape Town

The distraught father is on the narrow single bed and points to two small ball holes in the wall of his house.

This is striking proof of a moment that has always broken the life of his family.

Devon Africa’s son, four, Davin, was shot in February, caught in the cross fire of a shooting between criminals.

He was the victim of the gang war which tormented the Cape Flats, the cantons around the Cape – an apartheid heritage, when the non -white population was far from the center of the rich city on the subressouries.

“It’s the ball hole here,” he said. “This is where he slept.”

The family had already endured an unspeakable horror.

Davin’s older sister, Kelly Amber, was killed two years earlier, also shot while competitors from each other. She was 12 years old.

Now Devon and his wife, Undean, are only their youngest daughter.

“She asks me:” Where is my brother? “,” Said Untean. “So I told him that he was with Jesus in Dad’s heart and in my heart.”

These murders took place in an area known as Wesbank, but many other families in the Cape Flats region in the broad sense had to undergo similar nightmares, despite the increased assurances of increased patrols.

The figures tell a horrible story. The western province of the Cape – in which the Flats Cape Sits – constantly sees the overwhelming majority of the gangs linked to the gangs in South Africa, according to the police.

Officially, this is a police priority for the government. President Cyril Ramaphosa created a special unit to combat the violence of gangs in 2018, he also briefly deployed the army in the region the following year, but the problem persisted and the murders continued.

“There is a whole story and generations of people who were born in these gangs,” said Gareth Newham, head of the Private and Violence Prevention Program at the Johannesburg Safety Studies Institute.

“”[They] flourish in areas which have been largely neglected or underdeveloped by the state. The gangs provide a form of social structure which really provides services to communities that the State does not do. They provide food for houses. Money for electricity. Money for transport or funeral. These gangs even pay for tuition fees. “”

They are anchored in the community and “that is why it is so difficult for the police to approach them … This means that they can use the houses of non-Gangs members to store drugs and store weapons”.

But there are people who try to solve the problem.

Fifteen kilometers (nine miles) of Wesbank is Hanover Park where Pastor Craven Engel is stuck on his mobile phone almost all day, every day in his quest for peace.

His mission is to mediate in gang conflicts to arrest this violence and murders, fueled by lucrative drug trade. He and his team try to follow a basic formula: detection, interruption and change of mind.

“Hanover Park doesn’t really have any savings to say,” said Pastor Engel. “Most of the economy is emerging from drug culture. This is the greatest economy.”

Pastor Engel says that the impact of apartheid on the region cannot be overlooked but that generational trauma cannot manifest itself as a drug addiction and then a family break.

“The substance [drug] Creates unemployment, the substance creates a flight, it creates gang fights because of the lawn. Thus, the substance is found in the midst of so many atrocities in the community, “explains Pastor Engel, who estimates that around 70% of local children live with a kind of dependence.

This community of approximately 50,000 people must undergo shots and stabs almost daily. And it is often young people who make murder and are killed.

“It is unlikely that the police ‘approach solves the problem because you could stop people to be gang members, to have firearms and for shots and murders. They will go to prison, but then they will be replaced by younger members. And that creates a whole other set of problems. They are more likely to fight in the territory and the Turf,” said Mr. Newham.

“How is a child fired seven times in his head or three times behind his back? How did a wandering ball struck a child?” Ask Pastor Engel.

On his phone, he calls community leaders and gang pivots, constantly cajoling to try to leave violence. When BBC Africa Eye visits him, he tries to negotiate a ceasefire between two gangs at war-and manages to reach the imprisoned chief of one of them.

“If I want something to happen, it still happens. Do you understand pastor?” The gang boss screams all over the line. “But I can tell you one thing. I am a guy who likes to counter if I am on fire.”

Threats. Even behind bars.

But Pastor Engel is relentless. He is very visible in his community, whether at the home of a parishioner or before his large and strong congregation in the pulpit on a Sunday.

“I think what makes him very, very terrible now is that there are more children involved in the gangs, because the gangs recruit between eight to 15 years,” he said.

The program he leads used to obtaining government money, but it dried up. To cut the supply lines and protect the innocent, he will meet the victims and the authors anywhere and at any time.

He also sends rehabilitated gang members to negotiate directly with war factions. Those who have lived a life on the verge of death know how essential it is to push for peace instead.

Glenn Hans is one of those people. He meets rival gangs to convince them to honor a ceasefire. “I was also in this match. As long as you decide that you want to be a better person. That’s it,” he said to a group of gang members.

We have a frightening answer: “The more we kill, the more we seize in the field and the more we have in the field, the more we can build. So, for me to talk about peace – I cannot make this decision because it is not my decision to ensure peace.”

The ceasefire which is ultimately agreed only lasts a few days, broken by the murder of two people in a car shooting.

But some at the heart of the conflict have enough.

Fernando – or Nando – Johnston is in a gang called The Mongrels, and he wants to try to find a way out with the help of Pastor Engel.

The pastor describes Mr. Johnston as being young and “born in the gang” since his whole family was involved.

“In this game, there are only two options – it’s either you go to prison or you die,” said Johnston.

“I really want to change direction and I think there is always a way. This is the reason why I approached the pastor – to ask him if there is a plan or a way to take me.”

He will join a six to 12 -week rehabilitation program managed by the pastor and financed by charity donations designed to ensure that people in drugs and work.

“The fact is that you can now start building again,” said Pastor Engel. “You can find yourself a job and make money for yourself. So you will no longer have to jostle and recover here.”

“I am ready to leave, pastor,” said Johnston, ready to leave his battered community and marked in search of a new path.

The closest to him gathered to wish him good luck. His mother, Angeline April, retains tears, desperate that, this time, her son will choose life. “Please simply take advantage of this opportunity, Nando,” she said.

“Yes mom, I always get the best party in a situation.”

But it was never easy.

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

“But because he was a gangster, the children also got involved in gangsterism despite that I constantly warn them. It was not easy to raise four boys per myself, you know. I always encourage him to make a change, because I love him very much.”

And so far, everything is fine for Mr. Johnston. Two weeks after the start of the program, he’s still there.

“Nando stabilizes. He is in a work program. He is busy seeing his family, seeing his children. He made a visit to the house yesterday. We let him go wild and he returned and tested clear without drugs in his system,” explains Pastor Engel.

Hope is a rare commodity here, but it sometimes springs through the meshes of the net in the streets that have seen so many trauma.

However, all the streets. Very little hope is in Devon Africa and at the house of Undean Koopman, which is in the middle of a battlefield.

The cycle of murders and reprisals that struck the areas that fight on the edges of this beautiful South African city are overwhelming for many of those who have trouble surviving.

And those captured in the middle must often make impossible choices.

“Community members, even if they are opposed to gangs, are not necessarily pro-political for two reasons,” said Newham.

“The first is that they simply do not know that the police will really come if it is called. And if they call the police, they do not know if the police are corrupt. People do not understand the scale of the challenge in South Africa.”

Feelings reflected by craftsmen on the fronts of this war. “No one will come from anywhere to help us or save us. Not from abroad. Not from our local government. No one will come with a magic wand to heal the Flats Cape,” said Pastor Engel.

“As individuals, we must be so determined to strengthen resilience, to create hope for our people and to grow. Because politics has clearly failed us.”