In Delft, kids as young as nine are being drawn into gang life and forced to steal and turn over their riches to underworld bosses. These kids are hardly tall enough to see over a car bonnet.
The youths who call themselves the Terrible Hooker Boys are now swarming delivery vehicles, tearing open doors, and stealing parcels in a matter of seconds as part of a rapidly spreading new fad.
They are even stripping The Hague’s Centre for Community Development and turning it into their “gang den” since they are so blatant.
At least six youngsters have been shot in the Mother City in the last week due to a wave of gang violence. There have been four fatalities.
IOL visited Delft this week to see what this Cape Flats suburb is up against.
Driving down Delft Main Road, the neglect is impossible to miss.
The Centre for Community Development is in a sorry state — no windows, graffiti and gang names sprayed across the walls, and the roof, or what is left of it, pocked with holes and falling apart.
Delft has long been one of the most dangerous areas on the Cape Flats, battling high gang activity, drug markets, violent crime and overcrowded informal settlements.
In recent years, Delft has consistently appeared in police statistics as one of the top stations for murders and attempted murders.
Between July and September this year, the Delft police station was one of four police stations in Cape Town that recorded the highest number of contact crimes in SA, according to acting police minister Firoz Cachalia.
Ward 13 councillor Michelle Adonis said things were now “out of hand”, with gangs running amok.
“There’s definitely a gang–citizen problem here within the Delft area,” she said.
“And the scary part is, the group members are as young as nine years old.
“Those kids, whenever there is a truck, they jump on the truck, they open it up, they take out the stuff and they run.
“Then you will see the bigger guys that are operating with them … that is the scary part.”
Adonis said many of the children have already dropped out of school, with little parental supervision and no structured activities keeping them off the streets.
She said incidents of theft and robbery along major routes such as Silver Sand Road have become routine, with criminals grabbing cellphones and targeting passing vehicles
While the motive behind the children’s involvement remains unclear, Adonis believes the looted goods are often handed over to older gangsters.
“It might be that they give it to the bigger ones who are the leaders,” she said.
“Or their brothers, as they call them.”
One recent tragedy paints a picture of the deadly danger these children are exposed to.
“We had a gruesome death that happened on this main road,” she said.
“One of those kids fell from the truck trying to open it. The door swung open, he fell, and then another car drove over.
“It stopped for a while, and then they started again.”