Life has not been as quiet as the media and police have been reporting in Manenberg, says a mother of three living in a small flat overlooking Manenberg Avenue. Her home has been dangerously close to the impromptu battlefield that erupted this Easter weekend.

“These guys … have no respect for anyone, they don’t care that there are people on their way to work, or children on their way to school when they start their fighting,” said Yumna Adriaanse* when VOC  News visited her Tuesday, after fighting between the Americans and Hard Livings gangs had calmed down.

Her three daughters, she says, all attend school in areas outside of Manenberg and its surround, for the sole purpose that they cannot be influenced, or harmed by, the gangsterism and crime that often affects young men and women on the Cape Flats.

“All three of them go to schools outside, but even then it’s not easy because our friends who run a service to take them to school have to be wary when they drive into the area. More often than not we have to call them to warn them, there’s shooting at the circle [into the avenue] or close to the church.

It’s scary to think we have to live like that, so many times I’ve told my children we’ll get boxes and move, I don’t know where but anything is better than here when they fight.”

Two years ago, in another street war between the Americans and HLs, Adriaanse was injured just outside her own home when a bullet pierced her chest and shot through her lungs.

“Luckily the one responsible for that was arrested and he was sentenced, a lengthy one, for attempted murder,” she says, satisfied.

Her high-school going daughter Laila explains she has no friends in the area, by her own volition, as she does not want to be associated with any gang by the block she lives on when travelling to other areas within Manenberg.

“It hasn’t happened to me yet, but I’ve heard of people asked what block or court they live in, and if it’s a court that say the Americans know is controlled by Hard Livings or another rival gang they’d get beat up or robbed,” Laila said.

Adriaanse said the worst times, for her, are when she and her six year old daughter are alone at home when gun shots go off.

“Sometimes, and you can see the marks on the burglar bar,” she points out where she says bullets have ricocheted off the piped metal bars, “the shots go off and all I can do is tell my little one to stay down on the ground while we wait for the shooting to pass, even if we can only hear it in the distance.” VOC