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

This is a proof of a moment that broke his family’s life forever.

Dewon Africa’s four-year-old son Davin was shot dead in February, caught in a shoot-out crossfire among criminals.

He was a victim of the gang war that affected a heritage of township-rabids around Cape Flats, Cape Town, when the non-white population was forcibly transferred from the center of the rich city to the out-discounted out-discounted outspoints.

“This is a bullet hole here,” they say. “This is where he slept.”

The family had already tolerated the untouchable horror.

Dewin’s elder sister, Kelly Amber, was killed two years ago, as well as the rivals were shot at each other. She was 12 years old.

Now Devon and his wife, Unden, are only his youngest daughter.

“She asks me: ‘Where is my brother?” “Unee says.” So I told him that he is in Daddy’s heart and in my heart with Jesus. “

These murders took place in an area known as Wesbank, but many other families in the broad cape flats region had to bear the same nightmare, despite the assurance by the police of the increased patrolling.

The number tells a terrible story. Western Cape Province – in which cape flats sit – according to police, in South Africa continuously sees the overwhelming majority of gang -related murders.

Officially, this is a policing priority for the government. President Cyril Ramfosa established a special unit in 2018 to counter the gang violence, he also briefly deployed the army in the next year’s area, but the problem remains, and the murders continue.

“There are a complete history and generations of people born in these gangs,” says Gareth Newham, head of the Justice and Violence Prevention Program at the Institute for Security Studies in Johannesburg.

,[They] They thrive in areas that have become largely neglected or underdeveloped by the state. The gangs provide a form of social structure that actually provides services to communities that do not state. They provide food for homes. Money for electricity. Money for transport or funeral. These gangs also pay school fees. ,

They are inherent in the community and that is why it is difficult for the police to deal with them … it means that they can use the houses of non-gang members to store drugs and weapons “.

But people are trying to deal with this issue.

Fifteen kilometers (nine miles) from Wesbank is Hanover Park, where the pastor Craven Angel is glued to his mobile phone almost all day, looking for peace every day.

Their mission is to mediate the gang’s struggles to prevent this violence and killings, which is fuel by attractive trade in drugs. She and his team tries to follow a basic formula: finding, interruptions and changing mindset.

“Hanover Park has not really an economy to speak,” says Pastor Engel. “The wholesale drug of the economy comes out of the culture. This is the largest economy.”

Pastor Engel says that the effects of apartheid on the region cannot be ignored, but neither generational trauma – drug addiction and then can appear as a family breakdown.

“Substance [drug] Unemployment creates, matter makes robbery, it makes gang fights due to turf. Therefore, the matter sits in the midst of so many atrocities within the community, “Pastor Angel says that approximately 70% of local children are living with some kind of addiction.

This community of about 50,000 people has to have almost daily firing and stabbing. And it is often young people who are killing and being killed.

“The policing approach is unlikely to solve the problem alone because you can arrest people for gang members, guns and firing and murders. They will go to jail, but then they are replaced by young members.

“How does a child shoot a stray bullet in his head seven times or three times in his back? How does a stray bullet kill a child?” Pastor asks Angel.

On his phone, he calls community leaders and gang kingpins, to try continuously and to stop violence. When the BBC came to Africa, he is trying to broker a ceasefire between the two fighting gangs – and one of them manages to reach the prison leader.

“If I want to do something then it still happens. Do you understand the pastor?” The gang shouts from the boss line. “But I can tell you one thing. I am a boy who likes to counter when he gets into fire.”

Threat. Even behind bars.

But Pastor Engel is tireless. He is highly visible in his community, whether it is in a parician’s house or on Sunday in Pulpit and loudly before the congregation.

He says, “I think that makes it very, very terrible, now the gang now involves more children, as the gangs are recruiting between eight and 15 years of age.”

The program he runs receives government money, but it has dried up. To cut the supply lines and protect the innocents, he will meet the victims and criminals anywhere and at any time.

He also sends rehabilitation gang members to interact directly with warning groups. Those who lived a life on the edge of death, know how important it is to push for peace instead.

Glenn Hans is such a person. He is meeting rival gangs to explain them to respect a ceasefire. “I was also in this game. As long as you make a decision that you want to be a better person. It is all,” he tells a group of gang members.

One has a chilling reaction: “The more we kill, the more land we seize and the more land we have, the more we can build. Therefore, to speak about peace for me – I cannot decide this because it is not my decision to ensure peace.”

Finally, the conflict stop that agrees remains for a few days, shattering from the murder of two people in a drive-by-shooting.

But some of the thick struggle were enough.

Fernando – or Nando – Johnson is in a gang called The Mongreel, and he wants to try to get out with the help of Pastor Engel.

The pastor described Mr. Johnson as young and described as “birth in the gang” as his entire family was involved.

“There are only two options in this game – it either you go to jail or you die,” says Mr. Johnson.

“I really want to change the direction and I believe there is always a way. That’s why I contacted the pastor – to ask him if there is any plan or way to take me.”

He will attend the six to 12-week program of rehabilitation run by the pastor and will be funded by charitable donations designed to bring people into drugs and use.

“The thing is that now you can start your construction again,” Pastor Engel tells him. “You will be able to get yourself a job and can earn money for yourself. Then you will not have to do more hustle and scams here.”

“I am ready to go, the pastor,” Sri Johnson says, is ready to leave his battered and scary community in search of a new way.

His closest people have gathered to wish him well. His mother, Angelin April, keeps tears back, desperate that, this time, his son will choose life. “Please make the best of this opportunity, Nando,” she says.

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

But it was never easy.

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

“But because he was a gangster, the children also joined the gangsterism despite continuously warning me. It was not easy to pick up four boys on my own, you know. I am always encouraging him to make changes, because I love him very much.”

And so far it is great for Mr. Johnson. Two weeks from starting the program, he is still there.

“Nando is stabilizing. He is in a work program. He is busy seeing his children after seeing his family. He traveled to a house yesterday. We loosened him and he came back and came back to his system without any drugs,” Pastor Angel.

Hope there is a rare object here, but it sometimes spring through cracks on the roads that have seen a lot of trauma.

However, not all the roads. There is very little hope in the house of Devon Africa and Unsan Copman, which sits in the middle of a battlefield.

The cycle of murders and vengeance that is hitting the areas fought on the very edges of this beautiful South African city is struggling to survive for many of them.

And those caught in the middle often have to make impossible options.

“The members of the community, even if they are opposed to the gang, are not necessarily pro -police for two reasons,” Sri Nuham says.

“One is that they do not just know that the police will really call. And if they call the police, they have no idea whether the police officers are corrupt. People do not understand the scale of challenge in South Africa.”

In this war, the sentiments reflected by the penis on the front. Pastor Angel says, “No one is going to come from anywhere to help or save us. Not from abroad. Not our local government. No one is going to come with a magic stick to fix the cape flats.”

“As individuals we need to make flexibility, our people need to be so firm to create hope and grow. Because politics has clearly thwarted us.”