SWK1013F COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS ASSIGNMENT 2018 NOMASWAZI NENE NNXNOM006 Due Date
SWK1013F COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS ASSIGNMENT 2018
NOMASWAZI NENE
NNXNOM006
Due Date: 9 April 2018
Lectures: RONALD ADDINALL & CINDEE BRUYNS
THE COMMUNITY OF MANNENBERG.
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CONTENTS
The community of Mannenberg
Mannenberg is a community located in Cape Town. The is well known for its high rates of crime and poverty. Crime is the most dominant system that operates in this community. The area is just surrounded by gangster groups. A mannenberg resident is 3 times likely to be murdered than anywhere in South Africa because of the ongoing issue of gang violence in the area. (Yoliswa Tswanya, 2017). Due to this violence people are scared to go out so they stay inside their houses and now children cannot go to schools or even play outside due to fear of being shot. This assignment will briefly outline the systems that operates in mannenberg.
The Community of Mannenberg
Mannenberg is a township which is in Cape Town in South Africa.
Mannenberg was created for low-income coloured families in Cape Flats in 1996. It has an estimated population of 52000 residents. The area has rows of semi-detached and projects like flats. It is 20 km away from the Cape Town’s city centre and is separated from the neighbouring towns Nyanga and Gugulethu by a railway line. (GreenC Bot, 2017).
This township has elevated levels of unemployment, overcrowding and a very disturbing reputation for elevated levels of gang’s activity. But not everything is that bad, because residents have joined with religious groups, schools and community organisations to rid the town of the stigma it has earned. They want to change Mannenberg, uplift the crime and poverty. (GreenC Bot, 2017). Mannenberg is an example of a Microsystem. A microsystem is an immediate physical and social environment in which the person interact face to face with other people and influences and is affected by them. (Bronfenbrenner). In other words, a child born or living in Mannenberg is likely to get involved in gangsterism and very likely to be affected by it.
Mannenberg living conditions are very bad and poor. According to Mannenberg residents the scourge of Tuberculosis and HIV reached epidemic proportions, mostly because that an alarming number of teenagers were tik addicts. However local health facilities were in a bad condition and had become breeding grounds for illness rather than places of health care (Themba Boyi,2010). Mannenberg has turned into a war zone which makes peoples life more hard and difficult, mostly people are scared to go out because of the gangsterism war. Mannenberg is full of gang violence, drugs, alcohol abuse, rape, unemployment and poverty. The youth of this town has joined the gangsterism gangs and have dropped out of school. Looking at Mannenberg community we can say it also a Macrosystem because Macrosystem is defined with an example of culture which says, “culture is defined as the shared understandings and way of life of people, beliefs and practises”. (Addinall:2018). By that a child born in this place will group up either scared or will also join the gangsterism groups because that how they are influenced.
The reasons behind such high rates of crime in this community is mostly because of poverty. The youth of Mannenberg join the gangs because of many several reasons, which include the following things: unemployment, poverty, bad academic results, difficult learning these challenges lead to kids dropping out of school and joining gangs so that they can feel safe and overcome all these challenges. Some join gangs because maybe one of the family member is also a member of a gang, so they also decide to follow them because they want to have a nice life because that how being a gang member appears to be or that how they recruit kids by telling or showing them that they going to lead a nice lifestyle. It mostly the young boys that cause so much chaos and join gangs, abuse drugs and alcohol.
The gangs have made life for the Mannenberg residents, people are even scared to go to work because they cannot live children alone and, they cannot go outside because they may get caught in some shooting going. Children are not allowed no play outside because of their safety they must stay indoors, getting into school is hard moreover gangs may also attack the schools so it better to stay indoors which led to children growing up with fear and no education or living in a stable environment, which makes some of the young boys and girls join gangs and become drug dealers. For girl’s life is very hard as girls are being raped everywhere some are sold by their parents to sleep with older man and they pay the parents to keep quiet and not report them, some are recruited to become drug dealers.
However, these gangs are very dangerous, surprisingly it the youth that has made this community’s life difficult, moreover over people are scarred to stand up to these gangs. These gangs were most often formed by children seeking physical protection from threats in their communities. (Shaun Swingler: 2014).
Judging by the way things are in this community the is still a lot of programmes or interventions to be putted in place in order to fight against this violence and poverty surrounding Mannenberg, it is not going to be over very soon because the Mannenberg gangs are no longer scared of the police and moreover people have accepted the that they are living, that is because they are scared to stand against gangs , e.g. people cannot even agree to be witnesses even if they saw what happened they won’t be able to say so because of fear.
Some Mannenberg residents are trying to fight against the dominance of crime surrounding the community. Mannenberg mothers have a plan to take children as young as five years old off the streets and out of the area so they can experience a different side of life. (Francesca Villette:2016). They have campaigns that will stop children from wanting to join gangs, take the youth to rehabs. Religion groups, School, Residents and other people have joined forces to stop children from joining gangs and came up with different campaigns that will protect the young kids and stop them from becoming gang members. One campaign was “Taking Back Our Children Campaign”, which seeks to equip mothers with the skills they need to able to identify whether their children are at risk of joining gangs. (Lengwadishang Ramphele: 2016).
Mannenberg residents have finally saw that they are not living the life they should be living, because living in fear and staying indoors all time is no life and that definitely not healthy, especially for children which are supposed to be going to school getting educated, playing outside without any fear, be able to make and engage with other teenagers, walk to the shops without any fear of getting raped or shoot and live a healthy life and enjoy their youth, so parents decided to start campaigns to fight against crime and give their children another chance to lead a better life and also Mannenberg to be a new community that will have a healthy and safe environment. Moreover, people can safely visit the place.
Mannenberg can be a fit community only if the residents work together and fight against all the crime and poverty in this community but all of this will need determination and it a challenging work mostly important to be able to work together as a community, every member of the community affected or not affected should join the campaign groups.
PART B: The Williams Family.
The Williams family is affected/ impacted mostly by Crime. Crime is doing all something offensive or against the law. Looking at this family, Mr William Kurt the father of this family was arrested because of drugs he was a drug dealer and now his two teenage sons have joined or followed his footsteps and now also drug dealers and belong to a local gang in Mannenbeg. The William’s boys and Kelvins girlfriend abuse drugs which against the law, moreover the boys belong to a local gang which means that they do all the kind of stuffs that is against the law. Crime has made this family fall apart and the only daughter of this family must suffer a lot, because she must take care of the household chores and take care of his brother’s child which affects her school marks/ academics.
The mother is sick but works so hard to provide food for her children but the boys do not even notice the pain their mother is in, which also puts more stress and depression as she wishes for a normal stable family and her children to have a bright future. The daughter is the only person in the children in this family who tries to change this life but she also lives in fear sometimes she is even scared to go to church because of the crime in her community. This has broken this family and the chances of having a normal life are very slim.
CASUAL FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO EXISTENCE OF CRIME
One of the factors is the absenteeism of their father who has been in out jail for almost their life. This family has been facing a lot of difficult such as 6 people living in a 2 bedroom flat not counting the father who is in jail, the situation may be the reasons why the boys choose to be involved in drugs to try to forget their problems, moreover kelvin has a child now which added more to their expenses, and worst he cannot take care of his child. The boys grew up with a bad example of life as their father is a drug dealer, he never taught them anything good about life and how to take care of themselves or lead a good life. The boys don’t respect their mother they don’t even take care of her. The way their mother of working so hard while she is sick may have also made the boys to abuse drugs and alcohol so that they can forget all the problems in their lives, pain and poverty. Joining a gang maybe they wanted to feel safe and rich in some way.
CRIME IMPACTS ON FAMILIES & VULNERABLE CHILDREN
Having someone in the family being involved in crime, more like an older person, the children in the house will grow up exposed to that life and when they are old they will also get involved in crime and commit serious deep crime. This can also lead to having an unstable home for children as they must live in fear all the time in fact the whole family lives with fear. As these kids are expose to crime they also start to be aggressive and cold-hearted which makes them different from others therefore get reject by other kids in schools and in the community which lead to them dropping out of school.
The family does not lead a healthy normal life because of this, kids are emotional affected by this. Children are likely to commit crime also. This family will always be at risk of death because they are involved in crime, when gangs fight they might also get into trouble if one of the family member belongs to a certain gang. The family gets reject by community members because they know that they are involved in crime, which can lead to depression, anger and fear to the family members especially children because they cannot really understand why, as they are innocent and which lead to them joining gangs and doing illegal stuff so that people can fear them and so that they can feel belonging somewhere.
No one in the community will like to be involved with this family as they are scared and maybe also hate family. This can lead to children having no bright future and low chances of the family leading a normal life and overcome poverty. This destroys the children’s minds to be able to think upright and stands in the way of the family being able to move and start afresh, even if they try to but it can never be easy because no one can be ready to show them the right path. This eventually destroys the whole family and they start to be attached and love what is going on even they knew its wrong but its gives them a sense of belonging and safety as the community has rejected them
MEASURES THAT SHOULD BE IN PLACE TO ADRESS THIS ISSUE TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF LIFE
This family will need a qualified social worker who will help them out, start from the beginning till the end because this family will need someone to keep them moving and motivated. The social worker will them have to introduce therapy to the family and some few programmes to follow. The children must be taken to rehab to start a better life and go to counselling as a family. The children need to be specially taken care of because they must go back to school and lead a normal life.
The family also need to go out and ask for help because it will not come for itself. The children should be moved to a more peaceful, quiet and safe place. The mother should be taken to the old age home or somewhere safe. The police should start get rid of the gangs in the community. The community members should start to witness what they saw and be not afraid of the gangs but instead start to stand up against crime. The family will need support and guidance to improve this life. The should prevention programmes putted for families.
Someone like a social worker needs to take the first step into helping this family because the family won’t go to the social workers. As for the police they should always put patrolling teams on the community to look out for any dodge things happening.
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CONCLUSION
The community of Mannenberg can be a better and safe community but if people are scared aand not willing to take a stand against the crime, violence and rape that is taking place in this community, they will never be in a safe place and their lives won’t change for the better. The mannenberg SAPS should also start working so hard to get rid of gangs and put them I jail. Parents should make sure that their children go to school every day and keep a watch on them for anything dodge in that way the life in Mannenberg can start to change. Families that are most affected by crime should stand up and fight and look out for help. This community has an ability to be a community with a safe and healthy environment for all but they need to stand together as community and fight against what is wrong and start to do what right and legal.
REFERENCE LIST
Addinall, R.2018.SWK1013F Community Connections: Lecture Notes/slides.
Unpublished
GreenC Bot 2017. Mannenberg Community
Available: http: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/manenbeg.
Themba Boyi 2010.Mannenberg poor living conditions
Available: ewn.co.za /2010/11/06/Cape-Flats-community-describe-their-living-conditions.
Yolisa Tswanya 2017. Living in Mannenbeg
Available: http//www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/living-in-manenberg-increases-your-chances-of being-murdered-10844942.
Francesca Villette 2016. Manenberg moms rescue kids from gangs
Available: https://www.iol.co.za/news/manenberg-moms-rescue-kids-from-gangs-200905.
Shaun Swingler 2014. Deeper, more dangerous
Available: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-05-26-the-capes-youth-gangs-bigger-deeper-more-dangerous/#.WskVXXRBvqALengwadishang Ramphele 2016.Available: http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/12858/manenberg-mothers-stand-together-to-protect-their-children-from-joining-gangs
