Part II - Journalism.co.za

Mail & Guardian October 31 to November 6 2014 21
News
of its druglords
Dreams: Graffiti spells out a message of hope on a wall in Westbury (above). Gangsters once ruled the tiny
suburb but now drug dealers lord the streets. Photos: Madelene Cronjé Michael Abrahams
and the drugs fall out of their pockets. They say the police are corrupt,
but they offer the police bribes,
so who is to blame?”
It is hardly a comment you would
expect from a former career gangster who did two stints behind bars.
Jansen grew up in Westbury,
known as the Western Native
Townships during apartheid. It
was a place where the police fuelled
local disputes in order to divide and
rule, where they enforced harsh
pass laws and often looked the other
way when crimes were committed.
Oom Zakie, Jansen’s friend and
chairperson of the community policing forum of Sophiatown police station, was also a member of a gang.
He joined the Vikings, a gang that
roamed the streets of Westbury in
the late 1950s, following the forced
relocations.
“We couldn’t go to the police at
that time, because the police were
oppressing us. So we had to resolve
our own problems and we looked up
to gangsters, called them sterkman
[strongman],” he says.
The two men sit in the living room
of Zakie’s Westbury house, reminiscing about the past, while they
drink tea served by his wife.
Life of a gangster
Jansen describes how his evolution
into a sterkman started with child’s
play. “The Spaldings and Fast Guns
went to school together. We were
friends and classmates, in standard six, in the year 1966. We played
a game that involved hitting each
other with cardboard. Then one
day, I put a stick in my cardboard,
so it would hurt more. That led to
fist fights and the fist fights turned
into knife fights by the time I was 16
years old.”
Two groups emerged. The Fast
Guns named themselves after
the 1958 western The Last of the
Fast Guns. The origin of the name
Spaldings is less heroic. According
to Jansen, it was a name they saw
scrawled on a wall. Spalding was
a producer of sports equipment,
mainly basket balls.
The southern part of Westbury,
from Florida Street down towards
the flats, belonged to the Spaldings
and the northern part of the township, from Florida Street up, was
Fast Gun turf.
“Little fights would break out at
the dance hall on Friday night. The
fight would then spill over on to the
football field on Saturday morning.
Sometimes we would fight over a
girlfriend, sometimes over nothing.”
Gangs would have about 30 to
40 members and numbers would
shrink when members died or were
arrested and grow when new blood
was recruited.
Other gangs were formed. The
Majimbos hailed from Eldorado
Park, and the Varados aligned
themselves with the Spaldings.
As the Spaldings died off, a new
band of brothers appeared on the
scene, who called themselves the
Vultures. All gangs were involved in
robberies, car theft, extortion and
small-scale drug dealing, mainly in
Mandrax. Shopkeepers also paid
them for protection.
“We stood in front of an open
grave every week, burying our
brothers. These were boys, were
family members or friends, we went
to school with them and still we
killed each other. It was stupid and
senseless,” says Peter Faver, a pastor
and former leader of the Fast Guns.
Jansen had a few run-ins with the
police. “The police were rough, especially the armed robbery and murder squad of the Brixton police station. They would torture you until
they had a confession. We deserved
it though. There is no honour
among thieves. The police always
came afterwards. They were never
there when you were shooting and
chopping. They arrived after someone had died.”
According to Jansen, the police
were neither a deterrent nor a
threat to the warring gangs. “When
we were chopping each other, we
would run for cover to the police
station. Then we could live another
day. The cops would be sitting
behind the barracks, smoking and
gambling, and they had no guns, so
they also started running when they
saw us.”
The senselessness of the incessant and often lethal violence
came to a halt in the late 1990s,
when the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission was spreading the message of forgiveness throughout the
country.
Road to reconciliation
cell while they were awaiting their
trial,” said Faver. “When they got
out, a meeting was called at the
Southgate Mall in Johannesburg, on
neutral ground.”
Community elders had com-
plained about the ongoing violence
and the incarcerated gangsters had
heeded their calls and decided the
violence had to end.
“There were 12 gangsters there,
of the Vultures, Fast Guns and
Varados. The Spaldings by this time
had ceased to exist. Three pastors
had agreed to join the meeting. We
were all nervous, wondering if the
other party was armed.”
To Page 22
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“It all started in jail, when opposing gang members had to share a
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