Military conscription the answer to reduce violent gangsterism?

Just when we all thought that the frightful and fearsome scourge of township gansterism was a thing of the past, residents of the besieged township of Etwatwa, in Daveyton, have proved that we were all wrong.

What is in fact even more fearful about what is happening in Etwatwa, is that these types of township gangs, as we’ve known and experienced over the years in many black residential areas, now involves children as young as 14. Worse still, we are even told that some of the gang leaders are in fact nothing more than adolescents themselves, some hardly older than 30.

Adding to this worrying fact is that the Etwatwa community has lashed out at the police, accusing them of siding with the criminals. It is also alleged that some police members have been seen to be too close to the gangsters for the community’s comfort, who are claiming that the police are biased when it comes to issues relating to the so-called OVL gang which has reportedly been terrorising the local community for months.

Although it is unclear where these criminal youths in Etwatwa have sprung from to spew their vitriolic criminal activities upon innocent members of the local community, the number of violent and brutal killings attributed to the gang and its activities warrant prompt and decisive action from both the police and the community.

My main concern at this stage is that this is something that should not in the first place have been allowed to sprout out of the ground and result in the kind of anger and violence it has managed to arouse among the locals and peace loving South Africans in general.

Looking back, it is a well-known fact that gang violence and gangsterism have always been part of the culture of turf-wars and bullying among township criminals. However, what is even scarier with the Etwatwa happenings, is that, unlike in the past when these gang-wars were waged by criminal adults, the Etwatwa brutal and violent debacle is, according to mayor Mondli Gungubele, about the dreaded nyaope drug.

But to the Etwatwa residents and their children it does not really matter nor make any difference now whether the brutal gang-war being waged by these wayward and ill-disciplined youths is about the local turf or nyaope. The only thing residents undoubtedly want to see now is for the police to take drastic and decisive measures to bring an end to this madness once and for all.

It is about time that police crime intelligence units from both the EMPD and SAPS, keep what is happening in Etwatwa under close scrutiny and make sure that those responsible for this bloody mayhem in the township are brought to book as soon as possible and that the ensuing violence is curbed before more innocent lives are lost.

Perhaps both units could re-visit the dreaded necklace method now being re-introduced by the vigilante groups fighting their young criminal opponents in the area. South Africans are quite familiar with what this form of brutal mob justice has done to our country’s image both locally and internationally.

IS MILITARY CONSCRIPTION THE ANSWER?

I’ve never stopped wondering why vocational training and military conscription for youths when they turn 18, were discontinued under the new dispensation.

Just think of all the wonderful things today’s youth, both girls and boys would be benefitting from with vocational training as well as military conscription. First, we would be having less of the many social ills that young people especially black youths are caught up with in the townships and this includes a decrease in gangsterism and violence.

Secondly, there would be less pregnant teenage mothers in our schools and less male teenagers falling prey to drugs and crime.

I believe that by re-introducing both vocational training and the army conscription into the lives of the country’s youth, as a nation we stand a chance of moulding better young men and women in our communities than when we try to repair these broken young men and women later in life.

South Africa will have to create a life-skills program from which the majority of the country’s youth will be able to benefit from instead of ignoring them and thus making them easy prey for drug-dealers and crime gangs.

There’s not a single doubt in my mind that the introduction of both the vocational training and the military conscription for the country’s youth would turn the tide both on the crime and drug issues in this country and perhaps also create a better landscape for the future of the country and its people.