It’s a windy Wednesday morning in Eldorado Park. Monica* stares at a stream of brown, wet sand behind a block of flats in extension 4. With tears in her eyes, she explains why the ground is wet.
“I came back here yesterday to wash his blood away again, that’s why it’s still wet. I want it to go away. I just want it to disappear and never come back. I just want to be free from this pain, standing here and looking at it, is like I’m being tortured; this is torture and I’m still feeling very raw,” Monica says.
On September 12, her 35-year-old son became the latest victim of gun violence in the suburb south of Johannesburg. At about 9.45am he was shot nine times in the head. Fearing that her son’s killer will seek revenge, Monica begs me not use her real name nor publish her son’s name.
Two days earlier, two other young men were gunned down in Eldorado Park. In August, in the same area, gunmen opened fire on a group of teenagers — one, Benjamin Leisegang, 19, was killed and five were wounded.
Eldorado Park, on the southern boundary of Soweto, is plagued by unemployment, poverty and crippling alcohol and drug problems.
Under the Group Areas Act, it was declared an exclusive settlement for coloured South Africans and divided into extensions. Over the years extensions 1 and 3 have become the worst areas in terms of drugs and shootings; extension 4 is now also a crime hotspot.
When the Sunday Times visited this week, it was unusually quiet at the dilapidated block of flats known colloquially as Varkejard — "pigsty" in English.
Broken beer bottles, plastic and household rubbish are strewn outside the flats. Water leaks from damaged sewerage pipes. The sewage smell mingles with that of the nearby landfill site as it drifts across Varkejard.
Eight men, aged between 19 and 35, are preparing to smoke their hookah pipe. They agree to speak to us provided their names are not used.
“We’re still scared. We just want to feel safe again. We don’t mind talking to you but if you name us, they’re going to think we spoke out about them [the gunmen]. I have young kids and I don’t want my kids to be without a father. It’s been two months that we’ve been living like this. Every weekend for the last two months there’s been a funeral here. Every week we see the pathology van. We’re traumatised,” says one man, aged 36.
The men constantly look over their shoulders. One of them says they are jittery because of the September 12 shooting.
“It happened around this time (mid-morning). We were standing here, just like this, and then we heard the gunshots coming from over there,” he says, pointing to the area behind an alley where Monica has washed away her son’s blood.
“So now when we just hear footsteps, we’re scared. We don’t know if someone is going to start shooting. We’re even scared of the wind, as it’s blowing we don’t know if that sound is someone coming to shoot us or if it’s just the wind. We don’t know when this started or why, we just know that life here is not what it used to be. We’re even scared to fetch our children from school,” the man says.
The youngest of the group is 19. Pointing to white steps where someone else was shot and killed in June, he describes how residents have implemented their own curfew.
“We stay in our houses ... we can’t go out. We know when Dragon Ball Z starts (at 5pm), that’s when it’s too dangerous to be outside. We have our own curfew. It’s like we’re in lockdown again,” he says, taking a puff of the cherry-flavoured pipe tobacco.
When an older man joins the group, the young men slowly scatter. Wearing a vintage leather jacket, the man, 51, says life in Varkejard is sad. He describes how children used to play soccer in the open areas and young boys and women would sit outside and chat. With the recent shootings, everyone is too scared to live as they used to.
“This is just like the coronavirus when we had to sit at home. Except this is a virus of bullets. We used to fear the coronavirus, now we fear the bullets.”
In Varkejard three women wearing green Patriotic Alliance T-shirts are preparing to join a community protest against gun violence.
“At the moment we don’t know who to trust. We live in constant fear, we don’t know when the next shooting is going to happen. Our children are scared ... everyone is traumatised. We don’t know when we’re safe,” one woman says.
They, too, have a curfew. Their signal to move indoors is when the Afrikaans e.tv series Elif is about to start. From 5pm no children are allowed outside, and at 6pm they lock their doors.
A woman who lives with her daughter and granddaughter says: “Because the first two incidents happened when Elif was playing, that has become our signal. An hour before the series starts we make sure our kids are indoors. I lock the burglar gate and the door. Then I block the door with another door and then I put the couch in front of those two doors. Then we also have these two hockey sticks that we sleep with.”
This past week community members took to the streets to seek action from the police regarding the rampant gun violence. They held prayer meetings and marched through the area. On Monday they erected a white tent outside Eldorado Park police station. By Wednesday, several more tents were on the pavement and two portable toilets had also been donated to the cause.
Anti-drug activists, community leaders and residents have been sleeping outside the police station. Tea and coffee facilities have been set up in the main tent.
We’re still scared. We just want to feel safe again
— Local resident
Activist Cheryl Pillay, chair of the drug action committee, says: “On Saturday night two people were gunned down, we took to the streets on Sunday and shut down some of the intersections. There was a shooting on Monday morning. We told the national police commissioner that we are going to stay at the police station. We’re not feeling safe being in our homes, so we are here.
“The gun violence has escalated to a level where it’s not safe to be outside at night because at any time guns are going off. Every day on our group chats you’ll hear there was a shooting,” Pillay said.
Marcelle Daniels from the community policing forum has also been sleeping outside the police station. Exhausted from her 48-hour shift, Daniels describes the various criminal elements they deal with. The hotspot is extension 4, but she and her team have dealt with recent shooting incidents in extensions 1, 2 and 3.
“There’s a huge market in terms of the drug element. We’ve lost some gangsters who left a void, so people are fighting for territory; not only for drugs, also for all the other criminal activities like business robberies, murders, it’s a whole lot of things put together. The biggest thing here is about territory.
“I’m not going to mention the gangs’ names because our lives are at risk. We have received threats. We can’t prove that it’s a specific gang or group or individual, but we’ve been receiving threats as individuals and as teams,” Daniels says.
Feeling their cries aren’t being heard, community leaders later in the week placed coffins in the road outside the police station and spray-painted outlines of bodies in the street. This is a reminder of the weekly funerals and the lives that have been lost as a result of the drug-related turf wars.
Back in Varkejard, residents have wrapped a white cloth around a tree and pinned yellow ribbons to it. There is a wall with the name “Benjamin” written in graffiti. It is a memorial to the young man who was killed on August 23.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when Benjamin and his brother LJ, 21, were hanging out in Varkejard, as they often did with their friends. The brothers had repeatedly been warned by their parents not to spend time in that part of extension 4.
The Leisegangs live close to Varkejard. That day, at around 6pm, their dad Lloyd was in the yard when he heard gunshots.
Holding back tears, Lloyd says: “I can see the flats from my house. I could hear the screams. The first thing that went through my mind was, 'my boys are there, I hope nothing bad happened to them'. But you don’t want to think the worst.”
Not long after he went inside, there were screams at his gate, people telling him to go to Varkejard. Lloyd took off his slippers, put on sneakers and ran to where his sons were. A crowd had formed and when Lloyd pushed through, he saw Benjamin and LJ had been shot and were lying next to each other.
They had been caught in the crossfire. Benjamin had been shot twice in the abdomen and LJ in the chest. Four of their friends were wounded.
“When those shots went off, you don’t want to think that one of your children got shot, that’s far from your mind. What was on my mind was that my boys are there and I told them I don’t want them there, so I said to myself, when they come back home they’re in trouble. Except they didn’t come back,” Lloyd says.
The brothers were rushed to hospital. LJ was critical but stable and doctors said they hoped he’d survive. Benjamin was on life support and doctors told the family his injuries were severe. At 5am the family got the call that Benjamin had died.
“Never in a million years did we expect that one of us would become casualties of war. Here we are now and my son has become part of the statistics,” Lloyd says.
While LJ's wounds are healing, it’s clear that the death of his brother has left a void in the Leisegang home. The boys used to regularly joke and argue about whose turn it was to wash the dishes or feed the dogs.
“I had a way that I used to call him, I used to kind of drag out his name. When I was looking for him or if I was angry I’d say his name differently. I silently still say it ... every morning I still go into his room,” Lloyd says.
His last conversation with his son was a reminder to pay his college tuition. Benjamin had enrolled to study sound engineering and planned to go into event management. Lloyd will never forget his youngest son's concern for his brother while both boys were fighting for their lives.
Benjamin repeatedly asked: “God, please ... where is my brother?” These were his last words.
Now, like many other families in Eldorado Park, Lloyd knows what it's like to lose a son who is caught in the crossfire of gangsters. Like many in the community, the Leisegangs feel neglected by law enforcement, with nowhere to turn for help.
“It’s a bitter pill to swallow to lose a child in the manner that we lost ours, innocently. We have a huge problem here, the problem is that nobody is listening to our cries, absolutely nobody,” Lloyd says.
“So now on whose doors are we knocking? It seems like our only solace is to knock on heaven’s doors and say, God, please help us.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.