EDITORIAL | Everyone has to stand together in war against gangs and drugs

It was heartwarming to witness community safety forums, the corporate world, police, the department of education and pupils converging for an anti-gangsterism campaign at schools in Duncan Village on Friday. Gang culture in schools has been a cause for concern for far too long. Schools, alone, will never win the war against this behaviour, primarily because it emanates from outside learning institutions.

Therefore, we need all hands on the deck if we are to turn the tide against it. The fact is gangsterism in schools is fuelled by children who are doing drugs and are into alcohol abuse. That magnitude of a problem calls for a multifaceted and collaborative approach to sensitise school children about the physical and mental effects of substance abuse.

All of us must understand that it takes a village to raise a child, hence fighting gang culture in schools is everyone’s business. In our province we are all too familiar with the correlation between substance abuse and crime. Releasing crime statistics for July to December 2024, MEC Xolile Nqatha indicated that a total of 2,615 people were murdered in that period.

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Alcohol played a role in more than 300 of these murders, while drugs were involved in 11 of them. In those six months 3,415 people were raped. Alcohol was cited as having been a contributing factor in 744 rapes, and drugs contributed to 40 of them.

Without a doubt chances are high that children doing drugs might end up involved in even more heinous crimes, like murder and rape if they are not helped. Schools should be places of learning, hope and opportunity. They cannot be breeding grounds of destructive cycles of gang culture and substance abuse — problems that threaten not only individual futures, but the wellbeing of our entire community. We applaud those who organised the Friday campaign and we hope it can be replicated and intensified, not only across Buffalo City Metro but the province and country.

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