Young boys in the Western Cape are increasingly being used as gang recruits. Gang-related violence in the Western Cape continued to escalate throughout 2025, sustaining a worrying upward trend of the past five years and exposing serious weaknesses in the provincial government’s response. This is according to the latest Western Cape Gang Monitor released by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) .
The December 2025 reportreviews gang dynamics over the past year and sets out a 12-point plan for rapid intervention, which the authors say can largely be implemented within one to three months. According to SAPS data cited in the report, gang-related murders in the first six months of 2025 were 58 higher than in the same period in 2024, after already doubling between 2020 and 2024. The monitor shows that violence is highly concentrated in specific clusters, particularly Hanover Park, Manenberg and Mitchells Plain, where multiple gangs control adjacent territories and conflicts have become increasingly unpredictable Mapping of incidents between November 1, 2024, and October 31, this year shows that these hotspots overlap with police precincts identified as vulnerable to corruption and weak service delivery.
It describes a more volatile, fragmented and heavily armed gang landscape, driven by turf wars, breakaway factions, illegal firearms and systemic failures in policing and the criminal justice system. Crime investigators comb an area of a crime scene due to gang violence. The report identifies accelerating gang fragmentation as a key driver of violence, with established gangs splintering and new factions emerging.
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The monitor highlights the rapid expansion of the Fancy Boys, who have grown significantly since 2020 by absorbing members from rival gangs and expanding access to firearms, drugs and illicit profits. It also identifies the unchecked flow of illegal firearms as a central factor fuelling violence, with weapons diverted from police and military sources, corrupt licensing systems, private security companies and smuggling routes, including firearms trafficked from Namibia.
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