Children as young as nine are being pulled into gang activity in Delft. They raid delivery vans, use abandoned buildings as bases and face deadly risks. The area struggles with soaring violence, drug use and failing social structures.
Community leaders say unemployment, addiction and weak policing fuel the crisis. Children barely tall enough to see over a car bonnet are being pulled into gang life in Delft — some as young as nine, sent to steal and surrender their loot to underworld leaders. And now, in a fast-spreading new trend, the kids who call themselves the Terrible Hooker Boys are swarming delivery vans, ripping open doors and making off with packages in seconds.
They are so brazen that they are even stripping the Centre for Community Development in The Hague and using it as their “gang den”. This comes as the Mother City reels from a wave of gang violence that has left at least six children shot in the past week. Four have died.
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IOLvisited Delft this week to see what this Cape Flats suburb is up against. Driving down Delft Main Road, the neglect is impossible to miss. The Centre for Community Development is in a sorry state — no windows, graffiti and gang names sprayed across the walls, and the roof, or what is left of it, pocked with holes and falling apart.
Delft has long been one of the most dangerous areas on the Cape Flats, battling high gang activity, drug markets, violent crime and overcrowded informal settlements. In recent years, Delft has consistently appeared in police statistics as one of the top stations for murders and attempted murders. Between July and September this year, the Delft police station was one of four police stations in Cape Town that recorded the highest number of contact crimes in SA, according to acting police minister Firoz Cachalia.
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