Cape Town - The families of children who lost their lives to ongoing gang violence in Delft gathered outside a local high school yesterday for a “healing service”.
Delft Community Action members organised the service to show their support.
Tears were visible as parents held pictures of their late children, some after years of struggling to come to terms with their deaths.
The service, which was held in honour of all the dead, was organised after 15-year-old Aqeelah Schroeder was gunned down a few metres from her home on Women’s Day last year.
A mother, Rushana Carstens-Burton, said it had been three years and nine months since her 16-year-old son Qasim Burton was stabbed to death for breaking up a fight that could have easily turned into a gender-based violence case.
In the past three years, the family have been praying for justice to be served.
“My son was at a friend’s party when a fight broke out between a girl and a boy. Noticing the commotion, he told the guy that he couldn’t hit the girl, and that was before he came back home to tell me that he would be sleeping at his other friend’s place.
“While he was sleeping there, the boy who had been fighting with the girl earlier went to look for him, calling him by his name. He woke up and went to attend to the group of boys, who started to stab him to death.”
Vanessa Carolissen, 56, Aqeelah Schroeder’s mother, said she still remembered the day like it was yesterday.
Last year, she was at a Women’s Day celebration when she heard five gunshots, one of which killed her daughter.
“A bullet went through under my daughter’s chin and up her head, killing her on the spot. I can’t forget how her body lay lifeless on the street. Sometimes I think that she’ll walk in my house and live her life again …”
According to a recent joint statement by Premier Alan Winde and Police Oversight and Community Safety MEC Reagen Allen, gang-related murders remained an ongoing concern in the Western Cape government, with 166 of the 193 gang-related murders nationally occurring in the province.