‘This is why a forever war kid like me is friends with gangsters’

I have been working with gangsters on the Cape Flats for more than three years. When I spend time with them, there’s nostalgia in the air. I often wonder, had it not been for the funnel of the school system, the example set by authority figures and the safety net of both parents, how I might have turned out. “Gangster” might have been quite appealing.

On my childhood playground in London, at an all-boys primary school, I wasn’t one of the cool kids playing soccer on the concrete. I couldn’t get into it, perhaps because my father was never a soccer guy and it seemed to be one of those father-son things. 

I pretended to support Manchester United for a while, but without the unyielding tribal mimicry to inherit from my father and little motivation to impress, my aspirations to fit in quickly fell apart and I withdrew. 

The collector kids would assemble around a row of wooden picnic tables on the terrace above the playground. Scattered across the tabletops were heroic collections of strategy-based playing cards like Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic or Pokémon, depending on the “in thing’’. I collected them and tried to play against the others who had done the same, but again, I was imitating interest and my efforts were thwarted. 

By the time I understood the rules, the next thing was in, and it was too late; nobody wanted to play anymore. Where I really found my place was with the kids that went to war.

Gangsters smoke Mandrax and exchange war stories