Bay gang violence: ‘Our parents are burying us’ say residents, as police downplay crisis

Nelson Mandela Bay District Police Commissioner Vuyisile Ncata has pushed back against comparisons between gang-related violence in the metro’s northern areas and the entrenched gang warfare seen in the Western Cape (WC), saying the two situations are “nowhere close”.

Addressing concerns about gang-related violence in Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB), Ncata said gang activity in the northern areas should not be equated with the levels of organised gangsterism experienced in the WC.

“I know many people want to compare the gangsterism in the northern areas versus that of the Western Cape. We are nowhere close to what is happening in the Western Cape. Nowhere near,” he declared.

Ncata was speaking on the sidelines of a rally held by the Democratic Alliance (DA), where the party challenged president Cyril Ramaphosa with the question: ‘Do our lives not matter?’, amid growing public concern over violence in parts of NMB.

Read more: ‘Residents are prisoners in their homes’: EC premier to ask Ramaphosa for military intervention

The rally comes after president Cyril Ramaphosa – during his State of the Nation Address on 12 January, 2026 – announced army deployments in the WC and Gauteng. He, however, made no explicit mention of the Eastern Cape (EC) despite the fact that there have long been calls for military intervention to curb gang-related crime in Gqeberha.

Daily Maverick sent questions to the Presidency’s office on Friday to ask why interventions to fight gangs were deployed to WC and Gauteng but not Gqeberha. To date no response has been received.

Audrey Campher, Public Relations Officer for the Nelson Mandela Bay District Community Policing Forum (CFP) Board and chairperson of the Galvandale Police Station CPF, said although gang-related crimes have stabilised, people continue to feel unsafe.

She said there are two gang-ridden areas in NMB, namely Helenvale and Schauderville.

Residents feel unsafe

Meanwhile Ncata instead pointed to increased police visibility and operations in the northern areas as part of efforts to curb crime. Ncata emphasised that policing alone would not resolve the problem, describing crime as a broader societal issue that requires community involvement.

“These people that are being called gang members eat and sleep in people’s homes here. The same gangs are protected by parents,” he said. He added that police operations are often met with resistance from within communities, with officers coming under attack during raids and arrests. “When we arrest suspects and raid drug posts, our police vehicles are stoned by community members,” Ncata said.

‘This is no way to live’

While Ncata said that gang-related violence in the northern areas should not be compared to the violence that claims lives in the WC, 58-year-old Helenvale resident David Hillier, who has lived in the area his entire life, paints a different picture – one of escalating violence.

“The crime – especially gang violence – in this area has over the years deteriorated and it’s heartbreaking. It’s getting worse by the day. It’s a problem,” he said.

“Gang violence is not a solution that I will be able to solve. It is in the hands of the law. We are not able to walk freely. This is not a way to live. To be ruled and tormented by [gangs] is not a way to live,” Hillier said.

Another local, Collette Gallant, 52, who grew up in Helenvale, said her childhood felt safe. However, over the years the situation had become so dire that she was forced to move out of the area. Some of her relatives, however, still live in areas notorious for gang-related shootings.

According to Gallant, gangs in the area have robbed her of two relatives – her brother was murdered inside his home during a housebreaking.

‘Scared to step out of my home’

“I know the pain of losing family members to gang violence. We are not getting any help from the government.

“We experience the same kind and level of violence that is happening in other provinces. This is a traumatising situation we are living in. I am scared to step out of my home. Every day there are shots being fired in our community,” she said.

Youth from other parts of the city – including Missionvale and Schauderville – said several social factors, one of which is unemployment, has made gang life alluring for young people.

Lwazi Mcanyangwa (26) from Missionvale said the financial rewards that gangs in the area promise people, often young, school-leaving boys, is what makes it so appealing.

“If I can talk about the impacts of gang violence in our community, we are going to talk for the whole day,” he said. “The young people in my community think that joining a gang is the way out of their problems, but I do not think they know that there are bigger problems waiting for them.”

Parents burying their children

Said Mcanyangwa: “There is so much potential in our communities, but due to drugs and all the gang activities, it is heartbreaking and disappointing.

“Most of the people who are dying are youth. The situation is so bad that our parents are burying us, which is not right.”

Schauderville resident Laylah Jaylarnie (27) also expressed concern over the wellbeing of her community and parents.

Jaylarnie said gangsters have made life so difficult that it is not pleasant for young people to walk in the streets.

“All I want is for our community to be fixed and for the shootings to stop. Children are just being killed senselessly. We cannot even walk in the street. It is not nice,” she said.

Deploying the SANDF to protect

Many residents, and the DA, have asked President Ramaphosa to seriously consider deploying the military to support police in combating gang activity.

In the party’s memorandum addressed to Ramaphosa and acting police minister Firoz Cachalia Yusuf Cassim, MPL PE Northern Areas Constituency Leader writes: “What makes the President’s snub even harder to swallow is that Acting Minister Cachalia visited Nelson Mandela Bay in January this year and said the gang violence in the Northern Areas mirrored the crisis in the Western Cape.”

The memorandum read further: “The DA demands that President Ramaphosa acknowledges that the lives of the people of the Northern Areas do matter by deploying the army on a short-term basis to create stability, and that he commands Acting Minister Cachalia to enforce Parliament’s resolutions without delay.”

Read more: Police not ready to combat ‘growing gangs’ — Cachalia

Guy Martin, editor of specialist defence news portal DefenceWeb, said that while deploying the SANDF domestically is constitutional and lawful, this should only be done under strict conditions outlined in the Constitution and the Defence Act.

“According to the Constitution, the President can authorise the deployment of the SANDF inside the country but must promptly inform Parliament in detail about the reasons, location, number of personnel, and expected duration of the deployment as well as cost –Parliament can challenge the decision, although this rarely happens,” Martin said.

Authorising deployments

He clarified that the Defence Act allows the President or minister of defence to authorise deployments for purposes like preserving life in emergencies, providing essential services, socio-economic upliftment or border control.

The deployment of SANDF is only in a supporting role, said Martin.

“Soldiers do not have the power of arrest and are not trained in solving or preventing crime, so when they do detain suspects, they must be handed over to the relevant authorities, such as police.”

On questions about how long these sort of deployments usually last, Martin said there are no exact defined timelines.

Previous deployments, however, have been short – months or weeks, such as in response to the July 2021 Durban unrest.

He said: “Longer deployments stretch budgets, increase the chances of things going wrong, and stretch logistics and personnel requirements.”

Policing and crime expert Dr Guy Lamb pointed out that there are drawbacks to calling in the troops to support the police, including that it demonstrates that the police are not as effective as they should be.

“So it sends that message to the general public, which is certainly not a positive experience for South Africans, because it really reinforces negative perceptions about the police.”

Campher said the situation in relation to gang-related crimes in the northern areas has stabilised, largely due to positive police interventions.

“There is stabilisation – not normalisation – but stability. Crime, by extension gang-related violence, is not as bad as it was six months ago. It is not the same as it was a year ago. There have been a number of successes. Police have really retrieved a number of illegal firearms and conducted a number of operations,” she said. “Despite this, our people still feel unsafe.”

She also pointed out that residents are living in extremely “abnormal conditions”.

Campher added: “Children cannot play like normal children. People cannot walk to the shops, because then the shots go off.”

Civil organisations

Meanwhile civil organisations including the Cape Crime Crisis Coalition rejected the deployment of the SANDF to combat gangs and gang-related crime in the Cape Flats and Gauteng, saying that it cannot fulfil the duties of police.

The organisation said when the government calls in the troops to perform civilian policing, it “confesses that its police leadership is broken, its political oversight has failed and its reserves of competent governance is exhausted”.

“Today’s gangs are highly organised criminal syndicates. Dealing with organised crime requires an organised and highly efficient police service with experienced detectives. This is something the army cannot do.

“Gangs and organised crime are embedded social institutions. They are not weakened by these deployments. They adapt. They consolidate.” DM