CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
Dec. 14, 2017
(Excerpt) It’s not the gangster language itself that worries Sr. Ana Maria Mainero, a Salesian Sister of Don Bosco. What worries Mainero is when young children start using those words, signifying their uneasy relationship with neighborhood gangs.

Words like hos (“hello”), kapadien (“captain”), stiek (“stab”), skiet (“shoot”) and daala (“I dare you”) echo through the streets, part of the insular world of gangs that are threatening to swallow the neighborhood’s children.

Mainero works in Delft, a small and overcrowded township on the outskirts of Cape Town. Gangs are strongest in areas like Delft with high unemployment, because young people here have no other option to survive economically. And the gangs bring other issues to the neighborhood: violence, crime, and drug and alcohol addiction. (MORE)

See the full Global Sisters Report article by David Reierstord: Where gangs are family, job training offers chance to escape violence

The Global Sisters Report is a project of the National Catholic Register.
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