The victims caught in the cross fire in Cape Town

The distracted father lies on a narrow, single bed and points to two small bullets holes in the wall of his house.

This is extremely proof of a moment that broke the life of his family forever.

Devon Africa’s four -year -old son Davin was shot dead in February, caught in a cross -fire fire between criminals.

He was a victim of the gang of war that struck the nasal apartments, the cities around the Cape Town-in the case of Apartheid when the non-white population was forcibly moved from the center of the wealthy city in insufficient outskirts.

“This is the bullet hole here,” he says. “This is where he was asleep.”

The family had already withstood indescribable horror.

Davin’s bigger sister, Kelly Amber, was killed two years earlier, also shot dead when rivals fired at each other. She was 12.

Now Devon and his wife, Undean, remain only their smallest daughter.

“She asks me,” Where is my brother? “Says Undian. “So I told her he was with Jesus in my dad’s heart and in my heart.”

These murders were held in an area known as Wesbank, but many other families in the wider area of ​​the nasal apartments had to withstand such nightmares, despite police assurances for increased patrols.

The numbers tell a terrifying story. Western Cape Province – in which the Cape Apartments sit – consistently see the overwhelming majority of murders associated with the South Africa gang, according to police.

It is officially a police priority for the government. President Cyril Ramafosa set up a special band to combat the band’s violence in 2018, and he also briefly deployed the army in the region of next year, but the problem continued and the killings continue.

“There are a whole story and generations of people who have been born in these gangs,” says Gareth Nachham, head of the Justice and Violence Prevention Program at the Institute for Security Research in Johannesburg.

“(They) thrive in areas that have been largely neglected or underdeveloped by the state. Gangs provide a form of social structure that actually provides services to communities that the state is not. They provide food for homes.

They are built into the community and “therefore it is so difficult for the police to deal with them … This means that they can use the houses of members of members to store drugs and store weapons.”

But there are people who are trying to deal with the problem.

Fifteen kilometers (nine miles) from Wesbank is Hanover Park, where Pastor Craven Engel is glued to his mobile phone almost all day, every day in his pursuit of peace.

His mission is to mediate in the band’s conflicts to stop this violence and murders, fueled by lucrative drug trafficking. He and his team are trying to follow the basic formula: detection, interruption and change of thinking.

“Hanover Park does not actually have an economy to talk about,” says Pastor Engel. “The bigger part of the economy is coming out of the drug culture. This is the biggest economy.”

Pastor Engel says that the effects of apartheid on the area cannot be ignored, but neither can be trauma to generations – like drug addiction and then breaking up the family.

“The substance (drugs) creates unemployment, the substance creates robbery, creates gangs for herbs for herbs. So the substance sits in the middle of so many atrocities in the community,” says Pastor Engel, who estimates that about 70% of local children live with some kind of addiction.

This community of about 50,000 people should tolerate firing and piercing almost daily. And often young people do the murder and are killed.

“Only on the police approach is unlikely to solve the problem because you can arrest people that they are members of the gang for having weapons and shootings and killings. They will go to prison, but then they will be replaced by more new members. And this creates a completely different set of problems.

“How does a child shoot seven times in the head or three times in their back? How does a stray bullet hit a child?” Asks Pastor Engel.

On the phone, he calls the community leaders and the Kingpins gang, constantly trying to try to get out of violence. When the BBC Africa Eye visits him, he tries to overcome the ceasefire between two warring bands – and manages to reach the closed driver of one of them.

“If I want something to happen, then it still happens. Do you understand the pastor?” The gang chief shouts along the line. “But I can tell you one thing. I am a person who likes to oppose if I fall under fire.”

Threats. Even behind bars.

But Pastor Engel is ruthless. He is very visible in his community, whether he is at the parish home or before his large and strong congregation in the pulpit on Sunday.

“I think what makes it very, very terrible is that there are more children participating in the gangs because gangs are gaining between the ages of eight and 15,” he says.

The program he is implementing used to receive state money, but it dried. To cut off delivery lines and protect the innocents, he will meet casualties and perpetrators anywhere.

He also sends rehabilitated members of the band to negotiate directly with hostile factions. Those who lived a life on the edge of death know how critical it is to insist on peace instead.

Glen Hans is one such man. He meets rival bands to convince them to honor the cessation of fire. “I was also in this game. As long as you decide that you want to be a better person. That’s all,” he tells a group of gang members.

One has a freezing answer: “The more we kill, the more reason we take advantage and the more reason we have, the more we can build. So to talk about peace – I cannot make that decision because it is not my decision to guarantee peace.”

The truce, which is eventually agreed, lasts only a few days, broken by the murder of two people when shooting.

But some in the dense of the conflict had enough.

Fernando – or Nando – Johnston is in a gang called the Monglels, and he wants to try to find a way out with the help of Pastor Engel.

The pastor describes G -n Johnston as young and “born in the gang” as his entire family participated.

“There are only two options in this game – either go to prison or die,” says Jonston.

“I really want to change the direction and I believe there is always a way. That’s the reason I turn to the pastor – to ask him if there is a plan or a way to take me.”

He will join a rehabilitation program of six to 12 weeks, led by the pastor and funded by charity donations designed to remove people from drugs and work.

“The thing is that you can now start building again,” Pastor Engel tells him. “You will be able to get a job and make money for yourself. Then you will no longer have to rush and clean yourself here.”

“I’m ready to go, a pastor,” says Jonston, ready to leave his battered and marked community in search of a new path.

The closest to him have gathered to wish him well. His mother Angelin April kept tears, desperate that this time her son will choose life. “Please just take this opportunity, Nando,” she says.

“Yes, Mom, I always take advantage of the situation.”

But it has never been easy.

“Fernando’s father was a gangster, but my other children’s father was a gentleman,” says G -N Johnston’s mother.

“But since he was a gangster, the children also got into gangsterism, though I was constantly warning them. It was not easy to raise four boys alone, you know. I always encourage him to make a change because I love him a lot.”

And so far, good for Jonston. Two weeks since the program is launched, it is still there.

“Nando stabilizes. He is in a work program.

Hope is a rare commodity here, but sometimes it crashes through the cracks in the streets that have seen so many injuries.

However, not all streets. A very little hope was found in the house of Devon Africa and Undean Koopman, who sits in the middle of the battlefield.

The cycle of killings and revenge that affected the areas that are led along the very edges of this beautiful South African city is fascinating to many of those who are just struggling to survive.

And those caught in the middle often have to make an impossible choice.

“Community members, even if they are against the gangs, are not necessarily valuable for two reasons,” says Mr. Newham.

“One is that they just don’t know that the police will actually come if they call. And if they call the police, they have no idea if the police are corrupt. People do not understand the scale of the challenge in South Africa.”

The attitudes reflected by the peacekeepers of the front lines in this war. “No one will come from anywhere to help us or save us. Not from abroad. Not from the local government. No one will come with a magic wand to heal the nose apartments,” says Pastor Engel.

“As individuals, we must be so determined to build resilience, create hope for our people and grow. Because politics obviously fails us.”