A fight for drug turf or revenge killings are the two main explanations cited for the increased amount of warfare these past couple of months between rival gangs in Hanover Park, in the Cape Flats of southwestern South Africa. While this poor neighbourhood briefly became famous for its minnow local soccer side, Hanover Park F.C., reaching the quarter finals of the ABSA Cup this year before being beaten by Orlando Pirates, it has been infamous for years for its gang problems, with several murders having been committed of late. The likes of the Americans, the Ghetto Kids, the Mongrels and the Nice Time Kids have kept local residents living in fear and off the streets at night. Parents have had to escort their kids to schools that resemble prisons, with their spiked gates and barbed-wire fences.
This is the situation that 66-year old Sedick Isaacs will walk into as he begins a stint as a primary school teacher next week at Hanover Primary. Jailed in 1964 on Robben Island for his activities with the Pan Africanist Congress, Isaacs was known as the island’s “minister of education.” Imprisoned for 13 years, he headed up an education committee that was started by prisoners to help with the education and literacy of their fellow inmates, some of whom had been arrested before they finished school.
Trained as a teacher, he is coming out of retirement to teach mathematics at the primary school level, as a reaction against the shortage of maths and science teachers in South Africa’s schools. He also wants:
to see what is happening in primary schools. I want to see the social situation at schools. I am passionate about this and I even tutor matric and university students maths.
Unfortunately he will have his work cut out for him, as at present it is a lack of students that is the main challenge for schools in Hanover Park. During one stage last month up to two thirds of parents had kept their kids away from school, fearful of being caught in the middle of gang violence plaguing their township.
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