Gangland Killing

It is all too easy to see headlines saying Gangland Killing and think murderers, drug dealers and rapists.  And let’s be honest, is it not true that often the next thought is “good riddance, let them get rid of each other,” before looking for the next article to read?
But this is not always the case.

Lunga

What I am writing about took place in Gugulethu, a township in South Africa. However It could have happened in more than one city across the world. In places where, for many families, poverty punctuates every facet of their lives, parents watch with despair as their children are both tempted and forced into joining street gangs.
To refuse takes enormous courage.
Lunga was such a person. A deeply religious young man, he was never tempted by the comradeship and protection that being a member of a gang gives.
He had no interest in easy money. He wanted to earn his honestly. To be someone who could hold his head up high and tell his children he had never caused grief to one person.   His ambition was to be a chef and on leaving school he managed to obtain a basic training at a township cooking school, one that qualified him to work in a fast food outlet.
That was not what Lunga wanted and at twenty he applied to my friend’s restaurant, the award winning Savoy Cabbage, for a position.
“I want to learn to cook,” he told Peter, the head chef. He was taken on for three months trial; that was five years ago.
He took tremendous pride in his work and became a valuable member of the team. A year ago he married and to his joy one month ago his baby daughter arrived.
The last time I saw him he was leaving work and I, sitting in the restaurant was finishing dinner. He was in a hurry to get home to his young family, but he still stopped at my table. I noticed that he was wearing new chinos and said he was looking smart. He beamed at me, shared a joke with my friend, then still chuckling, left.

The following day I heard what had happened to him.
Three men, one car and an AK47.
He saw them coming, tried to run, I am sure he called out to God then. Perhaps he begged for mercy. There was none. Eight bullets smashed into the back of his head. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Why, why, why we asked?  That took several hours to be answered. He had a brother; also trained once as a chef, but then the lure of the gangs drew him in. A member of a rival one was killed. Their revenge?  To kill Lunga, a young man with so much to look forward to. Such a cowardly, cowardly act.
I think of his children who will grow up never knowing their father and how special he was. Of his young wife and his mother grieving. How neither could even run their fingers through his hair or place one last kiss on his cold face.  Such a brutal death denied them of even that final good bye.
He was twenty five.