Cape Town – A 7-year-old Manenberg boy is fighting for his life after he was shot in his sleep yesterday morning.
He is among three people who were wounded in a bloody gang war that has flared up in the Cape Flats community.
Women and children were forced to run for their lives yesterday as heartless gangsters opened fire at active crime scenes, seemingly not concerned about police in the area.
In the first shooting, the family of Toufiek Johnson, 7, were left traumatised after the little boy woke up screaming as shots rang out shortly after midnight.
Toufiek was sleeping next to his sister Musfieka, 16, when a bullet ripped through their wendy house in Red River Street and struck him in the back.
Father Gershwen, 33, says they were woken up by the shots and loud screams as the Grade 1 learner from Rio Grande Primary School jumped onto his parents bed.
“The bullet went in his back and he was screaming in pain,” the dad says.
“We saw the bullet did not come out and one of the neighbours took him to the hospital. The doctors told us it was stuck in his kidney and they can’t get it out.
“I am so scared my laaitie (boy) will die and I’m hartseer (heartsore) because I am a working father.
“I get up every day and work for my children at the Epping market and there are no gangsters living here.”
Hours later Samuel Plaatjes, 64, was walking home from a neighbour when skollies (gangsters) opened fire on the oupa in Olga Court.
Shocked tenant Sumayah Jackson, 56, explains: “He was just walking and they shot him. He collapsed here because they shot him in his abdomen and his bum.”
Shortly after 10am and while officers stood at the crime scene, shots rang out once again, sending a large group of women and children scattering.
“Hulle lê op die dakke en skiet! (they are lying on the roof and shooting),” a woman shouted as more than 20 shots were fired.
Minutes later, residents reported that a teen girl in Madge Court had been hit.
When the Daily Voice arrived on the scene, a large crowd had gathered around the girl and a man carried her into his vehicle and rushed her to hospital. Blood was streaming from her shoulder.
Police spokesperson Brigadier Novelwa Potelwa confirmed the shootings, saying: “A number of SAPS units, local station police personnel and members of the Anti-Gang Unit are conducting raids in search of the perpetrators of the shooting incidents which left the two children and the male person wounded.
“An operational plan informed by a crime pattern analysis is unfolding in the identified hotspots and communities in these areas will see several operations and raids from time to time.”