06.04.2026
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Manenberg’s problems run deeper than just crime: Resident

8 mins



  • Members of the South African National Defence Force

As the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) rolls into gang-affected communities across the Western Cape, questions remain on whether boots on the ground can address the deeper roots of violence.

In Manenberg on the Cape Flats, one woman’s story offers a window into what is really driving crime and what it will take to turn the situation around.

Daily life in the area is often interrupted. Not just by sirens, but also gunfire. This week, efforts to arrest the situation got under way. Armored vehicles and soldiers became part of the landscape of the Cape Flats. Operation Prosper has brought the army into communities long plagued by gang violence.

Unemployment and poverty remain widespread in  the area, the intervention is being closely monitored. Thirty-one-year-old Ronique Wilson, who has lived in the area her entire life, believes the crisis runs deeper than crime.

“It’s hard to hope in poverty. It’s hard to hope when your next meal is the only thing you have think about. It’s hard to hope when there’s bullets flying. It’s hard to hope when there’s no direct home, when you are raised by a single mother and all the stress is on her. And a lot of times single mothers are the ones that have to carry the burden, and they don’t even have the resources of counselling, of healing. So it really has to be a full circle intervention,” says Wilson.

Her childhood was marked by instability.

“What they would call a “peela”. That is where I used to live. My mother went missing. I have no parents and I started living with my grandmother,” she adds.

In a community shaped by poverty and instability, survival and perseverance often comes early, says Wilson.

“When you come from a community like Manenberg, you are not used to people being charitable to you. You are constantly in survival mode because you can’t be vulnerable. Vulnerability means dangerous. Sometimes it means you would put yourself at risk. And I think in that moment I took that step. I really used my own perseverance,” she adds.

That decision changed her life.

“I received a bursary to study. I studied Psychology at Cornerstone Institute, and that year Community Chess not only offered me a bursary but they offered me a stipend that bought me my very first laptop,” says Wilson.

Today, she is a qualified social counsellor.

” I was a counselling intern first but now I am the pyscho-social counsellor where I counsel learners the same like me that have same problems like me. And for me it’s really a full circle moment to know that I counsel learners that has gone through the same problems I have gone, and yet I didn’t receive the support but they have a resource they have the support,” says Wilson.

She is appealing for the establishment of rehabilitation centres, in Manenberg.

“There are different schools that do have after school programmes but there are not enough after school programmes. There are not enough mentores mentoring our young boys. Even if there’s like a centre, we don’t have rehabilitation centres. Where do we send our young men to be rehabilitated because rehabilitation costs money? But of there’s a mother that has to do a little char next door to get a R20, how is she even able to rehabilitate that child, so I think in Manenberg we need rehabilitation, we need employment,” she says.

While she welcomes the army’s presence, Wilson believes it is only part of the solution.

“I love that they are deploying SANDF the army but as a counsellor someone that works with children I would also love for them to deploy trauma counsellors, because a lot of these men that are in gangsterism they also need counselling and because they had not have the opportunity to speak with someone they walk with that trauma. And sometimes the victim becomes the perpetrator,” says Wilson.

As Operation Prosper unfolds, the challenge will be whether it can move beyond enforcement and begin to address the root causes of violence. Because in places like Manenberg, the battle is not only on the streets, but in homes, schools, and the everyday fight to hold onto hope.

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