Taynie and his two daughters taken in 2005 Picture Brenton Geach Taynie and his two daughters taken in 2005 Picture Brenton Geach
Cape Times photographer Brenton Geach has covered the horror of tik addiction over the years on the Cape Flats. At the weekend he visited the family of a man who was gunned down last week. In this article, Geach describes what he experienced and what locals have to say about the state of their lives and suburb.
Cape Town - As I turned off Prince George Drive into Lavender Hill in the early evening of Wednesday last week with the music playing, I heard the distinctive sound of gunshots. I stopped my car and thought for a bit, then turned around and headed back home to Milnerton.
I was on my way to give my condolences to parents who had to deal with a second son being murdered in the space of five years. It wasn’t that the gunshots scared me, as I have heard them many times while documenting the lives of tik addicts on the Cape Flats, I just had a bad feeling.
Nathaniel Moonsamy, 32, affectionately known as “Taynie”, was killed by seven bullets while trying to run away from people he knew. His brother was killed by a friend five years ago after an argument outside his parents’ house.
So, on Good Friday, I returned. As I drove down the road I passed scores of smiling people carrying Bibles, children playing; it seemed like one big happy community.
While speaking to the mother of Taynie’s children, she casually said two young men had been killed down the road the previous night.
It had become such a norm, she said, that the place had been named “Kill Me Quick”.
Taynie, as I knew him back in 2005, was never a gang member, but was no saint. He regularly used tik and tried many times to stop, but after a few months the craving would return and he spiralled downhill again. He had two beautiful daughters – one of them just kept saying: “I miss my daddy.”
She also said when she heard the gunshots she got scared, thinking her father was out in the streets and might have been shot. Well, her fears were real.
Residents said they were praying for the army to return as they felt safer when it was around; they also want a curfew imposed. One man said in the 1970s there was law and order, and fights were with fists and knives – but now the weapon of choice is a gun. Also, then it was dagga and mandrax being used, but now tik rules.
On the eve of Good Friday, about 200 friends and family gathered on the field across the road from where Taynie lived, where they lit candles and sang hymns in memory of his life. While driving home, I was overcome by deep sadness as I thought of his daughters and that the fortunate ones living in the leafy suburbs have no idea what life is like in the poorer communities.
Cape Times