KLIPGOOI SNIPERS - Manenberg stone throwers now attack from rooftops as fighting escalates

MANENBERG klipgooiers are now sniping mekaar from rooftops, with skelms now climbing onto residents’ roofs to gooi klippe.

The latest drama unfolded on Sunday near Sonderend Road and Thames Avenue after a video doing the rounds on community crime groups showed klipgooiers pelting stones from huise se dakke.

A community worker and a concerned parent in Manenberg told the Daily Voice that they feel like they are losing the battle to stop the child gangs from fighting, despite a number of interventions.

They said: “As a community worker, myself and a few of my colleagues have been working for a few years with those kids - about 20 or 22 of them from different types of gangs. 

“We’ve been trying and trying, but it doesn’t look like there is light at the end of the tunnel.

“The saddest part is that we think the parents of these kids are enjoying it, because they are not coming together as a community. When we have meetings trying to make peace, you will always hear, ‘it is not my child, it is that one’.”

They added that they have had several meetings with the police and the Community Policing Forum (CPF), however it’s a continuous cycle of laaities getting arrested and the next day walking the streets doing the same thing.

With the youths taking their fighting to the dakke to terrorise the community, CPF Public Relations Officer Dullah Govind says the laaities are going “off the deep end”.

He said: “What if they fall from that roof? The people who are staying there are doing nothing about it, if you know someone is on your roof you would chase them off.

“These kids are really going off the deep end and it's sad actually.” 

A family member of Tasleema Erasmus whose death sparked outrage in the community after she was shot during a vicious stone throwing fight between child gangs in 2024 told the Daily Voice that the ongoing klipgooing brings back memories of her death.

They believe that Erasmus, 42, was intentionally shot as she had been vocal about the violent clashes between child gangs, as laaities as young as nine joined the stone throwing.

The source said: “These gangsters are grooming these laaities to become gangsters, want hulle sit daai anger en aggression in hulle om ’n gun te vat sodat hulle kan skiet en vir die mense nog seer te maak.”

Erasums’ killer Ashley Fisher was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years innie mang, however the family believe that his sentence should’ve been more strict.