Meet the Nyanga youths who are dancing away from crime

In 2014 there were 305 murders in the Nyanga police precinct (which includes Nyanga, Crossroads, Samora Machel and Brown’s Farm), the highest in the country (source CrimeStatsSA).

Every day after school a group of young people from different schools in different parts of Nyanga gather together in Oscar Mpetha High School for a minimum of two hours for dancing lessons. The group consist of males and females who have made it their mission to take out their daily frustration by sweating through a tough dance practice.

They dance kwaito, hip-hop and traditional dancing. They practice in a starke prefab classroom. It is dark and there are no lights. It is cold, but there is a heater, although the body heat of people dancing also warms it up.

Shaun Malima, a student at Oscar Mpetha, says he takes part in the daily dancing because he doesn’t want to associate himself with crime related activities in his neighborhood. “When I came here to dance, I get the opportunity to be free and be myself. People assume that every young male in Nyanga is involved in crime and that is not true.”

Relebohile Diphooko says she loves the dance classes because it is where she has freedom and a break from the difficulties she faces as a young girl.

“Being here every day makes me creative and it gives me some sense of belonging and space to be myself. The youth out there, they are involved in things that doesn’t develop them. Instead they destroy themselves and we are here to change that, and to show the youth in Nyanga that they don’t have to fall into the trap of crime and poverty”, she says.

Ntombizodwa Dayeni who is the coordinator and coach of the group said that the project is part of the Western Cape Department of Social Development’s Mass Participation, Opportunity and Access, Development and Growth (MOD) programme.

Dayeni, who is local dancer from Nyanga and is a member of the Likhwezi art project also based in Nyanga, says that the reason for the MOD programme is to keep young people active.

“The programme is created to take the youth away from gangsterism. We also focus on learners who are not doing well academically and we encourage them to do activities such as dancing, sports and other extra murals just to make them active,” she says. “We identified that some learners prefer doing arts and culture and sport so if that is the case we take them to arts schools and sports academies so that they at least build a career.”

Dayeni says she loves what she is doing with the students. Dancing is her passion, she says, and she loves seeing young people develop into good dancers.

A report by The Safety Lab, an organisation that has been providing youth activities in Nyanga, notes that the township is “appallingly dangerous but not an outlier”. Nyanga is an unusually young neighbourhood, the report says, and nearly half the murder victims are between the ages of 21 and 26. (GroundUp has carried stories depicting fatal violence between youths much younger than this.)