Cape Town café helps former prisoners brew a new life

Resumen detallado

Gangstar Café offers former prisoners a fresh start through training, employment and support as they rebuild their lives.

Lungiswa Sidukwana was in prison when her two-week-old son died in 2011. She was unable to attend his funeral. It was then that she realised things needed to change, she says.

It took almost another decade before Sidukwana was at last able to break a cycle of drug use, shoplifting and prison stints. She had been unemployed and struggled to find a way to stop her drug use.

In 2019 she was arrested and sentenced to three years, but was released in 2020 because of overcrowding in prisons during the Covid pandemic.

The following year she made the difficult decision to move out of the home she shared with her husband and mother-in-law in Mitchells Plain to live with her sister in Delft, where she was supported to stay away from drugs.

This person suggested that she apply for a training course that got her the job as a barista at Gangstar Café in Mowbray.

“Once I started working here, I got a full salary,” says Sidukwana. “Two years later, I was promoted to operations assistant. Now, I’m able to rent a house. All those things make me not want to go back to prison.”

For almost 10 years, Gangstar Café has been training and employing former prisoners as baristas. The café was opened by The Message Trust, an organisation focused on youth at risk, both in and out of prison. The coffee shop was one way to help ex-offenders get employment.

Naomi Engelbrecht, chief operations officer at The Message Trust South Africa, said there are many challenges for former inmates re-entering their communities.

“The biggest thing is they need employment,” Engelbrecht said. “They need to be able to eat, and gangsterism and crime can offer them that.

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