Blood and brotherhood in Katutura: The rise, fall and return of street gangs
Katutura endures. The names change. The stories don’t
Ask anyone in Soweto or Havana about the bad old days, and they’ll tell you about Red-Eye. Ask the youth today, and they’ll say Boko Haram or K202.
Different names, same streets – Katutura has always had its own rules.
These are not just groups of young men; they are movements born from the cracks of poverty, survival and rebellion in Windhoek’s oldest suburb.
Their legacy lives on in names still spoken with a mix of fear and pride: Red-Eye, Boko Haram, K202 and Kwateni Om’ Nona.
The Red-Eye legacy
Long-time Katutura residents still recall the name Red-Eye – or Rooi Oog – whispered in fear in the late-apartheid years.
The gang’s roots stretched through Soweto, Grysblok and the Single Quarters, where youth found belonging in the only structures that seemed to notice them.
Violence, reputation and territory became currency.
These boys grew up on the same corners where their fathers once fought. The gangs change, but the struggle stays.
When independence came, the promise of better days didn’t erase the anger or the poverty.
The Red-Eye generation faded, but its shadow remained – re-emerging decades later under new banners, in a new Namibia, with the same restless energy.
Boko Haram and K202
By the 2010s, Windhoek’s police and community leaders were once again confronting a wave of gang activity.
The names changed – Boko Haram, K202, Kasi 202, even the Panga gang – but the patterns were familiar.
These groups grew in the informal settlements of Greenwell Matongo, Goreangab and Havana, where unemployment, overcrowding and boredom turned every alley into contested ground.
Police records and NBC reports from that period describe running battles through corrugated-iron lanes and the occasional community meeting where elders pleaded for peace.
Gangs fought over respect more than riches.
Some carried knives or pangas, others sticks and homemade weapons, but most wielded fear as their strongest tool.
In 2018, NBC and New Era reported on police meetings with gang representatives, an attempt to broker peace and reintegrate disillusioned youth.
For a brief moment, the city dreamed of calm. Some boys accepted rehabilitation; others melted back into the nightlife of Eveline Street, where the line between hustling and survival blurred.
Kwateni Om’ Nona and the survival code
The Namibian reported in 2016 that the Windhoek City Police had arrested twelve members of a group calling itself Kwateni Om’ Nona, who had been terrorising residents in the Goreangab and Greenwell Matongo areas.
The gang was linked to a spate of robberies targeting children on their way to school and adults heading to work.
CCTV footage along Eveline Street was used to track down the suspects.
They were young, often operating in small groups, their crimes reflecting a new generation of township gangs shaped by poverty, neglect and notoriety.
Old-timers say the youngsters are hungrier and more reckless than those who came before. They fight less for turf than for recognition, to be named, to be feared, to be someone.
For some, a gang becomes the only institution that never forgets them.
Ask the shebeen owners along Eveline Street today, and they’ll tell you: the gangs haven’t gone, they’ve just evolved.
Red-Eye’s ghost walks with the night patrols.
K202’s graffiti fades but never disappears. Boko Haram, once a foreign name borrowed from headlines, has become a local legend.
For every crackdown, a truce. For every arrest, another recruit. Katutura remains restless, a place where history loops back on itself, and every generation invents its own name for rebellion.
“Eveline Street has become a place of both survival and danger, where music and crime compete for the night.” In 2016, Namibian Sun wrote about police concerns over robberies, stabbings and the proliferation of unlicensed shebeens.
Social inheritance
In sociology, gang life in Windhoek’s informal settlements is described as “social inheritance”. Survival habits are passed down from one generation to the next.
It is a complicated inheritance that carries the pride of resilience, the pain of exclusion, and the need to belong somewhere, even if that place is feared.
Some community programmes in Katutura are attempting to reclaim the township’s spaces.
For instance, the Golden Boxing Club, set up in 2002 to absorb young men from the streets, and the Katutura Community Arts Centre, which now offers recording, radio and visual arts studios.
But in a township built from displacement, where hope competes with hunger, progress is always fragile.
Older men at the Single Quarters may remember when Red-Eye ruled the night. They remember the first police raids, the first funerals, the first boys who never came back from a fight.
To them, today’s Boko Haram or K202 are just history repeating itself.
Katutura endures. The names change. The stories don’t.
Different names, same streets – Katutura has always had its own rules.
These are not just groups of young men; they are movements born from the cracks of poverty, survival and rebellion in Windhoek’s oldest suburb.
Their legacy lives on in names still spoken with a mix of fear and pride: Red-Eye, Boko Haram, K202 and Kwateni Om’ Nona.
The Red-Eye legacy
Long-time Katutura residents still recall the name Red-Eye – or Rooi Oog – whispered in fear in the late-apartheid years.
The gang’s roots stretched through Soweto, Grysblok and the Single Quarters, where youth found belonging in the only structures that seemed to notice them.
Violence, reputation and territory became currency.
These boys grew up on the same corners where their fathers once fought. The gangs change, but the struggle stays.
When independence came, the promise of better days didn’t erase the anger or the poverty.
The Red-Eye generation faded, but its shadow remained – re-emerging decades later under new banners, in a new Namibia, with the same restless energy.
Boko Haram and K202
By the 2010s, Windhoek’s police and community leaders were once again confronting a wave of gang activity.
The names changed – Boko Haram, K202, Kasi 202, even the Panga gang – but the patterns were familiar.
These groups grew in the informal settlements of Greenwell Matongo, Goreangab and Havana, where unemployment, overcrowding and boredom turned every alley into contested ground.
Police records and NBC reports from that period describe running battles through corrugated-iron lanes and the occasional community meeting where elders pleaded for peace.
Gangs fought over respect more than riches.
Some carried knives or pangas, others sticks and homemade weapons, but most wielded fear as their strongest tool.
In 2018, NBC and New Era reported on police meetings with gang representatives, an attempt to broker peace and reintegrate disillusioned youth.
For a brief moment, the city dreamed of calm. Some boys accepted rehabilitation; others melted back into the nightlife of Eveline Street, where the line between hustling and survival blurred.
Kwateni Om’ Nona and the survival code
The Namibian reported in 2016 that the Windhoek City Police had arrested twelve members of a group calling itself Kwateni Om’ Nona, who had been terrorising residents in the Goreangab and Greenwell Matongo areas.
The gang was linked to a spate of robberies targeting children on their way to school and adults heading to work.
CCTV footage along Eveline Street was used to track down the suspects.
They were young, often operating in small groups, their crimes reflecting a new generation of township gangs shaped by poverty, neglect and notoriety.
Old-timers say the youngsters are hungrier and more reckless than those who came before. They fight less for turf than for recognition, to be named, to be feared, to be someone.
For some, a gang becomes the only institution that never forgets them.
Ask the shebeen owners along Eveline Street today, and they’ll tell you: the gangs haven’t gone, they’ve just evolved.
Red-Eye’s ghost walks with the night patrols.
K202’s graffiti fades but never disappears. Boko Haram, once a foreign name borrowed from headlines, has become a local legend.
For every crackdown, a truce. For every arrest, another recruit. Katutura remains restless, a place where history loops back on itself, and every generation invents its own name for rebellion.
“Eveline Street has become a place of both survival and danger, where music and crime compete for the night.” In 2016, Namibian Sun wrote about police concerns over robberies, stabbings and the proliferation of unlicensed shebeens.
Social inheritance
In sociology, gang life in Windhoek’s informal settlements is described as “social inheritance”. Survival habits are passed down from one generation to the next.
It is a complicated inheritance that carries the pride of resilience, the pain of exclusion, and the need to belong somewhere, even if that place is feared.
Some community programmes in Katutura are attempting to reclaim the township’s spaces.
For instance, the Golden Boxing Club, set up in 2002 to absorb young men from the streets, and the Katutura Community Arts Centre, which now offers recording, radio and visual arts studios.
But in a township built from displacement, where hope competes with hunger, progress is always fragile.
Older men at the Single Quarters may remember when Red-Eye ruled the night. They remember the first police raids, the first funerals, the first boys who never came back from a fight.
To them, today’s Boko Haram or K202 are just history repeating itself.
Katutura endures. The names change. The stories don’t.
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