Mo and the Disposable Boys
by Jennifer Bruce and Alex Eliseev
Mo and the Disposable Boys is a story about a principal named Mo and his fight to keep open a school that saves teenage boys from the claws and bullets of the notorious Cape Town gangs. Mo – Moosa Mahadick, the principal at Ottery Youth Care Centre, has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to the school which is home to teenage boys, most of whom grew up in broken homes on South Africa's Cape Flats.
Mo is anticipating another budget cut this year. This will place even more pressure on Ottery in its battle for survival. “These kids live on the margins of society, where no one really worries. If things go wrong, what’s the problem? They are destined to populate gangs anyway. This was the kind of thinking we needed to disrupt, in the children themselves, in their families and in our staff,”
Moosa Mohadick (Mo), principal of the Ottery Youth Care Centre, joins his students in the canteen for morning assembly. April 2017
A wooden gravestone listing the names of numerous Cape Flats gangs in one of the gardens at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. March 2017.
Moosa Mohadick principal of the Ottery Youth Care Centre holds the hand of one of his students while they talk during breakfast in the Centre's canteen. May 2017.
Students attend academic classes at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. May 2017.
'Tsotsi' meaning gangster or criminal is seen on the hand of one of the past students from the Ottery Youth Care Centre. April 2017.
Students assemble for breakfast in the canteen at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. 25 April 2017.
Student line up for parade outside the canteen at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. April 2017.
Moosa Mohadick eats Sunday lunch with his students at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. April 2017.
A student looks at a family photograph in one of the dormitories at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. April 2017.
Moosa Mohadick principal of the Ottery Youth Care Centre in Cape Town with his cat Two-Kit. May 2017.
Kids from the Ottery Youth Care Centre attend a surfing class at Muizenberg Beach in Cape Town. April 2017.
A mother of one of the students at the Ottery Youth Care Centre says goodbye to her son as he returns to the Centre. April 2017.
Rashaad Allen walks through an alley in Parkwood. Allen is an ex Ugly Americans gang member who after more than 20 years in prison turned his life around and is now a child care worker at the Ottery Youth Care Centre. April 2017
Children play close to a washing line in Parkwood, a suburb on the Cape Flats. April 2017.
Two boys lean against a wall covered in graffiti in Parkwood, a suburb on the Cape Flats. April 2017.
A man walks down a street in Parkwood, a suburb on the Cape Flats. April 2017.
The Ottery Youth Care Centre provides discipline, supervision and a caring environment to 70 boys from the most dysfunctional and chaotic environments in the Western Cape, where gangsterism, drug and alcohol misuse, physical and emotional abuse and offending is common place. March 2017.