Welcome Witbooi: Gangsterism, Second Chances and Community Development South Africa

Welcome Witbooi, founder of BrightSpark Foundation was raised in Cape Town’s gang-infested Valhalla Park. He was a promising student but was drawn into gang life through absent role models and community influence. Sentenced to 23 years in prison at just 17, he had to join the 28s gang to survive, rising rapidly to General by stabbing correctional officers .

He describes the moment he decided to leave gang life after overhearing fellow inmates boast about violence and realising he didn’t want to be that man for his own daughter. Leaving required facing a tribunal of gang generals who could have executed him. Through a restorative justice program, he later visited and was forgiven by the family of Mr Jones, the correctional officer he killed. Jones’s daughter, Jamie, later became BrightSpark’s managing coordinator in Cape Town.

Welcome, with the BrightSpark foundation works in gang-affected communities in Cape Town and Johannesburg, running a residential “School for Life” program alongside family support, food parcels, and pathways into further education and employment. He closes with advice for aspiring changemakers: build a team, act with integrity, and never neglect your own family.

Listen to the Conversation

Also available on Apple Podcasts • Spotify

Behind the Conversation

by Babette Gallard

He Had Eight Stars

“It’s not just about me. It’s about preventing more copies of the negative me

I think it might be one of the most devastating and powerful things I’ve ever heard anyone say.

I didn’t know much about the Numbers gangs before this conversation, the 26s, 27s and 28s, or the power they wield inside South African prisons. Sitting across from Welcome, it was hard to reconcile the warm, funny, grounded man in front of me with the life he described. But that gap is the point. He is both, and the story of what happened in between is something I will never forget.