Under the skin of an ex-Lavender Hill gangster — Turner Adams’s tattoos told more than one story

Turner and his 2 month old son. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

By Brenton Geach

12 Nov 2024

The entire life of former Lavender Hill gangster Turner Adams, who died on 29 October 2024, was etched into his skin.

It was in 2003, while photographing the devastating impacts of tik (crystal meth or methamphetamine) in Cape Town’s poor communities, that I first met Turner Adams.

With an entire life etched into his skin – each tattoo telling a story of survival, pain and ultimately resilience – Adams, who died on 29 October, was a man not easily forgotten.

His family, like so many others, had been forcibly relocated from District Six to the neglected apartment blocks of Lavender Hill, a desolate expanse where apartheid discarded entire communities. It was a place that shaped Adams as much as the ink on his body, although he was always adamant he never wanted to be remembered for his past, or the hardships he had endured.

Adams spent nearly half of his 60 years in and out of prison. Wardens of Pollsmoor Prison knew him as a regular. When I visited him, his mother refused to join me, worn out from decades of prison visits and shedding tears for a son she could never quite save.

But Adams was more than a high-ranking member of the 28s gang; he was a storyteller, a philosopher, a man who could talk passionately about everything from world politics to jazz. I could sit with him for hours, transfixed by his tales of life inside and outside of prison.

Turner Adams gangster Turner Adams leaving Wynberg Magistrates’ Court for Pollsmoor in 2006. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

Shafiek Zeeman, Turner Adams’s brother, walks past the coffin with his daughter Asma at the service in Lavender Hill on 6 November, 2024. Long-time friend Mark Nicholson is pictured right. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

Although he bore the marks of a gangster, Adams’s dreams stretched beyond Lavender Hill’s unforgiving streets. He often spoke of wanting to be remembered not for his gang ties, but for making a positive difference. He recognised clearly the profound depths of need in the community in which he lived.

Our images were noticed by local media and filmmakers, and Adams eventually landed a role in Four Corners, a 2013 South African film about a teenage boy whose promising future as a chess player is threatened when he decides to join a local gang. Notably, at Adams’s funeral last week, none of the people who used him in their projects was to be seen.

It was a harsh reminder of how quickly real lives are left behind once stories are told.

Yet, Adams’s dream of giving back to the young people of Lavender Hill did take root. Film producer Janette de Villiers connected with the UK-based organisation In Place of War, which resulted in the opening of the Rise Above Development (RAD) youth centre five years later.

Turner Adams Turner and his mother. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

The ‘Battle Field’ where Mark Nicholson fed hundreds of children daily during the Covid pandemic. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

The centre was built on the notorious “Battle Field” on Blode Street, where gang violence had long reigned. Adams was thrilled to see a space where young people might find purpose outside of the gangs and drugs that had defined his own life. The first of five containers for the youth centre arrived in 2022, and today it is home to a music studio, computer lab, library, sports facilities and a community garden, with plans to add a cafe, outdoor theatre and dance studio.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Clinging to hope that the battlefield becomes a field of dreams in Lavender Hill

Two other significant Lavender Hill community leaders and good friends of Adams, Mark Nicholson, who fed hundreds of children on the “Battle Field” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and Ralph Bowers, founder of Guardians of the National Treasure, which feeds underprivileged children and families in Lavender Hill, also joined the RAD project.

The first of the five containers which were used for the youth centre. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

Turner Adams and his two-month-old son, photographed in 2014. (Photo: Brenton Geach – exclusive copyright)

Adams may not have been actively involved, but he took pride in knowing that something good was emerging from his life story, something meaningful for Lavender Hill’s next generation.

Years of hard drug use had, however, ravaged Adams’s body, weakening him until he finally succumbed to tuberculosis. He died in hospital, a quiet end to a tumultuous life.

The old adage is that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and in Adams’s case, his tattooed body told more than one story. DM

First published by GroundUp.

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