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Youth, Crime and Urban Renewal in the Western Cape

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070500035943

1465-3893

Tony Roshan Samara,

HIV/AIDS Impact and Responses

Abstract Urban renewal in South Africa involves contending with a combination of high crime rates, increasing inequality and growing public frustration. In Cape Town, urban planners are attempting to stimulate economic growth, in part, by turning the city into a ‘world class’ destination for investment and tourists. In taking this approach, the authorities cite crime as the primary obstacle to urban renewal. This study examines the politics of urban renewal in Cape Town's Central Business District, paying particular attention to efforts to control the presence of street children in the central city. I argue that the attention given to street children and the negative impact they are said to have on urban renewal constitutes a moral panic driven by and contributing to a vision of development that leaves relatively untouched the inequalities of apartheid. In defining street children primarily as a threat to social order, local elites, including the media, police and renewal authorities, are reproducing deeply embedded and recurring notions of a ‘black menace’ that emerge during times of real or perceived social upheaval and threats to social ‘order’. My contention is that this panic is indicative of an ongoing struggle over urban public space that expresses a deeper conflict regarding changes in the city, which has to do with unresolved contradictions of race and class. This criminalisation of street children raises serious doubts as to how well new progressive approaches to both crime reduction and development will survive urban renewal efforts that many feel reproduce the city's division into developed and underdeveloped areas. Notes 1 A. Standing, The Social Contradictions of Organised Crime on the Cape Flats, Institute for Security Studies, Occasional Paper, 74 (Pretoria, Institute for Security Studies, 2003). These figures use the expanded definition of unemployment, which includes those not ‘actively’ looking for work. 2 Throughout the article, I will use the basic racial categories employed by the Census – Black African, Coloured, Asian and White. However, by contrast with the Census terminology, I use the term ‘black’, as distinct from African, to refer to all ‘non-whites’. 3 M. Schonteich, ‘Age & Aids: South Africa's Crime Time Bomb’, African Security Review, 8, 4 (1999), pp. 34–44. The disproportionate involvement of youth in crime has been contested with regard to the United States. See M. Males, ‘Forget the “Youth Menace”: Crime, It Turns Out, is a Grown Up Business’, Los Angeles Times, 15 December 2002. For a brief discussion of this topic in relation to South Africa, see T. Samara, ‘State Security in Transition: The War on Crime in Post Apartheid South Africa’, Social Identities, 9, 2 (June 2003), p. 298. 4 M. Males, Scapegoat Generation: America's War on Adolescents (Monroe, ME, Common Courage Press, 1996). 5 M. Welch, E. A. Price and N. Yankey, ‘Moral Panic over Youth Violence: Wilding and the Manufacture of Menace in the Media’, Youth and Society, 34, 1 (September 2002), pp. 3–30; J. Seekings, ‘Media Representations of “Youth” and the South African Transition, 1989–1994’, South African Sociological Review, 7, 2 (1995), pp. 25–42. 6 R. Bray, Predicting the Social Consequences of Orphanhood in South Africa, CSSR Working Paper, 29 (Cape Town, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, 2003), p. 7. 7 Seekings ‘Media Representations of Youth’, p. 26. 8 D. Everatt, ‘From Urban Warrior to Market Segment?: Youth in South Africa 1990–2000’, Quarterly Journal of the South African National NGO Coalition & Interfund, 3, 2 (2000), pp. 4–37. 9 D. Ruiters, Nicro on Children, Crime, & Development: An Overview of Diversion in South Africa (Cape Town, Nicro, 2003). 10 See E. M. Blanchard, ‘Gender, International Relations, and the Development of Feminist Security Theory’, Signs, 28, 4 (Summer 2003), pp. 1,289–1,312; M. Afkhami, K. Naidoo, J. Pitanguy and A. Rao, ‘Human Security: A Conversation’, Social Research, 69, 3 (Fall 2002), pp. 657–673; A. K. Chowdhury, ‘Human Security: A Broader Dimension’ (Keynote address, Fourth United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues, Kyoto, Japan, 27 July 1999). 11 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio National, ‘After the Golden Age – No. 2: ‘It's a Global World’, Radio Eye, 11 November 1998, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/radioeye 12 P. Wilkin, ‘Global Poverty and Orthodox Security’, Third World Quarterly, 23, 4 (2002), p. 634; see also M. Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars (London, Zed Books, 2001). 13 M. Davis, ‘Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat’, New Left Review, 26 (March/April 2004), pp. 5–34. 14 World Urban Forum, ‘Dialogue on the Urban Poor: Improving the Lives of Slum-dwellers’ (Barcelona, Spain, 14–17 September 2004). 15 T. Newburn, ‘The Commodification of Policing: Security Networks in the Late Modern City’, Urban Studies, 38, 5–6 (2001), pp. 829–848. 16 J. Rauch, The 1996 National Crime Prevention Strategy, 2001, available from the Centre for the Study of Violence & Reconciliation at www.csvr.org.za 17 P. Bond, Elite Transition: From Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South Africa (London, Pluto Press, 2000), p. 83. 18 A. Desai, ‘Neoliberalism and Resistance in South Africa’, Monthly Review, 54, 8 (January 2003). 19 D. MacDonald and L. Smith, Privatizing Cape Town: Service Delivery and Policy Reforms Since 1996, Occasional Paper Series, 7 (Cape Town, Municipal Services Project, February 2002). 20 Towards an Economic Development Strategy for the City of Cape Town: A Discussion Paper (March 2001), p. 9. Available from www1.worldbank.org/nars/ucmp/ UCMP/Documents/capetown.pdf 21 G. Newham, T. Masuku and L. Gomomo, Metropolitan Police Services in South Africa, 2002 (Johannesburg, Centre for the Study of Violence & Reconciliation, November 2002). 22 M. Sangster, ‘Interventions & Initiatives’ (Cape Town, 2001). The Chief's statement has been posted on the City's official web-page, located at http: //www.capetown.gov.za/ 23 ‘Technicoloured Attack on Crime’, Cape Argus, 17 January 2002; ‘City Security: Safety or Overkill?’, Weekend Argus, 12 January 2002; ‘ANC Pitches for W. Cape’, Mail & Guardian, 12 October 2001. 24 Sangster, ‘Interventions & Initiatives’. Community Patrol Officers are police reservists employed by a local authority. See M. Memeza, Assessing City Safety Developments in Cape Town: July 2000 [Report prepared as part of the City Safety Project] (Johannesburg, Centre for the Study of Violence & Reconciliation, 2000) 25 Sangster, ‘Interventions & Initiatives’. 26 ‘Capetonians Fed up with Litter, Vagrants’, Cape Times, 22 February 2000. 27 ‘It's Official – Cape Town is Clean and Safe’, Cape Argus, 6 March 2002. 28 J. le Roux and C. Smith, ‘Is the Street Child Phenomenon Synonymous with Deviant Behavior?’, Adolescence, 33, 132 (Winter 1998), pp. 915–925. 29 South African Press Association, ‘Report Highlights Street People's Needs’, 16 May 2000. 30 ‘Millions Spent on “Solution”– But Kids are Still on Streets’, Cape Argus, 18 March 2002. 31 ‘Iron Fist Comes Down on “Street Gangs”’, Cape Times, 3 December 2002. 32 ‘Municipal Police on the Cards for Cape Town’, Independent Online, 15 March 2001. 33 R. Danso and D. A. McDonald, ‘Writing Xenophobia: Immigration and the Print Media in Post Apartheid South Africa’, Africa Today, 48, 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 115–137. 34 Family income figures are from the Bureau of Market Research at the University of South Africa, reprinted in ‘Income Gap Becomes a Gulf’, Cape Times, 23 July 2002. Readership information comes from the Independent online site for South African papers at www.iol.co.za 35 Weekend Argus, 2 February 2002. 36 Cape Times, 6 December 2002. 37 Cape Times, 9 November 2000. 38 Cape Times, 19 December 2001. 39 ‘Suburb Under Siege’, Cape Times, 25 March 2001. 40 C. Spinks, A New Apartheid?: Urban Spatiality, (Fear of) Crime, and Segregation in Cape Town, South Africa, Working Paper Series (London, London School of Economics, Development Studies Institute, 2001), p. 13. It is important to point out that perceived loss of control can be as anxiety-producing as actual loss. South Africa is still highly stratified according to race and class and the white and wealthy still exercise considerable control over space, as the direction of urban renewal suggests. Fear of loss can therefore be considered as a motivating factor just as much as, and perhaps more so than, actual loss. 41 Western Cape Provincial Development Council (WCPDC), Urban Renewal Strategy for the Cape Town Unicity (2001), p. 6. 42 As examples, see P. la Hausse, ‘The Cows of Nongoloza: Youth, Crime & Amalaita Gangs in Durban, 1900–1936’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 16, 1 (March 2000) and G. Kynoch, ‘From the Ninevites to the Hard Livings Gang: Township Gangsters and Urban Violence in 20th Century South Africa’ (unpublished paper, Institute for Advanced Social Research, Wits University, Johannesburg, 1999). 43 Bray, Predicting the Social Consequences of Orphanhood, p. 5. 44 A. Louw, ‘Bad News?: Crime Reporting’, Crime and Conflict, 8 (Summer 1997); Nedcor Institute for Security Studies Crime Index, 1 (Pretoria, Nedcor, 1997). 45 WCPDC, Urban Renewal Strategy for the Cape Town Unicity, p. 44. 46 S. Cohen cited in Welch, Price and Yankey, ‘Moral Panic’, p. 3. 47 Welch, Price and Yankey, ‘Moral Panic’, pp. 4–5. 48 E. Goode and N. Ben-Yehuda, ‘Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction’, Annual Review of Sociology, 20 (1994), pp. 149–171. 49 N. Nattrass, Aids and Human Security in Southern Africa, CSSR Working Paper, 18 (Cape Town, Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, November 2002). 50 Bray, Predicting the Social Consequences, p. 7 51 ‘Aids’ Legacy – Orphan Gangs Roam Inner Cities’, Independent on Saturday, 10 May 2002; ‘SA Cities under Threat from Aids Orphan Gangs’, Weekend Argus, 11 May 2002. 52 The question of a moral panic in Cape Town is explored further in the draft dissertation from which this research is taken. Briefly, the focus there is on a comparison between changes in media coverage, various surveys of city-centre visitors and the actual incidence of crime committed by street children. The comparison confirms what I argue here, that ‘public’ anger continues to be directed at the area's most vulnerable and politically powerless population, even as authorities point to declining crime, improved safety and record investment, and as development initiatives for street children continue to flounder. 53 Seekings, ‘Media Representations of Youth’. 54 ‘Metro Cops Beat Us Up Daily, Street Children Claim’, Cape Argus, 15 May 2002. 55 ‘City Zeroes in on Beggars’, Cape Argus, 4 April 2002. 56 ‘Mayor Rethinks Policy on Vagrancy’, Cape Times, 22 December 2003. 57 ‘Zero Tolerance in Mother City Puts Kids in Pollsmoor’, Cape Argus, 9 March 2002. 58 G. Thiel, ‘Cape's “Private Army” in Strong-arm Row’, Cape Times, 9 January 2003. 59 ‘Millions Spent on “Solution” – But Kids are Still on Streets’, Cape Argus, 18 March 2002. 60 ‘Millions Spent on “Solution” – But Kids are Still on Streets’, Cape Argus, 18 March 2002. 61 Bray, Predicting the Social Consequences, p. 38. 62 Nattrass, Aids and Human Security, p. 9. 63 To borrow a metaphor from the Leonard Cohen album, New Skin for the Old Ceremony.