Surviving Gangs, Violence and Racism in Cape Town

Ghetto Chameleons

Marie Rosenkrantz Lindegaard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415818919
• eBook ISBN: 9781136684715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Cape Town has some of the highest figures of violent crime in the world, but how is it that young men avoid and enact physical aggression and navigate stressful and dangerous situations?

Surviving Gangs, Violence and Racism in Cape Town offers an ethnographic study of young men in Cape Town and considers how they stay safe in when growing up in post-apartheid South Africa. Breaking away from previous studies looking at structural inequality and differences, this unique book focuses instead on the practices and interactions between 47 young men, and what they do to become a "ghetto chameleon". Indeed, exploring in detail what young men do to survive conflicts and what is at stake, Lindegaard depicts how they must become flexible in who they are in order to fit in and be safe when they move between "black" or "coloured" township areas and the "white" suburbs of Cape Town.

Opening the reader's mind to the relational aspect of violence, Surviving Gangs, Violence and Racism in Cape Town will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as African Studies, Qualitative Criminology, Sociology, Gang Violence and Anthropology.

Part 1

Introduction

1Chameleons

The apartheid government used the term ‘chameleon’ to describe people who were classified according to different categories of race. They categorised the population into four categories: African, Coloured, Indian and White. This scheme was explicitly based on both phenotype and cultural markers, including “habits, education and speech, deportment and demeanour in general.” (Posel 2001: 63). Rights such as what kinds of jobs one was permitted to have, what kinds of education one could follow, where one was allowed to live and who one could marry depended on these categories. Categorisations were made by government officials on recurring occasions. “By elasticising the official definition of race beyond merely biological factors, the apartheid state created a mechanism for investing all facets of existence with racial significance” (Posel 2001: 65). What mattered were therefore not only signs of phenotype such as skin colour and hair contexture, but also social indicators such as job responsibilities, spoken languages, accent and racial categories of acquaintances in the social network of family and friends.

The category of Coloureds was constructed as a solution to the ‘problem’ that some people did not fit the indicators for what was considered African or White: “‘Coloured’ covered mixed unions between Dutch settlers, Malay or West African slaves, and/or indigenous people.” (Lemanski et al. 2008: 140). Coloureds had more rights than Africans and less than Indians and Whites. Their social security benefits were better than the benefits for Africans and worse than those for Whites. The residential areas designated for Coloureds were geographically situated in between African and White areas, and their jobs were also in between White and African jobs in terms of social and economic status. The population of Cape Town primarily consists of people who are classified as Coloured (48 percent), African (which in the course of the post-apartheid period came to be referred to as Black; 32 percent) and White (19 percent), with most Blacks being of Xhosa descent. This relatively large group of Coloureds and the relatively smaller group of Blacks is unusual, as 79 percent of the South African population is considered Black, and Blacks are also the majority of residents in other large cities (Lemanski et al. 2008).

The category of chameleons was largely a Capetonian phenomenon as it involved changes to and from the category of Coloureds. People who were referred to as chameleons typically changed their categories either from White/Indian to Coloured or from African to Coloured. The more radical change from White/Indian to African was not allowed. In 1985, more than 1000 people were registered by the government as chameleons. In order to become a chameleon, people had to change their lifestyle significantly. They needed to get a new job, move to a new place or get new networks of friends.

This book is about young men I got to know during my ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town who behave like chameleons. They move between Black or Coloured townships and White suburbs¹ on a daily basis and change their ‘colour’ to fit in and be safe. I refer to them as ghetto chameleons because they live in township areas that were also referred to as ‘ghettos’ by participants living in those areas. The term chameleon was used by a close friend, who frequently interacted with township and suburb people. During apartheid, her parents were classified as Coloured, even though her father was always at risk of being categorised as African because he did not pass the pencil test (his hair was too stiff to allow a pencil to fall through it). After I noticed how she shifted accent, behaviour and style depending on whom she interacted with, literally walking and speaking differently among township and suburb people with an ease that surprised me, I started noticing the same phenomenon among young men participating in my study. When I confronted her with my observations, she laughed and said: “You have to be a chameleon to survive the new South Africa.”

The contemporary ghetto chameleons never had to deal with the politics of classifications of the apartheid state. They were born by the end of apartheid in times where categories of race officially were limited to Whites and Africans. Ghetto chameleons, however, have a great deal in common with their historical ancestors: they are capable of shifting their social positioning and thereby changing how others perceive them. The ability to fit in socially – changing their ‘colour’ like a chameleon depending on who they interact with – makes ghetto chameleons able to pass as Blacks, Coloureds and Whites. By frequently moving between the segregated neighbourhoods of the townships and the suburbs, typically to attend school in the suburbs, they have learned the practical skills of shifting accent, taste and style to accommodate for shifting cultural expectations. They are able to fit in when interacting with their peers both in the townships and in the suburbs.

Like their historical ancestors, ghetto chameleons are able to pass both as Blacks or Coloureds and as Whites. Unlike their historical ancestors, it is not ‘just’ a matter of convincing government officials about their ability to shift and be somebody else. It is a daily drama of avoiding gangs, violence and racism. This book is about these young ghetto chameleons and their much more vulnerable peers who do not share their ability to fit in and be flexible. It is about challenging apartheid-constructed categories of race and the inequalities following from that in ways that are similar to what chameleons did while apartheid was still in place.

The main point of the book is that the ability to fit in socially protects ghetto chameleons against exposure to gangs, violence and racism. However, the majority of young men, who frequently move between the townships and the suburbs, do not know the art of fitting in socially in both contexts. They tend to behave White also when they interact with their peers in the townships, and that makes them extraordinarily vulnerable. They pass as Whites, but not as Blacks or Coloureds, and in the eyes of their peers in the townships, that makes them traitors who are worth punishing for their attempt to be better than the rest. For those young men, who also tend to be called coconuts (White on the inside and Black on the outside), transgressing the apartheid-constructed boundaries of the city and challenging the lifestyle categories of race is severely punished. In fact, their vulnerability to violence in the townships is comparable to the risks experienced by young men who are in conflict with the law. While incorporation of the suburb style exposes coconuts as outsiders in the townships, it does not, however, ensure an insider position in the suburbs. When moving around in the White spaces of the suburbs, Black and Coloured young men – as well as the coconuts who have incorporated suburb interactional styles – frequently get exposed to racism as in “a pervasive attitude that all black people start from the inner-city ghetto, and before experiencing decent treatment or trusting relations with others, they must demonstrate that the ghetto stereotype does not apply to them.” (Anderson 2015: 14).

The starting point for the analysis presented in the book is what young men do when they become part of actual conflict situations. Their practices in these situations – i.e. how they position themselves socially – are referred to as social navigation. Conflict situations are defined by being emotionally tense due to the fact that one of the parties interacting feels reduced to an object against his or her will. One way of dealing with this tension is to become violent. Other ways are to run away or to speak slang. By taking actual interaction as the point of departure, the analysis shows how young men perform different aspects of their cultural repertories depending on the people and place of the interaction. It also shows that their social positioning changes over time. The research was longitudinal of nature in the sense that it started in 2005, continued into 2006 and was followed up and expanded in 2008 and 2017. Over those years, some participants radically changed their positioning, while others consistently performed the same cultural repertoires.

From a theoretical point of view, my ambition is to both understand and explain the social positioning of the young men involved in my study. My interest is to understand the way they deal with conflict situations – in violent or non-violent ways – from their point of view, and to explain their social positioning in these situations in relation to the broader circumstances of their lives. By focusing on the very specific situations where violence potentially occurs, I want to emphasise that even the most violent young men rarely use violence. In particular, participants who grew up in township areas were highly at risk of violence both as offenders and victims. Nevertheless, the majority of them never behaved in violent ways, and the ones who sometimes did became violent in certain types of situation. Garot (2010) referred to this as a matter of ‘who you claim’ in terms of identity when being challenged in specific situations. Furthermore, despite growing up in high-risk areas, a substantial number of young men try to escape the oppressive structures of their township lives by attempting to improve their life circumstances through better education and jobs. These attempts influence the daily lives in the townships, contributing to what Harding (2010) referred to as ‘heterogeneous cultural repertoires’. As previous studies predominantly focused on explaining high offending and victimisation risks within disadvantaged areas (Anderson 1999, Goffman 2014), little attention has been paid to variation within such areas, including the potential impact of the common phenomenon of people being mobile by frequently leaving the area. In the chapter that follows (Chapter 2), I will focus on what it means for the vulnerability towards gangs, violence and racism when young men on a daily basis leave their residential area in the Black or Coloured townships to study or work in the White suburbs of Cape Town. I continue the introduction with Chapter 3 focusing on cultural repertoires and the importance of understanding the way culture is played out as performances in the life of young men. Chapter 4 explains my motivations for taking actual conflict situations as an analytical starting point. It elaborates on the questions I address in the book and on the concepts I use in the empirical analysis. Chapter 5 focuses on the methods and analysis I conducted for the book. It emphasizes the importance of observational methods for the study of violence and reflects on the ethical dilemmas of doing this kind of research on violence.

In Part 2, I describe the realities of the lives of the young men participating in my research. Realities in the sense of the type of risks they are exposed to in their daily lives in terms of gangs, violence and racism (Chapter 6), and the actual patterns I found in my data regarding mobility, cultural repertoires, gang affiliation, violence and racism (Chapter 7).

I move on to Part 3, that presents my empirical chapters. My analysis focuses on the dynamics of specific conflict situations. I investigate the social positioning of the young men involved in the actual interaction (Chapter 8). I analyze the dispositions that are brought into play in the actual interaction (Chapter 9). I focus on the perspectives on the horizons as in how the involved parties imagine themselves and the future (Chapter 10). I investigate how the actual place in the city where the situation is played out matters for the interaction (Chapter 11). Finally, I analyze how the specific life phase of the young men involved in the conflict matters for the way the conflicts unfold (Chapter 12).

I conclude in Part 4 by focusing on the consequences of my investigation in terms of empirical conclusions and theoretical implications (Chapter 13). The last chapter of the book focuses on my encounter with the participants in my third fieldwork period after more than ten years of continuous contact. It shows how gangs, violence and racism continue playing a key role in their lives while moving into adulthood.

Note

1Historically, it was mainly the areas designated for Blacks during the forced removals that were referred to as townships. The areas designated for Coloureds tended to be referred to as the Cape Flats. I decided to refer to both the Black and Coloured areas as townships and sometimes the Cape Flats because I did not encounter significant differences in mobility to and from those areas and in experiences with violence, gangs and racism.

2Mobility

Coconut

It is on a Tuesday afternoon and Phumlani walks from the train station to his house in Athlone – a Coloured area in Cape Town. Phumlani is 17 years old and has recently moved to Athlone from Khayelitsha where his parents used to live when they migrated to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape. Khayelitsha is the biggest township in Cape Town and is notorious for its high crime figures and a range of social problems related to poverty and marginalisation. Both his parents are primary school teachers and they have looked forward to the day when they could afford to buy a house in an area they considered better than Khayelitsha. Crime rates are lower in Athlone and it is more centrally located, which means it is closer to former White areas. The locality enables them to send their two sons to a former Model C school (for Whites during apartheid) in the city centre because of the cheaper commuting.

Phumlani is different from his older brother, who soon gets himself into trouble at the school in town. As punishment, he is sent to a local school in Athlone. After a while, his brother even drops out of school in Athlone. He becomes a drug addict and starts stealing – even from his own family. In desperation, his parents sends him to his uncle in the Eastern Cape for a while, and when he comes back he has calmed down, but still refuses to attend school. In Athlone, Phumlani’s brother is known for being good-looking, charming and very streetwise. Phumlani is seen as the opposite. He is shy and prefers to stay inside as much as possible. He does not have friends in the area and does not make an effort to get to know anyone. His social life is limited to school.

On a specific Tuesday afternoon, Phumlani carries his saxophone in a wooden bag. He prefers leaving it at school, but sometimes he has to practice at home and then bringing the instrument home on the train is unavoidable. As always, he wears his school uniform, a blue blazer typical of Model C schools, which he tries to cover under a big sweater. When he gets to the ‘flats’, which are notorious for concentrations of social problems such as unemployment, drug abuse, alcoholism and gangsterism, peers hanging on the corner start screaming at him.

Their favourite derogatory statement when approaching him is ‘coconut’. Phumlani knows he is the prototype of a coconut. He lives in a Black area. During apartheid, he would have been categorised as Black. He attends a former White school in a White suburb. He speaks with a posh Model C school accent when speaking English. He is unfamiliar with slang in isiXhosa. He is not streetwise and isolates himself socially in his home area. He likes music that is typical of Whites. He wants to move to a former White area as soon as he can. In the suburbs, Phumlani is seen as a sensitive and polite young man. In the townships, he is used to being screamed at.

He looks to the other side of the street and continues walking in a determined way, but not too fast. After he passes the group of youngsters, he feels a stone hitting his school bag, and another stone passes his head. One touches his arm. He quickly grabs his saxophone bag, pushes it towards his chest and speeds up. More stones follow. Phumlani starts running. He hears laughter behind him and manages to get home and into the house without being injured by stones or run down by the youngsters.

Gangster

It is on a Wednesday afternoon and Zanezwe arrives in Khayelitsha by bus. He attends the same former White school in the city centre as Phumlani. The drive from his house to school takes about 90 minutes by bus. He is 17 years old and lives together with his mother and older sister in a brick house with a garden and burglar bars in a relatively quiet part of Khayelitsha. Zanezwe’s father passed away seven years earlier when he tried to get revenge against a friend who had stolen their video machine. He went there with a gun and got shot by the friend. Zanezwe’s mother has never had a job. The three of them live off the life insurance of his father. Zanezwe was sent to the school in town because his mother hoped that a good education would enable him to move to the suburbs and get a better life. She paid his school fees once when he got accepted at the school. The particular school had a policy of not rejecting students because of their inabilities to pay fees, so Zanezwe never got expelled. The major expense of attending school in town is therefore not the fees, but the transport costs.

Zanezwe does not have any friends in the suburbs and most of his friends in Khayelitsha attend school in the area. He describes attending school in town as an adventure which gives him the opportunity to experience the world outside the township. Apart from attending school, he rarely gets out of the area. Quite a few of his classmates are afraid of him at school because they expect him to be a gang member. Zanezwe often gets harassed by private security companies in the suburbs that want him to leave the area. During the course of my study, an increasing amount of Zanezwe’s friends got in conflict with the law. They would do break-ins, robberies, car thefts and car-jacking. Zanezwe likes to hang out with these friends, who are organised in what they refer to as a gang. He rarely gets involved in their crimi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Photo introduction
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Realities
• Part 3 Dynamics
• Part 4 Conclusions
• Appendices
• References
• Index