Gang Entry and Exit in Cape Town

Getting Beyond The Streets in Africa’s Deadliest City

Dariusz Dziewanski

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781839097331
  9781839097317
• eBook ISBN:
  9781839097324
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Joint Winner of the 2023 ASSAf Humanities Book Award in the Emerging Researcher Category

Gang violence is a concern being debated by academics, politicians, and communities around the world. Yet effective solutions are still in short supply, partly because too little research concentrates on understanding how people can escape the trap of violent street culture. Responding to that need, this book provides a detailed qualitative account of what it is like to join and then disengage from gangs in Africa's deadliest city.

Through the life histories of twenty-four former Capetonian gang members, alongside hundreds of hours of additional interviews and observation from five years of ethnographic research, Dariusz Dziewanski reimagines gangsterism in a way that pays heed to the overwhelming force of street culture, but also confirms the possibility of overcoming crime and violence amid disenfranchisement and disadvantage.

Rather than simply reproducing the poverty-crime-violence narrative, this book demonstrates how gang members can – and have – transformed their lives, challenging the pessimistic conclusions commonly associated with gang entry; even gang scholars studying street culture usually portray the end point to gang life as either prison or a body bag. By presenting evidence about successful gang exit, Dziewanski showcases a practical starting point for changing how criminologists think about gangs and street culture – offering hope to those trying exit gang life, as well as those trying to help them do so.

Chapter 1

Blood In, Blood Out?

To the casual observer, Cape Town looks glossy and serene. With its picturesque panoramas of Table Mountain and its fashionable shops and restaurants, the city earned the distinction of World Design Capital in 2014, and is regularly ranked among the world's top tourist destinations. But it also consistently makes it to the global list of deadliest cities. In 2019, it had the highest murder rate in Africa, and the eighth highest worldwide (CCSPJP, 2020). No more than 20 minutes away from Cape Town's central ‘City Bowl’, fierce gun battles raged between competing gangs on the ‘Cape Flats’, the expansive, sandy outskirts where the city's townships are located. This is the other side of the so-called ‘Mother City’ ¹ , the part not presented on postcards or travel websites, where the vast majority of its shooting is concentrated (ISS, 2019). Murder rates in Cape Town have been rising since the turn of the decade, and are now much higher than in South Africa's other major urban centres (SACN, 2019). Police statistics indicate an average of more than two gangland murders every day in the Western Cape Province whose capital is Cape Town, about one-third of all killings there (SAPS, 2018).

Some estimates purport that there are around 130 gangs, ² with up to 100,000 members, operating in Cape Town and its surrounds (Civilian Secretariat for Police, 2016). Among these are a number of street gangs ³ of considerable size and permanence. There are also three prison gangs – known collectively as ‘the number’ – that have a long and arcane history of ritualised violence that has permeated the four corners of South Africa's correctional system (Steinberg, 2004a). While prison and street gangs have historically stayed separate, versions of the number gangs – the 26s, 27s and 28s – can now be found throughout Cape Town too. Towards the bottom end of the underworld pecking order is a latticework of smaller, turf-based proto-gangs that usually ally with more established street gangs (Pinnock, 2016). It is mainly in Cape Coloured townships that one finds institutionalised organised street groupings (Hagedorn, 2008), whereas gangs in Black townships are usually relatively small cliques and crews (Sefali, 2014). It is also Coloured street gangs that dominate news headlines, and are the gang category that will be this book's primary focus. They often span several communities, and can be made up of hundreds and thousands of members (Roloff, 2014). Because of the size of street gangs, their members do not operate together in a unified manner, but sustain the gang's unity via a combination of shared cultural practices like specific tattoos, dress codes and slang, as well as through a mutual animosity to outsiders and collective memories of the gang's past (Standing, 2003). The biggest of Cape Town's gangs – like the Americans and Hard Livings – have evolved into street syndicates, or super-gangs, which are highly organised and are franchised across the city (Goga, 2014b).

The Americans are reputed to be the largest gang, and one of the most violent. The ‘American nation’ is made up of many thousands of members who are organised around the red, white and blue of the United States flag, a symbol that they have imported from across the Atlantic and emblazoned onto clothes, graffiti and tattoos across Cape Town. The Americans are affiliated with smaller groups that might also fight under the US banner, ⁴ while retaining their own gang identities. Gangs like the Hard Livings, Mongrels, Laughing Boys and Ghetto Kids by contrast affiliate under the British flag, standing together as a measure against the dominance of their larger Amerophile adversaries. Of course, the frenzied nature of Capetonian gangsterism means that alliances are in flux all the time, shifting and splintering as gangs are born, grow and die off in the battle to control the city's illegal economies. The grasp of gangsters touches every aspect of life, reaching into pockets of crooked cops, corrupt politicians and frightened business owners (Shaw, 2017), and even into the core of the city. Throngs of foreign travellers stumbling through the lively din of Long Street's club scene remain largely oblivious to the fact that security and drugs along the strip are also swayed by gangs (Dolley, 2019).

Still, it is the Coloured communities of the Cape Flats that are the heartland of gangsterism in Cape Town. Gangs there run violent drug business and control protection, taxis and prostitution rackets. It is down the barrel of a firearm or with a knife's blade that they carve up Coloured communities, taking anything from a building, street or block, to large parts of entire townships. When gang leaders want to expand their empires, they send street soldiers out to shoot at competing gang members. Teenagers – or younger – frequently open fire on their enemies from down a residential street or across a school field, sending civilians ducking for cover and rival gangsters running to get their own hardware in retaliation. Other gang-related violence is more targeted. The assassination of an adversary might be planned for days, weeks or months before.

Violence is central to the existence and functioning of gangs everywhere. International research has shown that gang participation generally amplifies rates of violent offending (Sweeten, Pyrooz, & Piquero, 2013), as well as violent victimisation (Peterson, Taylor, & Esbensen, 2004). Most importantly, it underpins the drug economy (Plüddemann, Parry, Louw, & Burton, 2002). Gangs are a real estate business. More turf equals more drug sales, which buys more weaponry to capture yet more ground. Violent acts may also be incorporated into gang admission ceremonies. The head of a prominent Cape Flats gang prevention initiative stated that the act of ‘taking blood’ in initiation is a driver of gang-related violence; other key sources of conflict include: disputes over territory, fights over drugs, personal altercations, exit ceremonies and disagreements over females. Once in the gang, loyalty is proved through atrocity, putting an exclamation point on a process that separates recruits from community and family, bonding them to the gang through blood (Pinnock, 1997). Violence is also used punitively against anybody stepping outside the rules or alliances of a gang. Only the worst transgressions end in murder, however. Warm bodies are more useful, after all, than are cold ones. ‘The Hard Livings will break your legs and pay for the hospital bill’, a Manenberg-based community activist told me, when discussing how the gang punishes members who step out of line. Bruises and broken bones are inscribed upon the body of the transgressor, teaching hard lessons to all members about what is and is not acceptable behaviour. Gang punishments and disputes can also be directed at outsiders, usually opposing gangs, in violence aimed equally at expressing catharsis and domination. ‘Sometimes me and my brothers we have an argument and we both fetch a gun and want to shoot each other... Then we go [shoot the enemy], because we don't want to shoot each other’, said a member of the Laughing Boys.

If the shooting starts, it can be difficult to stop. Gang life is ruled by the notion of ‘blood for blood’, stipulating that when one person gets killed, another must soon die as payback. Every salvo of bullets is treated as an alibi for the next. Wars start with a single incident and spin out into cycles of revenge, as retaliatory assaults, stabbings and shootings swallow up entire communities for months at a time. One death cascades into another, and then another and another. Dozens may eventually die from a single gang war. In addition to the many lives senselessly lost, the price of violence can include: disrupted access to education and other services, restricted mobility, lost livelihoods and diverted public investments. There are tens of millions of rands spent yearly on efforts to quell gang-related violence in the city by different levels of government (Nyathi, 2018) – treating gunshot wounds alone costs up to about 25,000 rands per patient (Lindwa, 2019). ⁵

Like this, gangsterism is continually being woven into the very fabric of social life in Cape Town, giving the aberrant the veneer of the normal, as people try to carry on with family, work and friendships as best they can. In spite of the carnage, many Cape Flats residents are fascinated by gangs, succumbing to a structurally induced version of Stockholm syndrome that compels them to idolise their tormentors in an unconscious and desperate bid for self-preservation. Even those residents who oppose gangs have no option but to live with them. Workers commuting to and from jobs pass by open-air drug markets, while children entertain themselves under mosaics of drying clothes strung between apartment blocks that double as gang hideouts. All too frequently, such scenes are disrupted by gun blasts. After the last shot is spent, police and residents congregate to assess the damage done. Though daily life typically quickly resumes, each violent act lives on as residents discuss gang battles and their resultant arrests, injuries and killings. These spirited discussions can move seamlessly from the spectacular and macabre to more prosaic topics like who has a new job, a new relationship or a new haircut.

As violence disperses imperceptibly into the normal course of things, it becomes ‘routinized’ in an established ‘part of a larger context of wholly expectable, indeed even anticipated, behavior’ (Scheper-Hughes, 1993, pp. 229 and 272). Taking stock of who was injured and killed during any given week became normal procedure throughout this study. Many young people I met had their lives cut tragically short as a result of gang-related murders. Eighteen-year-old Charlie was slayed after successfully making it out of the Dollar Kids gang, shot execution-style for his past affiliations while working on a road construction project. Dillon – just 16 – also made it out, only to be dispatched by the Americans because his father was still a gang leader. Kyle was killed by fellow Laughing Boys member to settle a drug debt, leaving behind a wife and child after struggling to get away from the gang and out of a drug addiction. There were many more who I knew personally, as well as those who I did not, whose premature deaths were brought on senselessly by the pernicious and persistent menace of gang violence.

Stories like these give the impression that gang membership is inevitably ‘blood in and blood out’. This well-known Cape Flats adage is an ominous reference to the death warrant ostensibly signed for anybody trying to flee the streets. But to what extent are such dire depictions accurate? On some level, public fascination with sensational news stories leads to a disproportionate amount of attention being placed on the most extreme aspects of gang activity. After all, the media is governed by its own axioms, favouring reports that adhere to the saying: ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. American gang researchers Decker and Lauritsen observed that gang members also have a stake in highlighting the bloodiest aspects of gangsterism, since ‘the viability of their gang depends on the ability of active gang members to maintain the perception that quitting the gang is nearly impossible’ (2002, p. 61). In the Capetonian context, Standing (2006) noted that the ubiquity of stories about gang members being murdered upon denouncing the gang leaves many afraid to attempt the same, although they might like to try. In our own way too, gang scholars focus on the most morbid features of gang life. Most international criminological literature concentrates on participation in gang activities, with comparatively little being written about if, how and why people leave gangs. This also compounds the belief that the sole way out is in a body bag.

That is not to imply that no literature on exit exists. Research dating back to Fredric Thrasher's (1927) pioneering study of Chicago gangs almost a century ago found that members leave as they mature, get married and find employment. Subsequent studies also indicated that people are able to ‘mature out’ of gangs (Hagedorn, 1994; Hagedorn & Macon 1988; New York City Youth Board, 1960; Pyrooz, 2014; Suttles, 1968; Thornberry, Huizinga, & Loeber, 2004). However, current disengagement literature is largely based in high-income settings like the United States (see: Decker & Lauritsen, 2002; Sweeten et al., 2013; Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, Smith, & Tobin, 2003), so it remains unclear to what extent its lessons are transferable to lower-income contexts. It is reasonable to assume gang leaving might be affected by the relatively more severe levels of deprivation and insecurity found in South African townships.

To be sure, I have seen men and women depart gangs in Cape Town. As well, other local researchers have provided anecdotal evidence, usually as an adjunct to scholarship that concentrates on other gang topics. For instance, after revisiting the Heideveld township that had been the site of his ethnographic work on a small gang called the Homeboys, Jensen stated:

It was with the greatest relief that I returned three years later to find that the Homeboys had ceased to exist as a group. Several had married and moved away. Two had become police officers! The rest either worked or studied. (Jensen, n.d. in Standing, 2006, p. 133)

Rodgers and Jensen (2015) also presented case studies of out-of-gang transitions in Cape Town, demonstrating that members can disengage via romantic relationships and religion. Other scholars, on the contrary, have expressed more pessimistic sentiments regarding members' potential to depart Cape gangs. Lindegaard (2017), for one, found that people's gang personas are largely durable across time, while Standing stated that: ‘wandering into the gang and remaining an entrenched member can be seen as an unavoidable consequence of the social and economic contradictions of life on the [Cape] Flats’ (2006, p. 135). In The Number, Steinberg also wrote forcefully about the struggles of a poor Coloured man scrambling to find the straight and narrow path, only to be repeatedly redirected into criminality, gangs and prison.

The numerous aborted attempts at disengagement I have personally witnessed further corroborate how difficult this is to do. Important obstacles to exit are: threats of violence, criminalisation by police, diminished social options and stigma that can follow gang membership (Feavel & Pyrooz, 2014). Another obvious impediment is that criminal records all but sink possibilities of staying financially afloat in an economy where the tide of unemployment is already so high (Standing, 2005). Hustling might be the solitary recourse an ex-gangster feels he or she has to make ends meet (Hagedorn, 1994). Somebody without the right social connections will find it especially difficult to land formal work (Brotherton & Barrios, 2011). By contrast, gangs are looking to hire 24/7, and are the one place where being an ex-prisoner actually increases his or her chances of employment. As a result, many youngsters on the Cape Flats grow up thinking that becoming a gangster is the surest way to attain financial freedom, and that prison is a rite of passage that is required to enhance one's street credibility and move up the ranks of the gang (Samara, 2011).

The City Bowl offers preferable alternatives. Living there follows a line of thinking developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1986), who believed that the well-to-do and well-connected have access to prestigious schools and elite networks that can be a big boost to their professional prospects. Not every job opportunity is posted on an employment site. Knowing the right person can help uncover these. Then knowing how to sell yourself properly can help you land the job. Growing up with a silver spoon, going to a top school and joining a swanky club teach one how to handle hoity-toity customs and conventions, which are advantageous to ascending the corporate ladder. Such ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1986, pp. 243–248) is slippery and elusive, and difficult to grasp for outsiders to high society. This makes it exclusive and valuable. Knowing the ‘proper’ way to enunciate a word, the latest fashion trend, when to laugh at a joke or even what people are laughing about conveys an intimate familiarity with upper-class circles, which in turn verifies one's belonging there. In fact, every social space has idiosyncrasies that draw a distinction between insiders and interlopers. Townships operate according to their own bits of cultural code, just like the city centre does. Think back to the lessons Gavin offered me in the preface as I entered the commotion of the kampie. That setting was as indiscernible to me as the stuffy ambiance of Cape Town's colonial Mount Nelson Hotel might have been to him. Whereas bluster and bellicosity would certainly get you booted from the Mount Nelson, being a wild, unshrinking and angry ‘motherfucker’ is important ‘street capital’ (Sandberg, 2008, p. 156) – a street cultural competence and recognisably legitimate form of authority in informal settings – for a gangster trying to preside over the drug market in a slum community.

Gang researchers writing on ‘street culture’ (Bourgois, 2002; Fraser, 2015; Ilan, 2015; Sandberg & Pedersen, 2011) have built on Bourdieu's theories and concepts – cultural capital, along with ‘social field’ (1993, pp. 30–31) and ‘habitus’ (1988, p. 782) – to show how young people everywhere in the world who are born into the pressure cooker of urban vulnerability might turn to gangs as a rational response to irrational social circumstances. Rather than accepting trifling wages, inhumane working conditions and racial prejudice, youngsters instead celebrate their marginality as a badge of honour, drawing pride and power in what the privileged classes would find shocking and shameful. What is broadly referred to as street culture in academic literature is popularly called ‘gangsterism’ (Standing, 2005, p. 12) in Capetonian street vernacular; it is an observable set of social practices – drug use, profligacy, hedonism, risk-taking, hypersensitivity, intimidation and aggression – that pitches loyalty to gangs against commitment to polite society. For its adherents, gangsterism promises protection (Jensen, 2006), dignity (Jensen, 2008) and income (Pinnock, 2016), in a context where equal economic opportunity (Crankshaw, 2012), active and responsive policing (O'Regan & Pikoli, 2014) and accessible criminal justice (Gould, 2014) are generally unavailable. The ‘structural power’ (Wolf, 1990, p. 587) of economic inequality, community deprivation and racial division hits Coloured communities in Cape Town hard, putting the balance of probabilities against the people who live there. So people make do, out of a desire to catalyse something from nothing. Gangs are made up of tough, poorly educated young men and women who have nowhere to go, and whose greatest resource is their indomitable will to live and die on their own terms. What might otherwise be judged by some as the moral failing of somebody simply opting to behave badly or criminally, is anything but.

Make no mistake, though, street culture is a self-defeating strategy in the long run. It is the already-excluded clashing with each other in order to not be the one who is left depressed, destitute, disfigured or dead, in an attempt to rise above their circumstances by pulling down those around them. Too much time spent cheatin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Map of Cape Town
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Blood In, Blood Out?
• Chapter 2 The Landscape of African Gangs
• Chapter 3 A City Still Segregated
• Chapter 4 Leaving the Streets
• Chapter 5 Walking the Righteous Path
• Chapter 6 Gavin
• Chapter 7 Beyond the Street
• References
• Index