at the limits of spatial governmentality: a message from the tip of … · 2016-08-02 · at the...

ISSN 0143-6597 printISSN 1360-2241 online02040665-25 q 2002 Third World QuarterlyDOI 1010800143659022000005328 665

Third World Quarterly Vol 23 No 4 pp 665ndash689 2002

At the limits of spatial governmentalitya message from the tip of Africa

STEVEN ROBINS

ABSTRACT Urban studies scholars drawing on Foucaultrsquos analysis of govern-mentality have investigated how urban social orders are increasingly moreconcerned with the management of space rather than on the discipline ofoffenders or the punishment of offences (Merry 2001) This paper examines thelsquorationalityrsquo and efficacy of spatial governmentality in post-apartheid CapeTown and shows how the city has increasingly become a lsquofortress cityrsquo (Davis1990) much like cities such as Los Angeles Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro Theselsquoglobal citiesrsquo are increasingly characterised by privatised security systems inmiddle class suburbs shopping malls and gated communities (Caldeira 1999)These spatial forms of governmentality draw on sophisticated security systemscomprising razor wire and electrified walls burglar alarms and safe rooms aswell as vicious guard dogs neighbourhood watches private security companiesand automated surveillance cameras On the other side of the race and classdivide are urban ghettoes characterised by growing poverty and everydayviolence These socio-spatial inequalities continue to be reproduced despiteurban planning initiatives aimed at desegregating the apartheid city Althoughthe media and the middle classes highlight the dangers of crime and violencethey tend to ignore the structures of inequality that fuel the growth of crimesyndicates and violent drug economies that are reproducing these urbangovernance crises Given the diminished resources of the neo-liberal state thepolicing of middle class residential and business districts is increasingly beinglsquooutsourcedrsquo to private security companies In working class neighbourhoods ofCape Town such as Manenberg the state has attempted to re-establishgovernance by resorting to new forms of spatial governmentality The paperdraws attention to the limits of these attempts to assert state control through themanagement of space Spatial governance in places like Manenberg will continueto be relatively ineffectual given existing levels of social inequality and racialpolarization Such processes are reproduced by massive unemployment andracialised poverty resulting from socio-spatial legacies of apartheid and CapeTownrsquos shift from a manufacturing to a tourist IT and financial serviceseconomy Although this paper focuses on attempts at re-establishing governancein a crime and gangster-ridden working class neighbourhood of Cape Town itaddresses these issues in relation to city-wide shifts to new forms of spatialgovernmentality after apartheid

Steven Robins is in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology University of the Western CapePrivate Bag X17 Belville Cape Town 7535 South Africa E-mail SROBINSUWCACZA

STEVEN ROBINS

Major elements of instability in the neoliberal scenario [include] the downward trendin corporate taxes and the inability to finance common goods nationally andglobally hellip Without taxation no infrastructure Without taxation no propereducation no affordable health care Without taxation no public sphere Without apublic sphere no legitimacy Without legitimacy no security This in itself is afamiliar future scenario It could take the form of global lsquoCalifornianizationrsquo whileCalifornia is being lsquoBrazilianizedrsquo A world of gated communities high barbed-wirefences steep hierarchies robots on the workfloor and at the gate and automatedsurveillance all around A world of creeping privatization of public space as in LosAngeles (cf Mike Davisrsquo City of Quartz (1990) A lsquopost-humanrsquo world hellip of whichwe see one face in Blade Runner and other cinematic dystopias (NederveenPieterse 2000 11)

Cape Townrsquos city managers and planners imagine their cityrsquos future as a globallycompetitive city with advanced IT and financial service sectors and a boomingtourism industry with world-class hotels and convention centres a Californiandreamscape at the tip of Africa Although the lsquoCalifornianizationrsquo1 of Cape Townis indeed taking place it seems to be replicating itself less as Africarsquos SiliconValley than as a fortress city of gated communities (Caldeira 1996 2000) lsquozero-tolerancersquo policing community policing strategies (eg neighbourhood watchescommandos and vigilante groups) private security companies automatedsurveillance cameras2 high barbed-wire fencing and vicious guard dogs on oneside of the divide and urban ghettoes of racialised poverty and violence on theother (Davis 1990 Nederveen Pieterse 2000) After apartheid the black lsquotown-shipsrsquo of Cape Town have become even more segregated and disconnected fromthe lsquowhitersquo middle class parts of the city In a context of rising levels of crime andviolence the townships are perceived by middle class suburban residents to beeven more dangerous and lsquounrulyrsquo than they were under apartheid

Despite concerted city-wide planning initiatives aimed at desegregating theapartheid city the everyday socio-spatial legacies of apartheid continue to bereproduced middle class Capetonians seldom venture near the townships andfears of lsquoblack crimersquo continue to fuel a booming security industry and a fortifiedarchitecture of fear in the leafy middle class suburbs and shopping malls (Davis1990) While the media and the middle classes regard the unacceptably highlevels of crime and violence as an indication of a severe crisis of governancethere is a loud silence on the role of neoliberal policies in reproducing theconditions of poverty and unemployment that sustain these violent economiesWith the limited state resources available for policing as in so many cities inthe North the policing of middle class residential and business districts isbeing outsourced to private security companies resulting in new forms of spatialgovernance (Merry 2001) Although this paper focuses on attempts at re-establishing governance in a crime- and gangster-ridden working class neigh-bourhood of Cape Town it addresses these issues in relation to city-wide shifts toforms of lsquospatial governmentalityrsquo

Sally Merry (2001 16) writes that whereas lsquomodern penality is largelystructured around the process of retraining the soul rather than corporal punish-ment recent scholarship has highlighted another regime of governance controlthrough the management of spacersquo According to Merry (2001 16ndash17)

666

AT THE LIMITS OF SPATIAL GOVERNMENTALITY

New forms of spatially organized crime control characterize contemporary citiesfrom the explosion of gated communities (Caldeira 1999) to lsquoprostitution freezonesrsquo as a regulatory strategy for the sex trade (Perry and Sanchez 1998 Sanchez1997) to lsquoviolence free zonesrsquo as a way of diminishing communal conflict in IndiaSpatialized strategies have been applied to the control of alcohol consumption(Valverde 1998) and the regulation of smoking hellip New community-policingstrategies towards youth emphasize moving potentially criminal youths to otherareas rather than prosecuting them (Ericson and Haggerty 1999 169) These are allexamples of new regulatory mechanisms that target spaces rather than persons Theyexclude offensive behavior rather than attempting to correct or reform offendersThe regulation of space through architectural design and security devices isgenerally understood as a complement to disciplinary penality but fundamentallydifferent in its logic and technologies (Ewick 1997 Shearing and Stenning 1985Shields 1989 Simon 1988 Valverde et al 1999)

This paper seeks to understand the implications for democracy and citizenship ofnew forms of spatial governmentality that contribute to socio-spatial exclusionsin an already highly segregated apartheid city Spatial governance and theprivatisation of public space seem to emerge in contexts of increasing racial andclass polarisation and rising unemployment and poverty These governanceinitiatives are also taking place in contexts in which the contracting and retreatingneoliberal state (and its security apparatus) is increasingly helpless in the faceof dramatically escalating levels of violent crime and social disorder This isexacerbated by the fact that large sections of the urban underclass do not seem tobuy into the liberal democratic values of citizenship given their limited accessto economic and political rights in a context of jobless growth and structuralunemployment It will become clear in the following pages that these develop-ments have placed enormous obstacles in the way of attempts by the SouthAfrican state to re-establish governance following decades of state violence andsystematic race and class inequalities under apartheid

While political violence and the bloody civil war of the 1980s have all butdissipated everyday violence and criminal activity continue unchecked Giventhis bleak scenario it is hardly surprising that the South African state isstruggling to re-establish governance after apartheid Neither is it surprising thatordinary citizens have lost faith in the capacity of the police and judicial systemto stem the tide of lawlessness and violence that has swept across the country

This crisis in governance is particularly evident in South African cities whereurban governance cannot rely on traditional liberal democratic notions oflsquotrusting citizensrsquo and lsquotrustworthyrsquo government but rather on an urban socialorder built upon a combination of systems of punishment discipline and security(Merry 2001) In parts of Cape Town this form of governance which isconstantly under attack from heavily armed and sophisticated crime syndicatesrelies upon the micro-management of urban space When it is successful as inthe historically white middle class parts of some South African cities spatialgovernance usually involves a range of exclusionary practices including theexclusion of lsquooffensive behaviourrsquo and people usually the poor and homelesswho look dangerous or disorderly

In the absence of resources for surveillance cameras and private security

667

STEVEN ROBINS

beyond the fortified walls of middle class suburbs and shopping malls the statecontinues to struggle to re-establish governance in lsquounrulyrsquo black and lsquocolouredrsquotownships

When anti-apartheid planners and activists sought to render the townshipsungovernable during the 1980s they could not have anticipated how difficult itwould be to re-establish governance after apartheid Now the proverbial chickenshave come home to roost and the ANC government is struggling to push back thetidal wave of crime violence and lawlessness By means of a case study thatfocuses on innovative attempts by the City of Cape Town Municipality (CCTM) toestablish governance in Manenberg a working class lsquocolouredrsquo community I willdraw attention to the structural dimensions of the lsquogovernance questionrsquo Thiswill involve locating the crisis in governance within the context of a shift to aservice economy that has undermined traditional manufacturing and textilesectors that used to provide jobs to residents of working class communities suchas Manenberg Governance problems in places such as Manenberg I argue areexacerbated by these macroeconomic policy shifts

A governance crisis at the tip of Africa

The spate of infant rapes in December 2001 shocked even the most hardenedSouth Africans used to living in a society characterised by extraordinarily highlevels of criminal violence and violence against women3 South African citizensincreasingly call on the post-apartheid state to adopt tougher measures to combatcrime including the reintroduction of capital punishment Meanwhile thosedisillusioned with lack of capacity of the police and judicial system have resortedto community policing strategies including gated communities para-militaryrural commandos neighbourhood watch structures and the formation of vigilantegroupings such as PAGAD Amadlosi and Mapogo Despite populist calls for thereintroduction of the lsquokangaroo courtsrsquo and peoplersquos justice of the 1980s the ANC

government remains committed to the rule of law and to liberal democraticprinciples and procedures of governance

At first glance the chaotic and violent character of post-apartheid (un)civilsociety seems to conform to media and scholarly representations of African statesand societies as fundamentally lsquodysfunctionalrsquo and ungovernable For instancewe have recently witnessed the emergence of a growth industry in academicaccounts of lsquokleptocraticrsquo lsquocriminalrsquo and authoritarian African states (Bayart etal 1999) These scholarly representations of African states reproduce mediastereotypes of Africa as a lsquobasket casersquo continent doomed to human disastersincluding famine war endemic corruption coups genocide AIDS and so on Themost recent expression of this academic trend has been the writings of FranccediloisBayart et al (1999) and others who focus on the bizarre and grotesque rituals ofAfrican state power and lsquothe politics of the bellyrsquo (Mbembe 1992 Bayart 1993)At times this literature appears to mimic the exoticism of traditional anthro-pological topics such as witchcraft Most of these studies revel in these culturaland political lsquopathologiesrsquo without locating such phenomena within the politicaleconomy of underdevelopment It appears that the lsquocultural turnrsquo ushered in bythe post-cold war hegemony of post-structural and postmodern theory has

668


valorised a lsquonew exoticismrsquo that focuses on witchcraft kleptocratic states andcriminal syndicates while obscuring any reference to the economic relations ofunderdevelopment and the more mundane material dimensions of everyday lifein Africa

It would seem that any understanding of the rise in occult and religious move-ments and criminal violence in post-apartheid South Africa requires locatingthese developments within the context of recent shifts in the economy Forinstance the loss of well over half a million jobs between 1994 and 2000 largelyas a result of liberalisation policies and the shift to a lean neoliberal state4 hasbecome a catalyst for the dramatic expansion of associational life and informaleconomies including religious and occult movements savings associations lottoand pyramid schemes international drug cartels and crime syndicates anti-crimevigilante groups informal taxi organisations and so on (see Comaroff ampComaroff 1999 2000)5

It will become clear in the Manenberg case study discussed below that themassive growth of gangs and drug trafficking in working class townships of CapeTown is indeed symptomatic of these broader political and economic processesThese post-apartheid developments cannot be understood without takinginto account the impact of the introduction of the neoliberal lsquocontract statersquocharacterised by privatisation outsourcing publicndashprivate partnerships (PPPs) andlsquodownsizingrsquo and lsquorightsizingrsquo initiatives Neither can state interventions in urbangovernance be understood without reference to shifts from manufacturing toservice economies

How lsquocivilrsquo is civil society in the lsquoliberated zonesrsquo

During the anti-apartheid struggle terms such as lsquocivil societyrsquo lsquocommunityrsquo andlsquothe townshipsrsquo conjured up images of virtuous and heroic working class blackand lsquocolouredrsquo people resisting apartheid state repression The progressive anddemocratic connotations attached to these conceptions of community wereperiodically called into question by the violence of lsquokangaroo courtsrsquo (or peoplersquoscourts) and the lsquonecklacingsrsquo and brutal slayings of alleged impimpis(informers) Nonetheless the political actions of these communities weregenerally valorised and lionised by the anti-apartheid movement as well as bythe more liberal voices within the mass media and the international communitySuch conceptions of lsquocommunityrsquo as an unmitigated lsquosocial goodrsquo have howevercome under scrutiny during the post-apartheid period The undemocratic illiberaland at times violent practices of chiefs warlords and shacklords as well as ofcommunity-based vigilante groups such as Mapogo Amadlosi and PeopleAgainst Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) have drawn attention to the Janus-facedcharacter of the politics of lsquocommunityrsquo after apartheid This has also drawnattention to the limits of the post-apartheid statersquos attempt to render the townshipsgovernable

Numerous cases of lsquomob justicersquo have been reported in the press in recentyears Newspaper reports on the stoning to death of suspected thieves and rapistsby angry crowds of crime-weary residents of black townships draws attention towhat is becoming increasingly commonplace The following caption refers to one

669

STEVEN ROBINS

such vigilante killing in one of Cape Townrsquos black townships lsquoGruesome justicehellip Shocked residents stare in horror at the body of a suspected thief who waspelted with stones attacked with sjamboks and everything the enraged membersof the mob could lay their hands onrsquo (City Press 7 October 2001) The reportnoted that in less than a month three people had been stoned to death in separateincidents by angry crowds of residents in Cape Townrsquos Philippi and Khayelitshatownships From the perspective of the ANC government these activities pose aserious challenge to liberal notions of democracy and the rule of law The strong-arm tactics and violent patronage politics of some community leadershipstructuresmdashfor instance civics Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP)forums ward committees street committees mdashhave also compromised notions ofdemocratic practice and citizen participation Clearly community-enforced formsof punishment and discipline are taking place alongside the kind of spatialgovernmentality characterised by high walls guard dogs private securitycompanies surveillance cameras and policed shopping malls

During the height of the anti-apartheid struggle in the mid-1980s the liberationmovements and community-based organisations had sought to render the town-ships ungovernable and create lsquoliberated zonesrsquo The post-apartheid periodhowever has witnessed concerted efforts by the state to reassert spatial gover-nance and control over what are now seen as lsquounruly townshipsrsquo To this effectthe ANC government and the Department of Safety and Security have activelyencouraged the formation of Community Policing Forums as well as neighbour-hood watches The statersquos sanctioning of these community policing structures haslargely been a response to government recognition that it does not have thecapacity and resources to deal with the massive explosion of criminal and gangactivities in South African cities (see Steinberg 2001 Comaroff amp Comaroffforthcoming)6 This shift to community policing can be seen as a form oflsquooutsourcingrsquo of policing functions by a neoliberal state unable to address crimeon its own It also draws attention to the statersquos acknowledgement of the need toreclaim governance in poor communities

The state has encountered countless problems in its attempts to lsquoreclaim thetownshipsrsquo These problems include urban land invasions high levels of crimeand violence and the non-payment of rental rates and levies for water andelectricity One of the most serious problems faced by the state is how to dealwith lsquoinformalrsquo and illegal activities that are increasingly sustained by a politicaleconomy of criminal syndicates and gangs involved in drug trafficking and otherillegal activities Working class communities are no longer the romanticisedspaces of heroic resistance to apartheid Instead many of these poor communitieshave become unruly spaces of dysfunction and disorder from the perspective ofthe state The case study below focuses on the attempts by the Department ofCommunity Development (Devcom) of the City of Cape Town Municipality(CCTM or lsquoCouncilrsquo) to re-establish governance in Manenberg a lsquocolouredrsquoworking class community classified as lsquodysfunctionalrsquo by senior city officialsThis was to be done through a variety of interventions including the introductionof individual home-ownership lsquooil spotrsquo strategies of policing and crime pre-vention and the lsquohardeningrsquo and protection of public facilities In other wordssignificant aspects of the Councilrsquos intervention involved what Sally Merry

670


(2001) refers to as lsquospatial governmentalityrsquoThe Manenberg case study suggests that communities with weak governance

structures and poor policing capabilities can become a nightmare in whichcitizens are terrorised by warlords shacklords and gangsters It was preciselysuch a scenario that plagued Devcomrsquos urban renewal programmes Residentstold me of the physical dangers involved in having to navigate competing gangterritories to access trains taxis and Council facilities such as schools the clinicthe library or housing office (see Salo forthcoming) The clinic for instance hadto be relocated to a classroom in a Manenberg school because it was situated inthe middle of a gang battlefield It was therefore hardly surprising that theCouncil identified the re-establishment of governance in Manenberg as a priorityA Manenberg Task Team was established lsquoto address the precipitous circum-stances that staff faced in delivering services with particular reference to Manen-bergrsquo The task team was mandated lsquoto follow a course of action that ensures (1)staff safety and security (2) staff receive maximum emotional and psychologicalsupport (3) that plans to ensure service delivery be put in placersquo7 The attempt tosecure Council facilities and create safe public spaces proved to be more difficultthan was initially anticipated Before proceeding to a detailed discussion of thesegovernance issues however it is necessary to situate Manenberg within thebroader socio-spatial order of the apartheid city

lsquoFortress LArsquo at the tip of Africa Spatial governance after apartheid8

The race and class divide between Cape Townrsquos historically white inner city andsouthern suburbs on the one side and the black and lsquocolouredrsquo townships on theother remains firmly intact in the new South Africa By removing blacks andcoloureds from multiracial working class inner city neighbourhoods such asDistrict Six in the 1960s and 1970s and relocating entire communities tooutlying Cape Flats townships such as Manenberg and Gugulethu apartheidplanners created the racialised grids of the apartheid city The relocation ofcommunities to Council flats on the lsquoCape Flatsrsquo represented a first wave ofmodernist social engineering While this housing scheme was an integral part ofapartheid segregationist planning recent housing development schemesdiscussed below have been lsquoprogressiversquo interventions aimed at reforming thesocial and spatial fabric of fragmented and lsquodysfunctionalrsquo communities shatteredby unemployment everyday violence and the devastating legacies of the forcedremovals of the 1960s and 1970s

The template of the lsquopostmodernrsquo post-apartheid city could seamlessly settleupon the spatial order produced by this earlier wave of apartheid social engineer-ing In recent years the historically white middle class parts of contemporaryCape Town have witnessed a massive expansion of gentrification mega-develop-ments heritage and tourist sites and spectacles of consumption such as theVictoria and Alfred Waterfront and the Cavendish Square Tygervalley andCentury City mega-shopping malls-cum-recreation centres These relatively newspaces of capital investment contrast starkly with the poverty wastelands anddesolation of the racially segregated black townships of the Cape Flats Theseracialised geographies of post-apartheid Cape Town reproduce the spatial logic of

671

STEVEN ROBINS

capital under apartheid despite the dramatic political reforms of the 1990s Theblack and coloured working classes remain trapped in places of extreme povertylocated at a considerable distance from middle class (mostly white) centres ofcommerce tourism and consumption This socio-spatial divide is reproducedthrough investment strategies that tend to steer clear of the dangerous anddesolate spaces of the Cape Flats ghettoes A multi-million-rand surveillance andsecurity sector ensures that these (mostly white) middle class neighbourhoodsand shopping malls are defended against what is perceived to be a dangerousunderclass lsquoOtherrsquo9

Since the April 1994 democratic elections levels of gang-related violence inworking class neighbourhoods in the Cape Flats have escalated on an unprece-dented scale The dramatic growth in the mid-1990s of PAGAD vigilantism has nodoubt contributed to the lsquotit for tatrsquo killings on the Cape Flats During the firsthalf of 1998 over 60 drug- and gang-related killings took place on the Cape Flatscontributing towards an undeclared war between gangs and PAGAD10 The lsquoCityFathersrsquo (sic) and tourist entrepreneurs panic every time this gang violence spillsover into lsquowhite spacesrsquo of tourism and consumption This has intensified themilitarisation of city life through an architectural semiotics of lsquodefensible spacersquothereby transforming Cape Town into a smaller version of lsquoFortress LArsquo (Davis1990) In this process of fortification control over defensible space becomes themajor concern for both rich and poor The urban poor of the Cape Flats lack themeans to command and defend space and generally find themselves trapped indangerous spaces11 These neighbourhoods are dangerous precisely becausethe need continuously to appropriate and defend space tends to result in theviolent expulsion of unwanted elements for example enemy gang members andoutsiders As David Harvey reminds us

Fine-tuned ethnic religious racial and status discriminations are frequently calledinto play with such a process of community construction Since ownership of eventhe basic means of reproduction (such as housing) is restricted the main way todominate space is through continuous appropriation Exchange values are scarceand so the pursuit of use values for daily survival is central to social action Thismeans frequent material and interpersonal transactions and the formation of verysmall scale communities With [the formation of] community space use values getshared through some mix of mutual aid and mutual predation creating tight butoften highly conflictual interpersonal social bonding in both private and publicspaces The result is an often intense attachment to place and lsquoturfrsquo and to an exactsense of boundaries because it is only through active appropriation that control overspace is assured (Harvey 1985 261)

These low-income townships are also spaces in which the state perceives anurgent need to intervene both to contain contagious social ills (from sex work totuberculosis) and to pacify and control what are often seen to be violentdangerous and unruly populations The demolition and relocation of lsquounhygienicslumsrsquo has been a standard measure of control over the lsquodangerous underclassesrsquoin South African cities and elsewhere in the world According to Harvey (1985261) within this spatialised scenario the state tends to be seen by the under-classes as a repressive external agency rather than a resource that is controllableand beneficial This spatialised class warfare continues to shape the post-

672


apartheid urban landscapeBy contrast the more affluent middle class can command space through spatial

mobility and ownership of the basic means of reproduction for instance housesand cars (Harvey 1985 261) In addition the (mostly white) middle classes havethe means to protect and fortify their suburban homes with vicious dogs highwalls the latest alarm systems and a proliferation of private security firms Sincethe affluent are generally economically self-sufficient they do not need tocommand space through continuous appropriation and neither do they needstreet-level interpersonal relations and neighbourhood networks in order to meettheir basic needs Instead their common interests and concerns generally revolvearound a need to maintain the standards and property value of the built environ-ment through a shared commitment to common conceptions of taste toneaesthetic appreciation and symbolic and cultural capital (1985 262) Sincemoney provides access to the communities and necessary resources these areless exclusionary communities (in terms of ethnicity and race) and tend to havediffuse and fluid boundaries Given this scenario it is not surprising that the stateis seen to be both beneficial and controllable providing security and assisting inkeeping undesirables out

In this contemporary scenario of class warfare and the militarisation ofeveryday life public space is destroyed in order to insulate spatially and sociallythe middle classes from undesirable Others For instance in new mega-structuresand supermalls street frontage is designed in ways that consciously exclude theunderclasses and street persons and hawkers strollers and street people areoften evicted from shopping malls by private security guards always on thelookout for non-consumers who might disrupt public consumption Meanwhilethose who live in South Africarsquos urban ghettoes find themselves socially andspatially imprisoned in repressive and bloody war zones where their security andsafety can no longer be guaranteed by a state financially hamstrung by cutbacksbrought about by neoliberal fiscal austerity measures Given this privatisation ofthe policing of public places it is only the wealthy who are able to afford theservices of private security firms while the poor remain easy targets of gang andcriminal violence

In Cape Town tourism and the service industry have become key sectorswithin a lsquomega cityrsquo economy that is both globally connected and internallydivided into middle class white spaces of wealth generation consumption andrecreation and black and coloured areas characterised by poverty and lack ofresources These socio-spatial legacies of the apartheid city are being reinforcedby strategies of capital investment and accumulation whereby mega-shoppingmalls and recreation centres are located near middle class white suburbs andbusiness centres at great distances from informal settlements and lsquocolouredrsquo andblack ghettoes The location of these business investments serves to reinscribethe spatial logic of the apartheid city and to subvert attempts by progressiveplanners to desegregate the city by bringing business investment and infra-structure closer to the historically black areas In other words while the lsquocitystatersquo claims that it is committed to undoing and dismantling the racialised gridsof the apartheid city national and global capital undermines these plans bycontinuing to flow to white middle class parts of the city What this means is that

673

STEVEN ROBINS

the lsquocolouredrsquo and African working class and the unemployed continue to beconfined within under-resources spaces of poverty and everyday violence thatare at great distances from the fortified middle class spaces of consumptionrecreation tourism and business These processes are also reinforced by a statethat is unwilling or unable to intervene in land markets thereby reproducingapartheid planning practices that locate low-incomes black housing developmentat the southwest periphery of the city where land is cheapest The followingsection discusses spatial governance and planning in the making and unmakingof the apartheid city

Spatial governancemdashthe plannerrsquos fetish The making and unmaking ofDistrict Six and Manenberg Cape Town

Manenberg was established as a lsquoColoured townshiprsquo following the 1960s and1970s Group Areas Act-forced removals from District Six and other lsquowhitersquo partsof Cape Town The design of lsquocolouredrsquo working class townships such as Manen-berg was based on Ebenezer Howardrsquos lsquogarden cityrsquo model with blocks of flatsterraced and semi-detached houses and a standardised architecture (Pinnock1989) Situated 15 kilometres from Cape Townrsquos city centre Manenberg isspatially isolated from adjacent black and coloured townships by means of high-ways mainroads railway lines and green belts and buffer strips (Jensen ampTurner 1996 83ndash85 Le Grange amp Robins 1997) These socio-spatial legaciescontinue to have a profound influence on the shape of Cape Town after apartheid

Planners of South African cities drew inspiration from Le Corbusier rsquoslsquoSurgical Methodrsquo in their attempts to radically reconfigure the urban landscapeThey appear to have shared Le Corbusierrsquos faith in rationally conceived lsquomasterrsquoplans and urban designs that would create social order by means of lsquoproperrsquozoning of land use and the segregation of different social groups In the name ofsocial order and racial harmony South African urban planners appropriated LeCorbusierrsquos notion of planning as a rational technical process that could bedivorced from politics It is worth quoting at length from Norman Hansonrsquos intro-ductory remarks made at the 1938 Town Planning Congress in Johannesburg

It is possible to achieve this radical reorganization by drastic methods only bya fresh start on cleared ground This ruthless eradication directed towards arevitalizing process we haves following Le Corbusierrsquos lead named the SurgicalMethod hellip through surgery we must create order through organization we mustmake manifest the spirit of a new age (Hanson in Pinnock 1989 156 cited inJensen amp Turner 1996 85)

This utopian faith in the capacity dramatically to transform lsquodisorderlyrsquo urbanenvironments reflects the thinking of influential planners and architects goingback to Baron Haussmannrsquos mid-19th century renovation of Paris and EbenezerHowardrsquos lsquoGarden Citiesrsquo12 These ideas emerged in the 19th century in responseto the problems of social disorder and threats to public health that came to beassociated with the working class neighbourhoods of industrial cities of theBritish Victorian age These planning interventions all share the assumption thatit is possible radically to redesign the built environment in ways that improve the

674


social fabric of lsquodysfunctionalrsquo communities and neighbourhoods In otherwords planners believed and continue to believe that social behaviour could bestrongly influenced by urban form This case study draws attention to the limitsof such lsquophysicalistrsquo thinking which continues to animate post-apartheidplanning discourses This will involve interrogating some of the underlyingassumptions and urban planning in relation to questions of housing builtenvironment and citizenship and governanceStarting from the premise that lsquohouses are much more than bricks and mortarrsquothe following discussion examines the micro-politics and development discoursesof housing and urban renewal in Manenberg following the 1999 tornado thatswept through this coloured working class neighbourhood Manenberg wasdescribed by City of Cape Town officials as lsquodysfunctionalrsquo using indicators suchas the extraordinarily high levels of criminal and gang violence tuberculosissubstance abuse the prevalence of teenage pregnancies and domestic violenceThe Manenberg case study shows how housing interventions are often deeplyembedded in ideological conceptions of lsquodevelopmentrsquo that seek to create goodgovernance and virtuous consumer-citizens out of the raw material of bricksmortar and lsquothe unruly massesrsquo13 It will become clear that despite claims to thecontrary low-income housing and urban planning in South Africa have alwaysbeen ideologically charged and planners policy makers city managers andactivists have engaged with urban development interventions in relation to thesepolitically charged questions of race ethnicity citizenship and governance

Housing citizens in the Cape of Storms

In August 1999 a tornado swept through the working class lsquotownshipsrsquo of theCape Flats in Cape Town The destruction was particularly devastating in Manen-berg a lsquocolouredrsquo neighbourhood known for its gang violence and for being theheadquarters of Rashied Staggiersquos Hard Livings gangs14 Manenberg constantlyfeatures in the media as a space of lsquosocial pathologyrsquo and dysfunctionality arepresentation that is reproduced through almost daily violence and gang killingsIt is also associated with the highly militaristic and hierarchical prison gangs suchas the lsquo28srsquo and lsquo26srsquo that have in recent years transformed themselves intosophisticated corporate structures connected to multinational drug cartels andcrime syndicates such as lsquoThe Firmrsquo the Hard Livings and lsquothe AmericansrsquoDrug trafficking alcohol sales and distribution gun-running taxis and sex workare the major sources of revenue of this multibillion-dollar industry With itsextremely high levels of unemployment and poverty Manenberg has become aripe recruiting ground for the foot soldiers of the drug kingpins the merchantsand hitmen

It was within this scenario that the CCTM planners policy makers and seniormanagers identified Manenberg as one of Cape Townrsquos six lsquozones of povertyrsquothat required lsquospecial treatmentrsquo15 The devastation unleashed during the tornadoprovided a unique opportunity to intervene in the social fabric and spatial designof Manenberg A CCTM senior manager was quoted in the press as saying that thetornado was a godsend as the destruction of blocks of Council flats controlledby the gangs would allow the Council to redesign the social fabric and built

675

STEVEN ROBINS

environment from scratch The Devcom in the City of Cape Town (CCT)16 wasresponsible for the implementation of the tornado rebuild and urban regenerationprogrammes in Manenberg In line with statutory development frameworks CCT

defined its major tasks as (1) to re-establish governance in a gang-ravaged partof Cape Town (2) to bring marginalised citizens into the mainstream marketeconomy and (3) to create the conditions for citizen participation in everydaypolitical life (Vawda personal communication see also Chipkin forthcoming)

One of Devcomrsquos key strategies was to use individual ownership of low-income houses as a means towards rebuilding moral and political community andbreaking the stranglehold of gangs that controlled many Council rental flats(lsquoCourtsrsquo) A key element in this strategy was to replace rental housing withindividual home ownership Council flats were perceived to reproduce theconditions of welfare dependency that contributed towards the disintegration ofthe nuclear family which was deemed responsible for systemic social problemsin Manenberg Devcomrsquos line of argument was that the Manenberg communitywas lsquodysfunctionrsquo because family units tended towards disintegration and weretherefore unable to socialise youth into adulthood (see Chipkin forthcomingSalo forthcoming) In other words Devcomrsquos task was to create the conditionsfor lsquoproperrsquo governance and citizenship in what was deemed to be a lsquodys-functionalrsquo community

In attempting to combat the gangs and Manenbergrsquos social problems theCouncil drew on the purportedly positive attributes of individual home owner-ship This was seen to be part of a strategy to help poor and working classcitizens break out of a lsquoculture of povertyrsquo and dependency that was perceived tobe reproduced through rental housing which in turn was seen to be part of anapartheid-created state welfare system In addition senior city managers arguedthat 90 of tenants of the Council flats were in arrears with their rentalpayments17 and gangs often controlled access to the flats through patronagenetworks In addition key policy makers and senior managers within the Councilargued that home ownership and the creation of a secondary housing marketwould draw poor people into the mainstream economy by assisting them to gainaccess to financial credit It would also encourage home owners to contributetowards the improvement of their neighbourhoods thereby increasing the valueof their property It was also envisaged that home ownership would strengthenthe positive parenting role of the nuclear family and in particular of femalehousehold heads The latter were identified as socially responsible citizensmdashtheeconomic and moral backbone of the communitymdashwho consistently paid theCouncil for the services they consumed (Vawda personal communication)

The ANC Council attempted to re-establish governance as a necessary conditionfor citizen participation in public life in Manenberg However rather than resort-ing to a conventional policing solution to Manenbergrsquos governance crisis andsocial problems Devcom sought to address these problems by creating theconditions for the participation of marginalised citizens and poor communities inthe mainstream economy and public domain This objective was to be achievedthrough a variety of Council interventions in Manenberg including ensuringsafer access to Council facilities such as libraries clinics and the housing officeDevcom Director Ahmedi Vawda argued that large numbers of Manenberg

676


residents were involved in daily interactions with Council officials in the clinicslibraries and housing offices and that these interactions were crucial for re-establishing governance Yet during 1998 gang violence in Manenberg hadresulted in the closing down of all Council facilities for extended periods Thisongoing situation of gang violence and disruption undermined the Councilrsquosdevelopmental initiatives

Other Council interventions included the lsquohardeningrsquo of Council buildings toprotect traumatised staff exposed to daily gang violence Council planners alsoattempted to create safer public spaces and secure flat courtyards by means ofwalls and barriers that functioned as obstacles to the free movement oflsquostrangersrsquo into flats and housing estates In addition in attempting to bring localgovernment lsquocloser to the groundrsquo Devcom helped establish area-based manage-ment systems whereby senior CCTM managers engaged directly with communityleaders and local residents on Area Coordinating Teams (ACTs) that were respon-sible for conveying information and development priorities and plans to seniormanagement structures and vice versa

Spatial warfare on the frontline

The fieldwork for this paper took place at a time of serious crisis in ManenbergThe devastation of the August 1999 tornado had left hundreds homeless andgang violence was on the increase By November 2000 seven Manenbergchildren had died in the crossfire as a result of gang shootouts in the area Inaddition as a result of many years of unrelenting gang shootings and violencethe Council staff at the libraries clinic and housing offices were suffering fromacute forms of psychological trauma and stress disorder A City of Cape TownCommunity Development Report dated 3 February 1998 stated that lsquothere is apotential collapse of service provision in libraries child care health and housingin Manenberg [and] gang violence is having a direct impact on service deliveryrsquoThe report went on to call for lsquourgent attention and a course of action tophysically protect staff and ensure emergency support is availablersquo This resultedin the lsquohardeningrsquo of the library clinic and housing office buildings at the cost ofhundreds of thousands of rands Meanwhile many Council staff who werereceiving trauma counselling were unable to cope with the extraordinarily highlevels of stress and everyday violence in Manenberg In addition despite thefortification of Council buildings in early 2000 the housing office and clinicwhich were situated in the nerve centre of Hard Livings territory were relocatedto safer territory The relocation in turn led to accusations from residents andfrom NGO and Community Based Organisation (CBO) representatives that theCouncil was more concerned about its buildings and its staff who were virtuallyall non-residents of Manenberg than about the ordinary residents who had to facethese harsh conditions of everyday violence on an ongoing basis

The local politics surrounding the closure and subsequent relocation of theclinic was extremely volatile At numerous community meetings residents andcivic activists complained vociferously about the closure of the clinic Councilrepresentatives were told that the elderly and sick now had to walk greaterdistances through dangerous rival gang territories to get to the relocated clinics

677

STEVEN ROBINS

In response staff mobilised their union representatives to convince the Councilthat their hazardous work conditions constituted a violation in terms of labourlegislation Clinic staff brought lsquoSydneyrsquo a hitman for the American gang to acommunity meeting to convince Dr Ivan Toms a senior manager in the healthservices that his staff were in serious physical danger if they went back to theoriginal clinic site Sydney told Dr Toms and others present at the meeting that lsquoIshoot at the clinic everyday You canrsquot take the staff back there Theyrsquore not safersquo

The Director of a Manenberg-based NGO understood the controversy surround-ing the clinic to be the result of the fact that the clinic staff were regarded bygangsters and residents as outsiders lsquoTheyrsquove isolated themselves from thecommunity They are fearful of these people and act superior towards them Theytend to be arrogant and look down on residents This makes them targets forabuse and intimidation Municipal workers the garbage collectors and so onwalk through Manenberg everyday and they donrsquot encounter the same problemsIts all about class status and attitudesrsquo18 In other words the social distance ofCouncil staff from the community has bred local animosity towards them Fromthe perspective of the Council however there was a legally defined obligation todo everything in its power to protect intimidated and traumatised clinic libraryand housing office staff

Devcomrsquos Ahmedi Vawda envisaged the provision and upgrading of com-munity facilities such as libraries community centres and computer laboratoriesas a central component of a strategy aimed at diverting youth from the dangerousstreets to the safety of learning environments This was perceived by Vawda to bein line with Cape Townrsquos urban development strategy aimed at preparing youth toenter the new information economy with its growth sectors in IT and financialservices However everyday violence in Manenberg presented serious obstaclesto this strategy of promoting the growth of the knowledge industries Theexcerpts from the daily diary kept by the Manenberg Library staff since January1993 (see Figure 1) provide some indication of the levels of everyday violencethat spill over into Manenbergrsquos schools and libraries Although I have arbitrarilyselected a few months in 1993 and 1994 similar patterns and levels of violenceare evident for all the years detailed in the diary (January 1993ndashAugust 2000)The chief librarian told me that he had started the diary initiative when hebecame convinced that official police statistics were hopelessly inaccurate andseriously underestimated the levels of violence and killings in Manenberg

Given this context of daily gang violence it is perhaps not surprising thatManenberg came to be represented in the media and in policy documents as aplace of lsquosocial pathologiesrsquo lsquodysfunctionalityrsquo violence and trauma What isless self-evident is how and why senior managers within the Council came toconceptualise individual home ownership and the creation of a secondaryhousing market as the panacea for these problems of social order and gover-nance What is clear however is that many Manenberg residents were them-selves calling for the ANC Council to intervene more directly in eradicating gangactivities and creating housing opportunities and the improvement of the physicalenvironment19

As was mentioned this pressure on the Council to address the realities of gangviolence also came from frontline Council staff who were thoroughly traumatised

678


by their experiences of everyday violence A Community Development report tothe CCT Executive Committee dated 2 March 1998 spelt out the implications ofthe lsquoManenberg Crisesrsquo

There is a potential collapse of service provision in libraries child care health andhousing in Manenberg hellip The gang violence in the township (which often spillsover into the adjacent townships) is having a direct impact on the service deliverylocations It has disrupted the provision of services placed staff lives in danger andis cause for distress amongst staff such that they are traumatized unable to workand in instances not wanting to return to work It requires urgent attention and acourse of action to physically protect staff [and] ensure emergency support isavailable hellip The situation in Manenberg and Hanover Park has reached a dangerous

679

FIGURE 1 Excerpts from the Manenberg Library diary

JUNE 199314 Borrower robbed in front of library17 Staff memberrsquos car was vandalised22 Borrower robbed at library entrance28 Stones thrown through windows

JANUARY 199426 Heavy shooting gun battle between gangsters and policemen station at

police mobile station in front of library Two staff members risked their livesto close the front door

27 Shooting in front of library at 515pm28 Mobile police station was withdrawn by police

FEBRUARY 19941 Shooting in front of librarymdashforced to close library Managed to get staff out

of the area safely4 Gang fight outside library Number of shots fired (1148am) Mobile police

station returnsmdashheavily barricaded7 Shooting at 512pm in front of library Man shot through the head Killed instantly8 Women caught in crossfire Shot in chest11 Advised by police to clear out of the areamdashunsafe situation25 Man shot at shops next to library Was brought to police caravan

Sat bleeding there28 Policeman stationed at the mobile police station Urgently requested staff to

phone for police back-up since shots were fired up the street and the situationwas unsafe hellip

MARCH 19941 Library closed

JUNE 199413 Staff return15 Library reopened after almost four months Stones thrown against windows28 Heavy stone throwing29 Stone throwing continues hellip

STEVEN ROBINS

point where the very existence of law and order good governance a stable socialenvironment and healthy working conditions have all but become impossible20

Another CCT Report drew attention to the lsquosporadic gunfirersquo near the housingoffice during the month of April 2000 Despite almost daily shootings outside thehousing office it was open for most of the month21 It was within this context ofdaily violence that the Council decided to relocate the housing office and clinicThese serious threats to good governance service delivery and safety andsecurity led to a variety of Council interventions including the lsquohardeningrsquo(fortification) of Council premises and identification of safe rooms the develop-ment of communication networks (the lsquobuddy systemrsquo) and trauma support forstaff the provision of bleepers and panic buttons the provision of safe trans-portation of Council staff in and out of the area and the development of riskmanagement strategies disaster management alternative service provision andcontingency plans in case of the breakdown of services as a result of gangviolence22 Given the extraordinary levels of everyday violence in Manenbergand the Councilrsquos responsibilities to protect its staff as well as ordinary citizensthe Council was clearly obligated to intervene in order to lsquore-establish gover-nancersquo However Devcomrsquos lsquohardeningrsquo of Council buildings and the use ofhousing delivery to re-establish governance failed adequately to take into accountthe structural dimensions of a political economy of drugs and gang violenceSo what kind of state and state intervention would have been necessary to re-establish governance in Manenberg

States of surveillance and control

James Scottrsquos highly influential book Seeing Like a State published in 1998attempts to understand statecraft as a process of rendering populations lsquolegiblersquoScott argues that this has been achieved through a series of disparate statepractices of surveillance and control including sedentarisation the creation ofpermanent names the establishment of cadastral surveys and populationregisters the invention of freehold tenure the standardisation of language andlegal discourse the design of cities and the organisation of transportation Thesepractices have functioned lsquoas attempts at legibility and simplificationrsquo

Much of early statecraft seemed similarly devoted to rationalizing and standardizingwhat was a social hieroglyph into a legible and administratively more convenientformat The social simplifications thus introduced not only permitted a more finelytuned system of taxation and conscription but also greatly enhanced state capacityThey made possible quite discriminating interventions of every kind such as public-health political surveillance and relief for the poor (p 3)

Scott concludes that these state interventions tend to fail because they aredesigned and implemented as top-down standardised packages that ignore thecomplexity of informal social processes Nonetheless these state technologies ofsurveillance and control appear to have had some successes in the advancedcapitalist countries of the North It is less clear however to what degree theyhave been effective in colonial and postcolonial countries in the developingworld

680


This question is taken up in Timothy Mitchellrsquos Colonizing Egypt (1998)Mitchell draws on a Foucaultian analysis of the modern disciplinary state toinvestigate new forms of colonial state power based on the re-ordering of spaceand the surveillance and control of its occupants According to Mitchell thePanopticon and similar disciplinary institutions were developed and introducedin many instances not in France and England but on the colonial frontiers ofEurope in places like Russia India North and South America and Egypt Nine-teenth century Cairo for example provided an excellent opportunity to establisha modern state based on the new methods of disciplinary powers includingmilitary reform the supervision of hygiene and public health compulsoryschooling agricultural reforms involving controls over movement productionand consumption and the rebuilding of Cairo and other Egyptian towns andvillages to create a system of regular open streets that were conducive to surveil-lance and control (Mitchell 1998 x)23

James Scott Tim Mitchell and Foucaultian analyses of development discoursemore generally (see Escobar 1995 Ferguson 1990) tend to emphasise theomnipotence of state discourses and the docility of subject-citizens who appearin these writings as passive victims of an all-encompassing modern stateapparatus The Manenberg case study however draws attention to problems withFoucaultian analyses of disciplinary institutions and the surveillance state Every-day life in lsquounrulyrsquo places such as Manenberg draws attention to the limits ofstate power and control for example by highlighting the agency and resistance ofcitizens who are exposed to state interventions In other words these are anythingbut the docile subject-citizens assumed in much Foucaultian analysis

The Manenberg case study draws attention to the limits of attempts by seniorcity managers and planners to use individual home ownership and urban spatialdesign to achieve the following objectives (1) to re-establish governance andcreate law abiding citizens thereby undermining the power of the gangs (2) tobreak down lsquosocial pathologiesrsquo and a lsquoculture of povertyrsquo reproduced by highlevels of unemployment and (3) to intervene in the socio-spatial grids of theapartheid city in order to promote integration between Manenbergrsquos lsquocolouredrsquopopulation and black African residents of the adjacent township of Gugulethu

Devcom strategists assumed that it would be possible to re-establish gover-nance and improve the neighbourhood through a combination of individualhome ownership and urban spatial design innovations For instance one of theproblems identified with Manenbergrsquos flats was that gangsters had open accessthrough the courtyards and gangsters chased each other through the courtyardson a daily basis Walls and barriers were subsequently built around existing flatcourtyards and new houses in order to limit access to outsiders The plannersrsquoover-emphasis on physical form and spatial design however did not take intoaccount the structural dimensions of the political economy of gang violenceNeither has this spatial design approach countered the socio-cultural dimensionsof gang culture by addressing the lsquodistinctive milieus for social interaction fromwhich individual [gang members] derive their values expectations habits andstates of consciousnessrsquo (Harvey 1985 118)24

These CCTM senior managers and planners believed that home ownership andspatial design alone could make a significant contribution towards re-establishing

681

STEVEN ROBINS

governance in Manenberg But the Cape Town Housing Company (CTHC) schemethat was introduced in Manenberg was challenged by community activistspoorer residents and illegal sub-tenants and backyard shack-dwellers who wereinitially excluded from the scheme25 The liberal individualist conception of thelsquoconsumer citizenrsquo (or lsquocitizen-consumerrsquo) clashed with deeply embedded com-munity structures neighbourhood and gang networks and communalsolidarities of residents especially the poorer sections of the community Com-munity activists claimed that the Council was undermining community interestsand lsquocommunity-consciousnessrsquo The Councilrsquos attempt to create a lsquonew citizenidentityrsquo through home ownership was bound to encounter obstacles given thepolitical economy of gangs drug trafficking and everyday violence in Manenberg26

The structural dimensions of gang violence and lsquodysfunctionalrsquocommunities

Within this scenario of high unemployment poverty violence and gangsterism inManenberg the Council decided to replace the badly damaged Council flats withindividually owned homes This lsquorent-to-buyrsquo housing scheme aimed to use thelsquopositive social valuesrsquo attributed to individual home ownership as a means ofovercoming the social pathologies associated with Council rental housing andpublic housing estates in the Cape Flats In terms of CCTM thinking home owner-ship would facilitate the creation of a secondary housing market and the improve-ment of the built environment thereby acting as a catalyst for urban regenerationprogrammes In other words it was believed that housing development couldcontribute towards improving the built environment and the social fabric andmoral economy of Manenberg The CCTM scheme was not only concerned withthe moral economy It was also widely believed that the establishment of asecondary housing market would kick-start a cycle of upward mobility throughthe creation and expansion of poor peoplersquos investment in their asset base (EdgarPieterse personal communication) This would in turn stimulate the localeconomy and increase the rates base27 In other words along with safety andsecurity projects and economic development programmes housing wouldbecome a key catalyst for a systemic programme of urban regeneration

The following CCTM definition of the problem terminology and principles forurban renewal and regeneration highlights the approach of Devcom

Urban renewal is understood to be about changing the physical environmentwhereas urban regeneration implies a rebuilding of both the physical and socialenvironment It is imperative that we have a common definition and understandingof urban regeneration and its related strategies Where such strategies need to beimplemented there must be a community understanding of the following thephysical environment the social factors and degree of dysfunctionality withina particular community the service delivery environment what resources areavailable and how it is being used hellip The following principles should provide thefoundations of an urban regeneration programme rebuild community confidencere-establish governance focus on integrated co-operative governance establish aservice delivery strategy via Area Co-ordinating Teams establish Area BasedProject Management hellip recognize livelihood strategies in communities in con-

682


tributing to local development (Community Development Report UrbanRegeneration 24 October 2000)

One of the major problems with the Councilrsquos housing model and the urbanrenewal programme was that these were predicated upon a liberal individualistconception of the lsquoconsumer citizenrsquo (or lsquocitizen-consumerrsquo) that clashed withlocally embedded community networks and communal identities especiallyamong the illegal sub-tenants backyard shack-dwellers and poorer residents whowere initially excluded from the scheme The Manenberg Disaster Committee(MDC) a civic organisation that emerged in response to the 1999 tornadochallenged the Councilrsquos housing scheme by claiming that it ran counter tocommunity interests In other words the Councilrsquos attempt to create a lsquonewcitizen identityrsquo through home ownership came to clash with civic activistsclaiming to defend neighbourhood solidarities and the interests of poor andmarginalised residents of Manenberg

The Councilrsquos Devcom encountered numerous obstacles in its attempts tointroduce urban renewal by re-establishing governance and incorporatingmarginalised citizens into the mainstream economy and political life It appearsthat the Councilrsquos senior managers and planners did not properly understand thepolitical and economic structures that reproduced poverty crime violence andlsquodysfunctionalrsquo patterns of behaviour associated with places like Manenberg Inother words Council management and officials failed fully to understand andacknowledge the structural and institutional obstacles to attempts to re-establishgovernance and incorporate lsquothe poorrsquo into the market economy

For decades the Council has been dominated by engineers and planningtechnocrats for whom the provision of basic services (eg water electricity andrefuse collection) rather than community development has been the Councilrsquoscore business (Vawda personal communication) This technicist perspectivehowever failed to fully appreciate the social and political implications of CapeTownrsquos drug economy gang violence and unemployment for governance andservice delivery As a result the Council was unwilling and unable to address theimpact of growing unemployment resulting from recent shifts from a traditionalmanufacturing economy to a service sector economy focusing on tourism thefilm industry and IT and financial services28 Instead of addressing the implica-tions of these job losses CCTM senior management and the private sectorcelebrated the fact that in the first 10 months of 2001 R7 billion had beenpoured into huge building projects in central Cape Town (Sunday Times 11November 2001) This fitted in with private sector and Council fantasies ofestablishing Cape Town as a globally competitive service economy replete withinternational convention centres and five-star hotels business and recreationcentres and mega-shopping mall developments None of these developments islikely to provide significant numbers of jobs to people living in Manenberg andother working class Cape Flats townships

As a result of these recent economic shifts the formal economy is increasinglyunable to provide employment to poorly educated and unskilled residents ofneighbourhoods such as Manenberg By contrast opportunities do seem toexist for those willing and able to participate in the violent economies of drug

683

STEVEN ROBINS

trafficking protection extortion crime sex work and the taxi industry Whilemost gang members in Manenberg comprise young men who spend their daysfighting over women and vaunting their masculine pride and reputations fortoughness their activities are tied to the recruitment of dealers and merchantsinto massive drug operations that are based in other parts of the city for instanceGreenpoint and Sea Point In addition to these very real economic opportunitiesthe lure and glamour of gang culture is also fuelled by urban mythologiessurrounding notoriously wealthy and powerful Hard Livings gangsters such asthe Staggie brothers Notwithstanding attempts by the Council to re-establishgovernance and spatial governmentality through the creation of safe publicspaces these initiatives continue to be undermined by this political economy ofcrime violence and unemployment

Conclusion

This article has argued that attempts by the city authorities to re-establish gover-nance in Manenberg failed because of the inability of the state to address growingunemployment in an urban environment characterised by a thriving drug andgang economy involving sex work crime protection syndicates and a boomingtax industry associated with violence and gang control over transportation routesThis failure to re-establish governance occurred despite concerted efforts bycity planners and officials to spatially engineer the built environment throughthe establishment of individual home ownership housing schemes and thelsquohardeningrsquo and protection of key government buildings such as clinics

The contestation between the state and gangs over control of space in Manen-berg is part of a broader process in terms of which current investment strategiesand urban development schemes have avoided poor areas of the Cape Flatsthereby reproducing the socio-spatial inequalities of the apartheid city Despitethe many well intentioned interventions by the city authorities the socio-spatiallogics of the apartheid city persist Investors and businesses continue to gravitatetowards the well policed historically white middle spaces of the city Theseparts of Cape Town have indeed been incorporated into a representation of CapeTown as a globally competitive multicultural city driven by the tourism industryand the IT and financial service sectors There are however at least two othersides to Cape Town One side is the lsquofortress cityrsquo of middle class neighbour-hoods characterised by gated communities neighbourhood watches vigilantesprivate security companies surveillance cameras high walls and barbed-wirefences The other is the urban ghettoes of the Cape Flats characterised byracialised poverty crime and violence

Post-apartheid Cape Town remains a deeply divided city with middle classenclaves fortified against black African and lsquocolouredrsquo townships that areperceived as dangerous lsquono-go zonesrsquo It is within this highly polarised urbanlandscape that spatial governmentality has become such contested terrain Newforms of spatially organised crime control that characterise contemporary CapeTown include a proliferation of gated communities and numerous initiativesaimed at creating prostitution- and crime-free zones through the use of closedcircuit television cameras and lsquozero-tolerance policingrsquo Even graffiti artists have

684


found themselves the targets of this new urban war against lsquogrimersquo As Merry(2001 16) points out lsquothese are all examples of new regulatory mechanisms thattarget spaces rather than persons [and that] exclude offensive behaviour ratherthan attempting to correct or reform offendersrsquo The urban renewal programmeintroduced in Manenberg following the destruction caused by the tornado in 1999represented such an attempt to regulate space through architectural designindividual home ownership and security devices These initiatives were meant tocomplement modern disciplinary penality but were vastly different in their logicand technologies (Merry 2001) The Manenberg case study suggests that thisattempt at spatial governmentality failed to dislodge the deeply embedded gangstructures and activities that have been fuelled by the shift of the Western Capeeconomy from traditional manufacturing to a service and tourist-driven economyThis troubling account from the Cape of Storms is yet another global warningabout the rough weather that awaits city planners and officials who uncriticallyembrace the cyber vision of a globally competitive IT-driven Silicon Valleyeconomy at the tip of Africa

NotesThis article is based on research funded by Isandla Institute and the Community Development Unit of theCity of Cape Town under the Directorship of Ahmedi Vawda For their helpful comments local know-ledge insights and creative criticism I must thank Ahmedi Vawda Bettina Von Lieres Edgar PieterseChristoph Haferburg Elaine Salo Chris Giles Christine Jansen Russel Dudley Joe Essak Pete VanHeerden Ivan Toms Owen Munroe Joel Bolnik Firoz Kahn Chris Tapscott and Ivor Chipkin Inaddition I owe special thanks to the numerous Manenberg residents and City of Cape Town officials whocontributed generously during the research process The first draft of this article was written in June 2000at the University of Bergen Department of Public Administration I would like to thank my Bergen andUniversity of the Western Cape colleagues for their insights and contributions during various discussionsand presentations of this work

1 The gated community syndrome is usually associated with lsquoBrazilianisationrsquo rather than lsquoCali-fornianisationrsquo This suggests that there is considerable scope for lsquoSouthernrsquo as well as lsquoNorthernrsquocomparisons and conceptualisations of spatiality and governance There is already an extensiveliterature on the ways in which the political economy of neoliberalism is shaping these urbanprocesses (eg social-spatial inequalities and racial polarisation) in post-apartheid South African cities(see Bond (2000)) There is also a burgeoning South African urban studies literature that includesBremner (1994) Bond and Tait (1997) Crankshaw (1996) Hindson et al (1994) Huchzermeyer(1999) Mabin (1991 1992) Smith (1992) Parnell (1991) Swilling et al (1991) and Tomlinson(1994) See chapters on urban citizenship and governance in Cape Town by Ivor Chipkin RafaelMarks Elaine Salo Andrew Spiegel Shannon Jackson and Clifford Shearing and Jennifer Wood inRobins (2003 forthcoming) Other recent studies on Cape Town include Vanessa Watson (1995)Spiegel et al (1996 1999) and Robins (2000)

2 Cape Townrsquos strategic surveillance unit which operates the closed circuit television (CCTV) camerasused to fight crime in the city centre and on the N1 highway has recently begun to expand itsoperation to include public places and roads in high-crime areas of the Cape Flats such as ManenbergThe CCTV crime unit provides the police and city traffic department with visual information on crimeinformal trading protest marches advertising billboards and fire hazards According to Ian Neilsonthe Cape Town unicityrsquos executive councillor for safety and health the CCTV system will contributetowards the process of developing Cape Town as a model global city (Cape Times 24 January 2002)

3 Some 25 000 South Africans are killed annually as a result of violent crime and South Africa isregarded as being the murder and rape capital of the world Following dramatic reporting of infantrapes throughout the country in December 2001 President Mbeki called for a meeting with religiousleaders to discuss the breakdown in the moral fabric of the nation while the former president NelsonMandela reiterated the widely held view that these infant rapes were linked to misguided beliefsabout cures for AIDS This development followed the rise in the incidence of rapes of young girls bymen who believed having sex with a virgin could cure them of AIDS Others ascribed these crimes to a

685

STEVEN ROBINS

complete collapse of the countryrsquos moral fibre itself attributed to the violent legacies of apartheidmassive unemployment and poverty and a host of other factors (Sunday Times 9 December 2001)Sunday Times journalist Sechaba Karsquo Nkosi noted for instance that the profile of the mothers of theraped infants was the same poor largely uneducated and single Their ages ranged from late teens toearly 20s They were usually unemployed The perpetratorsrsquo profile was similar unemployed youngand known to the mothers (Sunday Times 9 December 2001) Yet again there was a loud call fromlsquothe publicrsquo for the reintroduction of the death penalty for tougher jail sentences and for communitiesto be allowed to take the law into their own hands The state was perceived by most citizens as unableto control spiralling crime and violence

4 The latter half of the 1990s witnessed a shift from the Reconstruction and Development Programme(RDP) with its state-centric approach to development to the lsquoneoliberalrsquo Growth Employment andRedistribution (GEAR) strategy Patrick Bond (2000) suggests that the shift to GEAR was largely areaction to the perceived failure of the state to drive development and reconstruction during the 1990sand that this led to GEARrsquos acknowledgement of the central role of the private sector in job creationand development As a result GEAR promotes a more modest role for central government as facilitatorof development through publicndashprivate partnerships privatisation contractual outsourcing and thedecentralisation and devolution of competence to local government It remains to be seen how theseprocedures will affect citizensrsquo ability to access state resources and service delivery

5 The global reach of neoliberalismmdash and the retreat of the developmental statemdashhas also generatedmore lsquoconventionalrsquo forms of associational life in South Africa including the globally connectedNGOs Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) and lobby groups Treatment Action Campaign(TAC) for example successfully challenged international pharmaceutical companies and governmentAIDS policies through the strategic use of the courts and national and international campaigns Inaddition numerous cyber-connected environmental media and anti-arms trade organisations haveentered into this newly emerging post-apartheid public sphere and global civil society

6 At a Mowbray community policing forum 14 November 2001 Ministry of Safety and SecurityHennie Bester spoke of the logistical headache the South African police have had to deal with inattempting to fight ordinary criminal activity while having to commit resources to ongoing problemsof urban terror taxi violence gang drug trafficking and turf wars criminal syndicates and so on

7 City of Cape Town Manenberg Task Team Project Definition Report Draft 1998-04-03 p 48 Parts of this section appear in Robins (2000)9 An article in the Cape Times on 5 March 1998 entitled lsquoCameras to watch over you huge waterfront

security shake-uprsquo described the multi-million-rand security upgrading initiative following a shoot-outbetween two shoplifters and security guards at Cape Townrsquos Waterfront shopping mall Directlyopposite this front-page story was a large colour photograph of a grieving coloured woman her eyesblood red from crying Her teenage son had been killed in a triple assassination at Clarkersquos Estate acoloured neighbourhood in the Cape Flats The caption read lsquoViolent death is nothing new in thisgang-ridden areas but the triple killing has shocked the community hellip The police say they died inAmericansrsquo gang territoryrsquo Two weeks later four young men were killed at the entrance to theWaterfront in what police described as yet another gang assassination More surveillance cameraswere immediately installed at the Waterfront entrance and security was stepped up The fear of thespill-over of gang violence from the Cape Flats into the Waterfront prompted immediate action

10 This violence has over the past few decades become naturalised and normalised through essentialistdiscourses on a purported coloured predisposition towards violence and gangsterism PAGAD andrepresentatives of community police forums sought to displace this normalising discourse by drawingpublic attention to police corruption inefficiency inadequate resources and the statersquos allegedindifference to the bloodbath on the Cape Flats

11 For some of my University of the Western Cape (UWC) students who live in black and colouredtownships of the Flats the safe spaces of recreation are mostly the malls in formerly white parts of thecity however they often cannot afford the transport costs of a taxi to the Waterfront or CavendishSquare The UWC students I interviewed and who live in conflict-prone townships on the Cape Flatsexpressed powerful feelings of isolation claustrophobia and incarceration in dangerous and bleakspaces This was especially the case for women for whom the township streets can be hostile andthreatening places dominated by aggressive men and dangerous gangsters For many male studentswho also experienced the township streets and shebeens as dangerous spaces the only viablealternative places of recreation to the shopping malls were sports venues and staying at home to watchtelevision and socialise with friends and family

12 Ebenezer Howardrsquos lsquogarden cityrsquo was not meant to be a suburb but the antithesis of a suburb It wasnot a rural retreat but rather a synthesis or symbiosis between urban and rural a compact garden citywould have ample open space a park at its centre and tree-lined boulevards and gardens surroundingthe housing In its design the garden city shows a concern for amenity pollution and resourceconservation Cultural and leisure facilities are located centrally for example the central park The

686


legacy of Howardrsquos ideas are green belts protected agricultural land low-density housing industrialtrading estates shopping centres and neighbourhood facilities (Pile et al 1999 254)

13 A key feature of these interventions has been the social and spatial separation of the middle class fromlsquothe poorrsquo and the creation of the private space of the home within which the nuclear family could benurtured and protected According to Roger Silverstone (1997 7 cf Pile et al 1999 31) this Euro-American suburban culture was and continues to be highly gendered It is built around an ideologyand a reality of womenrsquos domestication and confinement to household work and the private domainThroughout Europe and North America this suburban culture was buttressed by public policies stateresources and media images that attempted lsquoto resocialize women into the home and into the bosomof the nuclear bourgeois familyrsquo (Silverstone 1997 7)

14 Staggiersquos Hard Livings gang is based in Manenberg and has over the decades become one of the mostpowerful crime syndicates involved mostly in the drug trade but it has also diversified into the sexwork and taxi industries

15 See CCT Community Development Report on Urban Regeneration 24 October 2000 The Manenbergzone was identified as lsquothe worse [sic] off in terms of poverty and dysfunctionalityrsquo The six zones ofpoverty included iSLP (Philippi Crossroads Nyanga and Browns Farm) Manenber g zone(Gugulethu Hanover Park Heideveld and Manenberg) Langa Kewtown WoodstockSalt River andMitchells Plain The key social indicators for the Manenberg zone Kewtown WoodstockSalt Riverand Mitchells Plain included lsquopoor high crime and dysfunctionalrsquo

16 Sometimes I will use lsquoCCT officialsrsquo to refer to both Devcom and CCT officials I do this because theDevcom team worked as part of a larger team that included CCT planners and officials from other CCT

departments17 A Cape Town Unicity task team recently warned of a looming financial crisis with the city

authorityrsquos debt soaring to a record R24 billionmdashequal to almost 40 of the cityrsquos R9 billion budgetA report compiled by the cityrsquos credit control task team warned of debts rising by R700 million in12 months and posing lsquoreal risks to the cityrsquos financial integrityrsquo (Cape Metro Sunday Times4 November 2001) The report noted that seven years after the end of the civic protests and rentboycotts against apartheid lsquoit is common knowledge that certain of our customers were encouragednot to pay municipal accounts for services rendered and that council and its predecessors have beeninvolved in uphill battles to redress the consequences of those actionsrsquo (Cape Metro Sunday Times4 November 2001)

18 Chris Giles Director of Self-Help Manenberg a local NGO believes that the police are completely ill-equipped and inefficient and that governance in Manenberg requires blockades with soldiers similar tothe situation in Northern Ireland He believes that this could be done if there was the political will todeal with crime and violence He suspects however that in many instances the police and politiciansare colluding with the underworld druglords and criminal syndicates Giles suggested that legalisingdrugs could bring the price down and that this could contribute towards reducing the levels ofviolence associated with the protection of supply lines and turf wars The Minister of Safety andSecurity Hennie Bester recently told residents of the Mowbray Community Policing Forum of theextraordinary profits generated by the trade in ecstasy

19 Manenberg residents interviewed in 2000 by Christoph Haferburg and UWC post-graduate studentscalled upon the Council to build more houses for residents who have been waiting on housing lists for10ndash15 years Respondents also insisted that the Council should repair its buildings and rental stockand hand over Council houses and flats to tenants who have been paying rent for many yearsResidents also claimed that while the Council provided basic services it needed to do more to cleanthe streets and Council housing in the area The most frequent demand from residents was that theCouncil needed to do more to eliminate gangsterism in Manenberg lsquoThe Council is too passive withregards to complaints of the residents here We have complained about the shebeens but the Councilhas done nothing so far The Council have [sic] to bring discipline here in Manenberg The policemust patrol the place properly hellip The place is full of gangsters They must be gotten rid of Theshebeens must be closed hellip The Council must be more visible to the community Drugs are affectingthe community badly hellip The neighbourhood watch must come and patrol the area to protect us inSherwood Park hellip The Council must wipe out the gangstersrsquo

20 Report Community Development 1998-02-03 The Executive Committee Manenberg Crisis21 City of Cape Town Community Development lsquoStatus Report Manenberg Crisisrsquo (2000-04-14)22 City of Cape Town Manenberg Task Team Project Definition Report Draft 1998-04-0323 Mitchell (1998) analyses these innovations as the vehicles of a modernist metaphysics that generates

the modern experience of meaning as a process of representation (p xiii) Mitchellrsquos analysis of worldexhibitions and urban planning in colonial Cairo focuses on the lsquomodernist experience of therealrsquo produced by the generation of what seems an unproblematic distinction between reality and itsrepresentation

24 The CCTMrsquos attempt to undermine these community-based gang cultures can be seen as part of a more

687

STEVEN ROBINS

general process whereby lsquocommunity-consciousnessrsquo is first made through residential differentiation(along class ethnic and race lines) and then destroyed in the name of the national interest and capitalaccumulation (Harvey 1985 123) As David Harvey notes lsquoCommunity consciousness with all of itsparochialisms once created becomes deeply embedded and it becomes just as difficult to piece ittogether in a configuration appropriate to the national interest (as perceived from the standpoint ofcapital accumulation) as it is to transform it into a class-consciousness antagonistic to the perpetuationof the capitalist order In order therefore to maintain its own dynamic capitalism is forced to disruptand destroy what it initially created as part of its own strategy for self-preservation Communitieshave to be disrupted by speculative activity growth must occur and whole residential neighbour-hoods must be transformed to meet the needs of capital accumulation Herein lie both the contra-dictions and the potentials for social transformation in the urbanization at this stage in our historyrsquo(Harvey 1985 123)

25 Advocates of both the new public management and the community participation models claimto depart from the lsquotraditionalrsquo public sector model which is seen to be highly rule-bound andhierarchical and built around centralised power and authority During the 1990s the traditional modelof bureaucracy inherited from the apartheid era was vigorously attacked by both the Left and theRight for being wasteful inefficient hierarchical and outmoded In addition it was seen to beincapable of dealing with complexities uncertainties and contingencies by virtue of being pre-programmed through inflexible standardised procedures It was within this management policyscenario that the CCTM embarked upon a publicndashprivate partnership low-income housing developmentscheme in Manenberg

26 During the French Revolution it was possible to lsquoliberate individualsrsquo and create a lsquonew universalcitizenrsquo by eliminating all existing identities According to Manuel Castells France is probably theonly country in the world that has been able to achieve this extermination of identities other than theFrench identity According to Castells lsquothe French model became the most effective model inbuilding the citizen identity which is an identity which is abstracted from any other historical groupexcept the state the democratic statersquo (2000 8)

27 CCT Community Development Report Urban Regeneration 24 October 200028 This was particularly evident in the garment industry where despite a boom in clothing and textile

exports in 2001 the SA Clothing and Textile Workerrsquos Union (SACTWU) reported the loss of anaverage of 1400 formal jobs a month Factory closures in the clothing sector Cape Townrsquos biggestemployer wreaked havoc for Manenberg women traditionally recruited into the garment industry Inthe first 10 months of 2001 19 companies shut their doors resulting in the loss of 2249 jobs in theclothing sector (Cape Argus 29 October 2001) As the Cape Argus reported lsquoThousands of jobs lostin city rag trade exodus to seek cheap rural labourrsquo

ReferencesBayart JP (1993) The State in Africa The Politics of the Belly (London Longman)Bayart JP Ellis S amp Hibou B (1999) The Criminalization of the State in Africa (London International

African Institute and Oxford James Currey)Bond P amp Tait A (1997) The failure of housing policy in post-apartheid South Africa Urban Forum 8

(1) pp 19ndash41Bond P (2000) The 1980s township housing boom in P Bond (ed) Cities of Gold Townships of Coalrdquo

Essays on South Africarsquos New Urban Crisis (Johannesburg Africa World Press)Bremner L (1994) Development and resistance The lessons for the planners of Phola Park Urban

Forum 5 (1) pp 23ndash44Caldeira T (2000) City of Walls Crime Segregation and Citizenship in Satildeo Paulo (Berkeley CA

University of California Press)Caldeira T (1996) Building up walls The new pattern of segregation in Satildeo Paulo International Social

Science Journal 48 (1) pp 55ndash65Castells M (2000) Globalisation identity and the state Social DynamicsmdashA Journal of the Centre for

African Studies University of Cape Town 26 (1) Winter pp 15ndash17Chipkin I (forthcoming) lsquoFunctionalrsquo and lsquodysfunctionalrsquo communities the making of ethical citizens

in S Robins (ed) Limits to Liberation Citizenship and Governance After ApartheidComaroff LJ amp Comaroff J (eds) (1999) Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa Critical

Perspectives (Chicago IL University of Chicago Press)Community Development Report Urban Regeneration City of Cape Town 24 October 2000Crankshaw O (1996) Social differentiation conflict and development in a South African township

Urban Forum 7 (1) pp 53ndash67Davis M (1990) City of Quartz Excavating the Future of Los Angeles (London Verso)

688


Escobar A (1995) Encounter ing Development The Making and Unmaking of the Third World(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press)

Ferguson J (1990) The Anti Politics Machine lsquoDevelopmentrsquo Depoliticization and Bureaucratic StatePower in Lesotho (Cambridge Cambridge University Press and Cape Town David Philip)

Harvey D (1985) The Urbanization of Capital (Oxford Basil Blackwell)Jensen S amp Turner S (1996) A Place called Heideveld Identities and Strategies among the Coloureds in

Cape Town South Africa Publications from the Department of Geography and Internationa lDevelopment Studies Roskilde University Denmark Research Report No 112

Le Grange L amp Robins S (1997) The WettonndashLandsdowne Road Corridor area the Identification ofCulturally Significant Places and Opportunities South Africa

Hindson D Byerley M amp Morris M (1994) From violence to reconstruction the making disintegrationand remaking of an apartheid city Antipode 26 (4) pp 323ndash350

Mabin A (1991) The dynamics of urbanisation since 1960 in M Swilling R Humphries amp K Shubane(eds) Apartheid City in Transition (Cape Town Oxford University Press)

Mabin A (1992) Dispossession exploitation and struggle an historical overview of South Africanurbanisation in D Smith (ed) The Apartheid City and Beyond Urbanisation and Social Change inSouth Africa (Johannesburg RoutledgeWitwatersrand University Press)

Mbeme A (1992) The Banality of Power and the Aesthetics of Vulgarity in the Postcolony PublicCulture 4 (2) pp 1ndash30

Merry S E (1981) Urban Danger Life in a Neighbourhood of Strangers (Philadelphia PA TempleUniversity Press)

Merry S E (2001) Spatial governmentality and the new social order Controlling gender violence throughlaw American Anthropologist 103 (1) pp 16ndash29

Mitchell T (1998) Colonising Egypt (New York Cambridge University Press)Nederveen Pieterse J (2000) Global Futures Shaping Globalization (London Zed Books)Parnell S (1991) Race class gender and home ownership subsidies in contemporary South Africa

Urban Forum 2 (1) pp 21ndash39Pile S Brook C amp Mooney G (eds) (1999) Unruly Cities OrderDisorder (London and New York

Routledge in association with The Open University)Pinnock D (1984) The Brotherhoods Street Gangs and State Control in Cape Town (Cape Town David

Philip)Pinnock D (1989) Ideology and Urban Planning Blueprints of a Garrison City in WG James amp M

Simons (eds) The Angry Divide (Cape Town David Philip)Robins S (2000) City sites multicultural planning and the post-apartheid city in S Nuttall amp CA

Michael (eds) Senses of Cultures South African Culture Studies (Cape Town Oxford UniversityPress)

Robins S (forthcoming) Limits to Liberation Citizenship and Governance after ApartheidSalo E (forthcoming) Race laws gendered tactics on becoming respectable mothers during the apartheid

era in S Robins (ed) (2003) Limits to Liberation Citizenship and Governance After ApartheidScott J (1998) Seeing like a state how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed

(New Haven Yale University Press)Silverstone R (1997) lsquoIntroductionrsquo in R Silverstone (ed) Visions of Suburbia (London Routledge)Smith D (ed) (1992) The Apartheid City and Beyond Urbanisation and Social Change in South Africa

(Johannesburg RoutledgeWitwatersrand University Press)Spiegel A Watson V amp Wilkinson P (1999) Speaking truth to power some problems using ethno-

graphic methods to influence the formulation of housing policy in South Africa in A Cheater (ed)The Anthropology of Power Empowerment and Disempowerment in Changing Structures (LondonRoutledge) pp 175ndash190

Steinberg J (2001) Crime Wars The South African Underwood and its Foes (Johannesburg Witwaters-rand University Press)

Swilling M Humphries R amp Shubane K (eds) Apartheid City in Transition (Cape Town OxfordUniversity Press)

Tomlinson R (1994) Urban Development Planning Lessons for the Economic Reconstruction of SouthAfricarsquos Cities (Johannesburg Witwatersrand University Press and London Zed Books)

689

STEVEN ROBINS

Major elements of instability in the neoliberal scenario [include] the downward trendin corporate taxes and the inability to finance common goods nationally andglobally hellip Without taxation no infrastructure Without taxation no propereducation no affordable health care Without taxation no public sphere Without apublic sphere no legitimacy Without legitimacy no security This in itself is afamiliar future scenario It could take the form of global lsquoCalifornianizationrsquo whileCalifornia is being lsquoBrazilianizedrsquo A world of gated communities high barbed-wirefences steep hierarchies robots on the workfloor and at the gate and automatedsurveillance all around A world of creeping privatization of public space as in LosAngeles (cf Mike Davisrsquo City of Quartz (1990) A lsquopost-humanrsquo world hellip of whichwe see one face in Blade Runner and other cinematic dystopias (NederveenPieterse 2000 11)

Cape Townrsquos city managers and planners imagine their cityrsquos future as a globallycompetitive city with advanced IT and financial service sectors and a boomingtourism industry with world-class hotels and convention centres a Californiandreamscape at the tip of Africa Although the lsquoCalifornianizationrsquo1 of Cape Townis indeed taking place it seems to be replicating itself less as Africarsquos SiliconValley than as a fortress city of gated communities (Caldeira 1996 2000) lsquozero-tolerancersquo policing community policing strategies (eg neighbourhood watchescommandos and vigilante groups) private security companies automatedsurveillance cameras2 high barbed-wire fencing and vicious guard dogs on oneside of the divide and urban ghettoes of racialised poverty and violence on theother (Davis 1990 Nederveen Pieterse 2000) After apartheid the black lsquotown-shipsrsquo of Cape Town have become even more segregated and disconnected fromthe lsquowhitersquo middle class parts of the city In a context of rising levels of crime andviolence the townships are perceived by middle class suburban residents to beeven more dangerous and lsquounrulyrsquo than they were under apartheid

Despite concerted city-wide planning initiatives aimed at desegregating theapartheid city the everyday socio-spatial legacies of apartheid continue to bereproduced middle class Capetonians seldom venture near the townships andfears of lsquoblack crimersquo continue to fuel a booming security industry and a fortifiedarchitecture of fear in the leafy middle class suburbs and shopping malls (Davis1990) While the media and the middle classes regard the unacceptably highlevels of crime and violence as an indication of a severe crisis of governancethere is a loud silence on the role of neoliberal policies in reproducing theconditions of poverty and unemployment that sustain these violent economiesWith the limited state resources available for policing as in so many cities inthe North the policing of middle class residential and business districts isbeing outsourced to private security companies resulting in new forms of spatialgovernance (Merry 2001) Although this paper focuses on attempts at re-establishing governance in a crime- and gangster-ridden working class neigh-bourhood of Cape Town it addresses these issues in relation to city-wide shifts toforms of lsquospatial governmentalityrsquo

Sally Merry (2001 16) writes that whereas lsquomodern penality is largelystructured around the process of retraining the soul rather than corporal punish-ment recent scholarship has highlighted another regime of governance controlthrough the management of spacersquo According to Merry (2001 16ndash17)

666







667

STEVEN ROBINS







668








669

STEVEN ROBINS




670







671

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689







667

STEVEN ROBINS







668








669

STEVEN ROBINS




670







671

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS







668








669

STEVEN ROBINS




670







671

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689








669

STEVEN ROBINS




670







671

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS




670







671

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689







671

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS





672






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689






673

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS







674






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689






675

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS






676







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689







677

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS






678




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689




679













STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS







680







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689







681

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS






682







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689







683

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS


Conclusion




684







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689







685

STEVEN ROBINS










686














687

STEVEN ROBINS

















688



























689

STEVEN ROBINS










686














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689



























689

at the limits of spatial governmentality: a message from the tip of … · 2016-08-02 · at the...

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