In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 Introduction Urban Geopolitics, Neoliberalism, and the Governance of Security In December 2006, newspapers in Cape Town reported that high school students in the Cape Flats communities of Hanover Park and Nyanga were caught in the middle of yet another brutal gang war linked to the drug trade. This particular outbreak of violence was so disruptive that high school matriculation rates plummeted, dropping to 33 percent at Hanover Park’s Mount View High, down from 82 percent the year before. Principal Archie Benjamin told reporters from the Cape Argus that the dramatic decrease could be attributed to the ongoing gang wars. “Sometimes, learners had to stay away for about two weeks and, at times, those living in the war zones could not attend classes.”1 One student told the Argus, “It’s been a tough year. There have been gunshots here and there, but we had no choice but to study.” Just five months later, in May 2007, local media reported another “crime wave” linked to area schools that the Western Cape provincial government referred to as crime “hot spots.”2 These latest outbreaks of violence on the Cape Flats, the vast workingclass and poor townships that surround this internationally renowned city on the sea, generated a familiar set of responses. Amid calls for “zero tolerance ” for drugs and school violence, government officials and school administrators dispatched hundreds of crime-fighting volunteers and police reservists to patrol the schools and make arrests when necessary. Provincial education officials pointed out that R4.19 million ($600,000) had already been spent on safety gates, burglar bars, barbed wire, mesh wire, alarm systems with armed response, and secure fencing, and that new laws would allow random searches and drug testing of students.3 At the same time, officials promised more progressive social development initiatives, from conflict management and intervention training to provincial and national measures to specifically address gangsterism, drugs, and school safety.4 2 · INtrodUctIoN Not long after these incidents had drawn attention to crime and violence in township schools, reports of street people being harassed by police and, more often, by private security guards began to emerge from the affluent city center. Street children and homeless or destitute adults in the downtown have been routinely demonized by local press, downtown business interests, and city authorities for years as manifestations of urban blight and threats to urban revitalization, primarily because of the crimes they allegedly commit and the fear they induce in the more affluent classes with whom they share this contested space. Particularly disturbing were the deaths of three people living on the streets in July 2007 alone, one allegedly from exposure after police confiscated her blankets in the middle of winter.5 Some of the street people in the city center and their advocates view the increase in harassment as linked to a growing intolerance for both adults and children living on the streets in the wake of a new “quality of life” bylaw approved by the city council in May 2007. This “nuisance” law includes, among other things, prohibitions on begging, washing clothes in public, and failing to move along when ordered to do so by a security officer, prohibitions which many feel were specifically crafted to criminalize behaviors associated with the urban poor. Although complaints of harassment are nothing new, the allegations of an increase and the passage of the bylaw seemed to be linked to a push for continued revitalization of the Central Business District, particularly as Cape Town prepared for the global media spotlight during the 2010 World Cup. These two examples, as different as they are, begin to sketch the outlines of contemporary urban governance in Cape Town. First, they draw our attention to a perceived relationship between security and socioeconomic development and the role of this perception in shaping governance. Second, they provide a glimpse of the meaning of urban renewal in the imaginations of urban elites and the myriad ways in which young people —young men in particular—be they students, workers, gangsters, or street children, appear in this vision. Third, they illustrate how those who govern the city are responding to crime and the fear of crime. Finally, they highlight a central concern of the following chapters, that Cape Town, like many cities, is a city divided, both socially and spatially. Communities on the Cape Flats are home to the vast majority of Cape Town residents, and these communities stand in stark contrast to the affluent and predominantly white downtown and surrounding...

Share