State security in transition: The war on crime in post-apartheid South Africa

The South African state faces a political crisis precipitated by worsening poverty, rising crime, and growing public frustration. At the same time law enforcement experts point to the southern African region as a growing site of international, cross border crime. Recognising crime as a major security threat, the government is attempting a restructuring of its criminal justice system modeled after Western approaches and, more specifically, those of the United States.; Increasingly, public frustration being laid at the feet of young people. Government rhetoric, media coverage, public perceptions and academic research are contributing to the development of discourses that, in a variety of subtle and not so subtle ways, equate African and Coloured youth with criminality, and position "crime" as the main obstacle to transformation. Policies to match the discourses are being implemented, marking a severe shift away from the promises made in the mid 1990s to the "heroic youth" that defeated apartheid.; The project assesses South Africa's attempt to wage its own version of a US-styled war on crime, paying particular attention to the relationship between youth, development and policing. In the first section I provide a detailed narrative of crime, security and development in the apartheid years. The second section of the study provides a case study of Cape Town, and examines the relationship between underdevelopment, the political economy of urban renewal and state security strategies in addressing the challenges of gangsterism, crime and youth development in the Coloured and African townships and the affluent City Centre.; The project draws from a variety of sources, its empirical data drawn primarily from participant observation and interviews with youth workers, police officers, gang members, representatives of civil society organisations working in the area of juvenile justice, researchers, and community organisers from anti-crime groups and advocacy organisations for the poor. The conclusion I draw is that while opportunities for progressive criminal justice reform and urban renewal exist, there is a danger that the social and political tensions of the apartheid era are, at the same time, being actively reproduced by current approaches to security, crime and development.