Youth violence in South Africa: exposure, attitudes, and resilience in Zulu adolescents

Exposure to violence is common in South Africa. Yet, few studies examine how violence exposure contributes to South African adolescents' participation in youth violence. The aims of this study were to examine effects of different violence exposures on violent attitudes and behavior, to test whether attitudes mediated effects of violence exposures on violent behavior, and to test whether adult involvement had protective or promotive effects. Questionnaires were administered to 424 Zulu adolescents in township high schools around Durban, South Africa. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test associations among violence exposures and both violent attitudes and behavior. Victimization, witnessing violence, and friends' violent behavior contributed directly to violent behavior. Only family conflict and friends' violence influenced violent attitudes. Attitudes mediated effects of friends' violence on violent behavior. Multiple-group SEM indicated that adult involvement fit a protective model of resilience. These findings are discussed regarding their implications for prevention.     

Spatial Contestation,Victimisation and Resistance during Xenophobic Violence: The Experiences of Somali Migrants in Post‐Apartheid South Africa

This article discusses how violence between South Africans and Somali migrants plays out in different forms of spatial contestation, victimization and resistance during xenophobic attacks. It analyses Somalis’ entrepreneurial strategies and the implications for access and appropriation of social and economic spaces around Cape Town. The article attempts to connect Somali perceptions of xenophobia and South Africans’ claims of spatial entitlement to issues of spatial control, belonging and social inclusion in South Africa. It argues that by establishing businesses in urban spaces and townships, Somali migrants have managed to establish stronger bonds and a collective identity, which give them better control over these spaces. Although their business tactics have propelled spatial contestations in which they have become easy targets during xenophobic incursions, the clustering of businesses has also created Somali‐dominated localities around Cape Town, which facilitates rapid mobilization to respond to or to resist different forms of crime and violence.     

Outcharming crime in (D)urban space

This paper is an inquiry into the uses of space and emotions in the governance of urban dangers. Cities have always been affective assemblages, yet the role of both space and affect in the control of urban crime has dramatically changed over the century. What defines spatial urban management today, in Africa and elsewhere, are not the prohibitive, moralising or forcefully exclusionary techniques of the past; instead, the powers of seduction and atmosphere have gained pride of place and given rise to a regime of spatial management through flirty surfaces. Crime, according to security strategists and city makers in the South African city of Durban, can be literally charmed out from particular bubbles of governance. Urban practitioners do not search for the root causes of violent crime somewhere deep in the history of society, but rather in space itself, right at the city's surface. While part of a worldwide trend, this recent fascination with the charming aspects of space has a particularly strong South African dramatic. Governing through handsome space in South Africa is not simply a creation of beautiful illusions against the reality of pervasive violence, but a constant endeavour to re‐draw a troubled spatial history.     

Politics gone cancerous: why the Marikana massacre should be prosecuted as an international crime

What makes the Marikana massacre particularly chilling and poignant is the fact that the use of lethal force on a mass scale was sanctioned by South Africa’s democratically elected government. It also makes the massacre relevant to international law. It will be established in this article that the killing of 34 striking miners by the South African police is a crime that transcends the limits and boundaries of domestic justice. This article will explore an approach to the legal aftermath of Marikana that has not yet received academic attention: the question of whether the Marikana massacre should be prosecuted as an international crime. The article will further consider the factors that will have to be taken into account in classifying the massacre as an international crime. It will be argued that even though instinctively a crime of this scale might seem to reach the gravity of an international crime, the application of the strict legal requirements for international crimes, the policy requirement in the definition of a crime against humanity, the doctrine of complementarity as well as the gravity threshold applied by the International Criminal Court render it complicated but not unlikely that the massacre will be considered an international crime in the sense of meeting the jurisdictional requirements set out for such crimes.     

Introduction

Abstract

This article discusses why it is important to consider how cultural racism contributes to the construction of motives and justifications among individuals who have committed acts of structural violence, including, lynching, hate crime and police violence against African Americans. Cultural racism is also discussed as a factor that contributes to interpersonal structural violence in situations involving black offenders and victims.     

Being black and non-citizen in South Africa: Intersecting race,white privilege and afrophobic violence in contemporary South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by growing feelings of pain, anger and frustration amongst black communities triggered by pervasive social inequalities. This has given birth to a new form of political and social activism shaped by crude violence, vandalism, destruction, brutal killings of women and children as well as thuggery in different black communities. It has also led to an upsurge in violence particularly on Africans from other parts of the continent. In this article, I attempt to examine how racial politics and resilient white privilege intersect to trigger afrophobic violence in South Africa. I draw on existing literature on broad conceptions of race and xenophobia to make a set of assertions about racial valuations, the resilience of white supremacy and black on black violence. In the article, I argue that black South Africans' pain, anger and the performance of violence on African migrants are on one level a consequence of resilient structural racism and racial practices, which continue to marginalize, emasculate and dispossess blacks. These racial practices force black South Africans to look elsewhere to express their anger, pains and frustrations.     

The Jewish Exodus from the New South Africa: Realities and Implications

In the 1990s, the Jewish population of South Africa declined at an unprecedented rate in marked contrast to Jewish populations in other English-speaking countries.
Possible explanations include fear of political instability and political violence, deteriorating economic conditions and prospects, fear of directly discriminatory government policies, rising violent crime rates, and more permissive immigration policies in desirable destination countries.
All but the last of these factors appear to have played some role. However, only changes in violent crime rates provide an explanation for the unprecedented surge in net emigration, persisting even after a successful political and economic transition to majority black rule under moderate African National Congress governments.
Changes in crime rates also provide the most satisfactory explanation for related changes in internal migration patterns.     

Immigration,internal migration and crime in South Africa: A multi‐level model analysis

A review of South African literature on crime confirms the lack of a study that considers the impact of migration on the crime rate in the country. The high levels of crime in South Africa aside, additional motivation behind the study has been the increasing rhetoric in media and by politicians insinuating the prominent role of foreign immigrants in the high crime levels of the country. While this is the first attempt to study this relationship in the South African context, it also stands apart from existing studies undertaken in the developed countries by accounting for both internal migrants as well as foreign immigrants. Further, the study claims the use of multi‐level regression estimations as an improvement from the existing studies on the issue by accounting for variance clustering across different spatial levels. In all the estimated models, internal migrant ratio came out as being positively and significantly related to crime rates across five different crime categories, with the sole exception of sexual crime rate. There was no evidence of foreign immigrant ratio impacting on crime rate in any of the crimes analysed except crime relating to property. Further, income inequality and sex ratio figure as determining factors across most types of crime in South Africa.     

The NEET concept in comparative youth research: the Nordic countries and South Africa

The NEET concept has become widely used internationally since its emergence in the UK almost two decades ago. This article reviews the adoption of the concept in two extreme contexts in terms of NEET rates, youth opportunities and youth welfare: the Nordic countries and South Africa. The article discusses the situations of NEET young people in the two contexts, and how the concept is used in the wealthy and relatively homogenous Nordic welfare states and in relatively poorer and racially divided South Africa. While the concept has been problematised in different ways in Nordic youth research, it has been more readily accepted by South African researchers. We argue that, in both contexts, the NEET concept can be taken as an invitation to look beyond individual life situations and biographies, and to focus on how structural forces such as the political economy shape young people’s lives. The NEET concept provides a way of discussing changing opportunity structures and how global social forces such as globalisation and neoliberalisation shape young people’s lives in different contexts. The NEET concept is useful in comparative youth research.     

African studies at a crossroads: producing theory across the disciplines in South Africa

African studies in South Africa is currently at a crossroads – of making choices in the process of establishing itself institutionally and reconstituting itself as a discursive and epistemological field, including an interrogation of its histories and a decolonisation of its scholarly legacies. But being at a crossroads does not imply being at a loss; on the contrary, for African studies it means realising its potential of being a hub of critical thinking and a catalyst in the transformation of the humanities and the social sciences in the country and, possibly, internationally. Proceeding from this assumption, I will ask: what are the conditions of possibility for the emergence of African studies in South Africa as a space of transdisciplinary debate, one that is driven by a commitment to socially relevant issues and within which critical standpoints to be voiced by public intellectuals can crystallise? Some approaches critical for the development of such a field are present in South African scholarship, but – as it often happens in hierarchical academic structures – they are scattered across different disciplines or areas of expertise. Further, one of the main problems of African studies scholarship internationally – lying at the core of power inequalities of scholarship in Africa and the West – is the artificial split between “theory” and “(empirical) material” and the question of who is expected to produce what. This article starts with a discussion of the recent debates provoked by a restructuring of African studies and related disciplines at the University of Cape Town. To understand the resonance of these debates, beyond the context of one university and country, they will be placed, firstly, in the international context of African studies and, secondly, in the national context of debating the function and place of the humanities and the social sciences in South Africa. Both contexts highlight the importance of producing critical theory (instead of applying theory produced in the West). Hence, the following three subsections of this article will examine works by South African scholars that, produced within various disciplines (history, sociology and cultural studies), interrelate the insights of these disciplines and, in so doing, initiate new theoretical approaches. Using its crossroads position, African studies in South Africa can become a “laboratory” in which new critical approaches can be interrelated and debated. Opened up to dialogue with African studies in Africa and worldwide, it can become a theoretically invigorating space, nationally and internationally.     

Cost Effective Quality Services in the Context of the Health Care Crisis

South Africa is facing a health care crisis of staggering proportions. The article provides an overview of the South African health care system, an analysis of the current problems and the implications and patented opportunities for EAPs in health care management in South Africa.     

Evaluation in South Africa: An introduction

This article provides a brief background to the articles in this edition on evaluation in South Africa. The overall background is self-evident: South Africa is a country which has undergone a political revolution, with a government of national unity in place. The formulation and implementation of new policies, and the programs which form part of them, will be an important part of South African politics in the years to come.These articles also appear against the more immediate background of trying to place evaluation on a surer footing in this country. In this introduction the efforts of a group of South African evaluators to position themselves and their activities in such a way as to make evaluation an accepted part of the organizational landscape, and to play a useful role in a future South Africa, are described as well.     

Violence in the Brazilian favelas and the role of the police

Institutions should normally have an integrative influence. The family, for example, has the task of protecting and giving socio-emotional support to children, and schools should prepare young people for their future. Ideally the common goal of all of society's institutions is to secure the integration of youth and prevent or intervene against deviant behavior. But sometimes institutions provoke or even cause juvenile delinquency. The article discusses institutional influences and the role of the police in the criminal and violent situation in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.Starting with an overview of the origins and the development of violence, crime, and drug trafficking in the favelas, the authors show how these slums arose. Their analysis examines the lack of a state presence with an integration policy to avoid social disintegration. Instead of social integration policy, there is a dual approach that both controls and produces violence. The article also presents the first results of a government attempt in 2000 to introduce a new police unit to stop the violence and improve the social opportunity structure of the residents of the favelas, especially young people.     

Black Violence and Crime in the 21st Century

Abstract

Although a number of perspectives have been represented as frameworks for analyzing crime and violence perpetuated by African Americans, no analysis can replace a socio-historical perspective. By carefully studying the works of W.E.B. Du Bois a sharper analysis of black crime and violence can be clearly delineated.     

A Gendered Analysis of the Crisis of Social Reproduction in Contemporary South Africa

This article argues that African working class households are the sites of a crisis of social reproduction in contemporary South Africa. Through a gendered analysis of five townships in Emnambithi the article demonstrates that African working class women are the shock absorbers of this crisis. While feminist scholars point to a growing crisis of social reproduction as a global phenomenon, the South African material illustrates how poor women experience this in the South.     

Preliminary analysis of emigration dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa

Migration is so prominent in African history that several observers have concluded that it is a way of life for many Africans. Considerable migration has occurred historically throughout Africa in response to political, economic, religious and security situations, ethnic tensions, and demographic pressures. Patterns, directions, and motivations of migration have been severely affected by the colonial experience which, in turn, has influenced economic, sociocultural, political, and demographic development. Historical and political links between African and colonial countries initially facilitated migration toward the UK, France, Belgium, and later to the US, Canada, and Germany. Under a lengthy recession, however, these Western economies have severely restricted the flow of immigration. This paper discusses the data situation, the economic regime, the demographic regime, the political regime, the micro-macro context, the cultural regime, the ecological setting, political change and uncertainty in South Africa, the intra-African exchange of skilled manpower, and implementing the IOM/UNFPA project in sub-Saharan Africa.     

Child abuse in South Africa: rights and wrongs

In a country in which human rights feature prominently in our discourse about who we are, as well as in the South African constitutional and legal framework, so many wrongs continue to be done to children. One category of wrongs is abuse, but it is not the only one. Poverty, patriarchy and gender violence, as well as the socialised obedience, dependency and silence of women and children, create conditions in which abuse can occur, often with few consequences. South Africa has extremely high rates of both physical and sexual abuse of children. Progressive, rights‐based legislation exists to protect children, but it is not adequately supported or resourced by services to fulfil their provisions. Child abuse and neglect will not be significantly reduced in South Africa, without simultaneous improvements in the social and economic conditions in which very large numbers of children live. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Emergent migration policy in a democratic South Africa

This article sets recent debates on migration policy in South Africa against broader historical realities that have shaped patterns of population movement on the subcontinent since the end of the nineteenth century. During the course of the last century, most forms of population movement were the result of disjointed regional economic development which can be traced to two epochal events at the end of the nineteenth century: the creation of the modern African state system and the discovery of mineral wealth in Southern Africa. Although regulation of migrant labour was a fundamental feature of the colonial period, it was only after 1950, when independent states began to define specific migration priorities, that states began to restrict significantly the flow of transnational labour. From this point notions such as internally displaced person, refugee and illegal immigrant become increasingly appropriate to the study of regional migration.
Particular attention is given to current debate on the definition of refugee which forms part of a broader international debate. A number of South African writers have argued that, given the structural imbalances contained in the regional economy, the term "refugee" should be redefined to include economic migrants. This position is not shared by the South African Government, and an analysis of current policy and legislation demonstrates a growing tendency to restrict the influx of undocumented migrants. This is due, in part, to the recent political transition and the institutional compromises that it produced as well as the growth of negative sentiment towards illegal immigrants at both mass and elite levels, as demonstrated by two recent research findings. The article concludes with a summation of recent trends in South African migration policy and an evaluation of the ambiguous position that South Africa occupies within Southern Africa.     

Social Development and Minimum Standards in Social Work Education in South Africa

This paper evaluates how well South African minimum standards for social work education, known as Exit Level Outcomes, are aligned to a social development paradigm. Developmental social work is a relatively new approach in social work education internationally, and this article can therefore provide lessons for other countries using this paradigm in an education model based on national minimum standards.

The complexities and difficulties of using a minimum standards approach in education are discussed and the policy context for the development of these standards in South Africa is explained. The use of a social development framework for the analysis is motivated in relation to its relevance to the social context. Nine criteria for a social development perspective were drawn from the literature to form an analytical framework. A content analysis using this framework was done on the minimum standards.

The results show that the minimum standards are generally aligned with social development principles that drive national priorities, but a few significant gaps exist, which are outlined and discussed. This article attempts to grapple with the complexities of using these minimum standards to drive both curricula related and extra curricula activities in social work education in South Africa