Global gangs the case of Cape Town, South Africa

By Steffen Jensen, RCT Gangs and gang culture occupy central positions in the imaginary and anxiety of mainstream societies across the globe, as well as haunt, for better or for worse, the everyday lives of countless, urban township-, ghetto- or slum-dwellers. As such, global comparisons are necessary (Wacquant 2008), while we also need to pay meticulous attention to variation, across national border, within countries, yes even across individual cities. South Africa is a testimony to this diversity in gang cultures. Along with other issues, the diversity of gangs and gang-culture should be attributed to the apartheid regime and its racialisation of economy and socity. African gangs are different from coloured gangs, not because they are racially different but because Africans and coloureds were inscribed differently in the political economy of South Africa (Jensen 2008). While focussing on coloured gangs in Cape Town, I will tune in to how the gangs in Cape Town are different and have a different history separate from the African gangs of espcially Johannesburg. To organise the exploration of the histories and practices of gangs globally, the organisers of the conference have outlined a broad definition of gangs, or at least a definition of the gangs that the conference will explore. This definition suggests that youth gang members are principally but not necessarily exclusively individuals under the age of 25; that a youth gang will display a measure of institutional continuity that is independent of its membership; and that a youth gang routinely engages in violent behaviour patterns that are considered illegal and/or illicit by the dominant authorities and/or mainstream society. Hence, this definition suggests that gangs are organised around age, levels of ritualisation and criminality. The question of definition has haunted the study of gangs for decades. Often the definitions have been trait-based, which frequently involves a circular argument. Gang-surveyers know what a gang looks like, and as a consequence the definition is derived from the traits of the gang (Standing 2006). The suggested definition to some extent works as a traitbased definition; however as a working definition, and with a few additions,

the Cape Town case suggests that the proposed definition does to some extent correlate with the coloured gangs in the city. First, we must be careful not to confuse biological age with social age. Age in many places in Africa is a social category (Christiansen, Utas and Vigh 2006) and adulthood is reached through the fulfilment of certain characteristics associated to maleness (Heald 1999). The crisis for many men in Cape Town is that they are not able to attain this form of maleness at any time. Hence, some gang-members are old, even into their 40s and 50s. However, gangs are often peer-groups and they tend to begin as youth groups. Depending on the fortunes of the gang and its members, it might continue into late adulthood. This was the case with the Terrible Pipekillers, as we shall see later. Secondly, organisational continuity should be understood broadly as encompassing the idea or narrative of gang members of organisational continuity, of there being something after individual members have gone, perished or been locked up. Focussing excessively on organisational continuity reproduces a problematic relation between organised crime and street gangs. Although they might be related, this relationship is tenious and ever-negotiated and often street gangs and organised crime structures have opposing agendas and visions (Jensen 2000). Finally, although crime is an integral part of gang members lives, they are necessarily committing crime as gang members; they could be individuals who happen to be in a gang. Focusing on criminality as a gang practice might end up reproducing an understanding of the gang as first and formost a criminal organisation. This is what Standing (2006) calls the parasitic model that understands gangs as distinctly criminal, isolated from an otherwise healthy society, and in business for primary economic ends. This model bears little resemblance to the reality of the Cape Flats. The organisers of the conference furthermore suggest that the text is organised around the response to three questions: How and why did youth gangs emerge as major social factors in the particular context of study? How have youth gangs evolved over time, and what are the reasons for their particular path of evolution? How are youth gangs situated within a wider panorama of violence in the country? What are their links with other armed actors, both state and non-state? These questions beg the analysis of genesis, development and relations with other violent networks.

Genesis the emergence of gangs in Cape Town

Gangs have a long history in Cape Town, beginning around the time of the Second World War after a huge migration to the city. Thousands of empoverished rural residents migrated to the city from around the turn of the century. In the area where Cape Town is located, migrants mostly came from farms around the city and were either empoversihed white farmers or coloured farm-workers. Both ended up in the urban sprawl of Cape Town. The city authorities watched the development with growing fears and anxieties first because of the sheer multitude and the increasing poverty of the urban fringes, especially the area called District Six. Their second concern was with issues of race. As whites and non-whites were equally empoverished, they all ended up in the poorer sections of the city, bringing into sharp relief the dangers of miscegenation and dilution of white blood and the precarious white right to rule. It is from around this period that issues of separation of races and racially based betterment schemes became a paramount political question, eventually resulting in the passing of apartheids spatial segregatory laws and separate development. Apart from being based in fears of racial miscegenation, responses to the urban question were animated by racial stereotypes of especially coloured men, not least the uncouth rural cousins, derogatorily termed plaas jappies (farm boys). These stereotypes drew on historical and racial understandings of the coloureds as happy-go-lucky, phycially and emotionally weak, promiscuous, prone to drink and almost inherently criminal (Western 1996). These stereotypes were embodied in the abstract figure of the skollie, the scavenger lurking in backstreets and dark alleys, terrorizing hard-working people of all coloureds (Salo 2004). Although the skollie was and is an abstraction, he animated government interventions and, as argued elsewhere, many coloureds internalised the abstract figure as a real, existing figure against the backdrop of which coloureds had to stake their claim to morality residents and gangs alike (Jensen 2006). The first known gang in Cape Town dates back to the 1940s where The Globe gang was formed as an anti-crime, anti-skollie initiative. However, economic need and state-police pressure led Globe members to criminal activities1,

For further elaboration on the history of gangs in Cape Town, see Pinnock 1984: 23-30.

and soon the gangs began to constitute a problem in their own right. Pinnock (1984) argues that strong neighborhood webs of social and personal ties countered the gangs' negative impact on communities and their abilities to secure safe livelihoods. As the predominantly coloured people of the older neighborhoods were forcibly removed and resettled on the Cape Flats, the web of social control broke down. As there were no new forms of control, the new coloured areas on the Cape Flats became inherently dangerous. The dislocation led young men "to build something coherent out of the one thing they had left each other". Thus, gangs in Cape Town emerged out of the breakdown of social controls in the old inner city, the crippling unemployment and social marginalization. In Pinnocks analysis gangs were the creation of the apartheid regime and the forced removals. Clive Glaser (2000) disagrees and argue that Pinnock fails to explain why "defensive" youth gangs emerged in the Cape Flats only around 1980, a considerable time lag given that the bulk of relocations took place between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s. His analysis of the gangs in the Johannesburg area from 1930 to 1976 indicates that in the decade following the destruction of old urban areas like Sophiatown (that is, the 1950s), gangs as recognized structures did not emerge to any significant degree. Only after 1968 did a resurgence of gangs take place in Soweto's new townships. Evidence from Cape Town supports this point. In a panel discussion on security problems in Manenberg and Bonteheuwel in 19752, today both gang hot-spots, gangs were only mentioned once. For the most part, the panel discussants lamented the presence of the skollie, the robies and other criminals lurking in the backstreets. This suggests that gangs, along with communities in general, suffered from the dislocations wrought by the forced removals. Hence, the gangs that emerged from the beginning of the 1980s were of a new, Cape Flats breed. Despite these differences, it would seem that we need to locate the genesis of the gangs in both Cape Town and in Soweto with the large societal transformation relating to urbanisation and the management thereof. Gangs emerged as responses to urbanisation; they were sometimes structures of social control but often developed into being part of the problem for struggling residents; according to all accounts gangs were a constant
2

See Nicro 1975: 7-10

feature of the old urban neighboorhoods of Cape Town and Johannesburg. Along with the rest of the urban population the gangs suffered quite significantly from apartheid and they only re-emerged in a new and transformed nature after a decade in the new townships on the Cape Flats and Soweto. But gangs also became a way that government made sense of life in the urban fringes; as a category, the gang became a tool of government (Greenhouse 2003; Alexander 2000). In the categorisation of particular forms of life as gangs, the Cape authorities drew implicitly on the stereotypes of the coloured man. This also made the gangs in Cape Town different from their cousins in Johannesburg. These gangs might be called the township-based gangs. However, other ganglike structures developed especially in the Johannesburg area around the mining sector. These gang-structures were often ethnically based and organised. These gangs emanated out of the single-sex mining compounds which housed different ethnic groups, especially Basotho, Shangaan and Zulu, which had managed to maintain or wanted to maintain a rural base. Often they were formed as direct responses to the urban, township gangs, which scavenged on miners for their livelihood. The Marashea, a Basotho gang, was a case in point (Kynock 2005). The apartheid regime and the mining sector actively sought to promote such ethnic factionalism by delegating particular work to particular groups (Moodie 1995). The process of urbanisation also impacted on the formation of different kinds of gangs. In certain parts of the country, the rural areas were so overly populated that migration could not, to the same extent, be circular. Hence, in the townships a more permanent urban population developed, which was at odds with the migrants, maintaining a stake in the rural areas. This was later to develop into intense factional fighting between ANC (township) supporters and IFP (hostel) supporters (Jensen and Buur 2007; Mamdani 1996). In conclusion, gangs in South Africa emerged as results of urbanisation and the political economy of the specific city. They were often responses to real social and political pressures but often they became part of the problem for an already struggling non-white population. In Cape Town, gangs emerged to confront the skollie menace but often they came to incarnate that very menace. They developed in at least two distinct phases. First, gangs emerged in the inner-city of pre-apartheid Cape Town. These gangs roamed the

intensely overpopulated districts with equal amount of swagger and danger and became part and parcel of the popular culture. After the forced removals to the sprawling suburban Cape Flats, they took a knock and only re-emerged a decade later in a new form and shape that was distintly of the Cape Flats.

Developments practices and narratives of the gangs on the Cape Flats

When the gangs re-emerged they did so with a vengeance; from the relatively isolated phenomenon occuring in the inner-city the Cape Flats witnessed an almost exponential growth in gangs. They were to be found in every township. In Grassy Park for instance, Pinnock (1984) reported the presence of almost twenty gangs. This meant that hundreds of gang structures emerged around the Cape Flats. The New Yorker gang in Heideveld provides an illustration of the process. During more than a decade from the middle of the 1980s to the end of 1990s, the New Yorker gang was one of the strongest in Heideveld. At the height of their influence, they commanded great respect from many people, especially young boys, in their territory. At the same time they were expanding into drug dealing and employing increasing levels of violence. As with other gangs, the New Yorkers began as a means of defending themselves against harassment. The Naughty Angels, a few years their senior, embodied their personal nightmare. As Gerard, a long-standing member of the New Yorkers, explained, "We were like kids in their eyes. They were fooling with us, sending us around. We were scared of those guys". But the Naughty Angels also had their adversaries in the older Pipe Killers. This hierarchy of age was played out in fights. As Michael, who had a brief fling with New York, explained, "The Pipe Killers decided to go and beat up the Naughty Angels to re-establish their authority. But now the Naughty Angels were going to do to the New Yorkers what the Pipe Killers were doing to them". This harassment came to a halt when the New Yorkers decided to strike back. The New Yorkers main economic activity was drug dealing, particularly among the gang leaders. With fights over drug turfs, guns became an increasing part of New Yorker activity. This appears to be a general trend in the beginning of the 1990s. With the introduction of guns, gang fights changed character, and guns became part of the paraphernalia of masculinity. Although the New Yorkers fought other gangs, their prime antagonists were the Asbestos Boys from the station side. The Asbestos Boys ended badly.

While some of them left before it was too late Nazeem, who headed the Asbestos Boys, was killed in another township. Another member of the Asbestos Boys was killed in a drinking party. Dickey from the New Yorkers killed two others later in 1995. The last incident proved not only to be the end of the Asbestos Boys. It was also the beginning of the end for the New Yorkers. The war with the Asbestos Boys provided the backdrop for the almost mythological construction of the strength of New York. For instance, the apartment block from whence the leaders came was called New York and was the place of warriors. In these constructions, the role of the hero was crucial. With the New Yorkers, Dickey filled this role with brutal efficiency. As Gerard put it, "Dickey was always in front. The rest of us just filled the holes". Although Gerard considered Dickey his friend, it was with a great deal of ambiguity that he talked about Dickey's almost legendary capacities for violence. Regardless of the reservations, it was this capacity for violence, coupled with his ability to inspire the other members that earned Dickey his leadership in the New Yorkers. In the end, Gerard decided to get out of the gang, but as he continued to stay in the courts, he could not leave the gang entirely, and his house was used as storage for guns and drugs. He also occasionally fought together with the New Yorkers. Gerard was one of the first to leave. This slow drainage to polite society of the older New Yorkers was one reason for the decline of New York. The other reason related to an incident touched on above. In November 1995, after a drinking spree Dickey killed three people, wounded around ten and, on top of this, fired at the police. He and one of his friends were arrested and three years later, Dickey received a long prison sentence for murder. The New Yorkers were reduced in numbers after this incident but their style and presence in the Courts changed as did their main opponent. In the post 1995-conflicts the Americans became the main antagonist. Anthony, one of the few remaining original New Yorkers, took over leadership. He tried to reduce the levels of violence and fighting, but his control was far from absolute especially when it came to Rocco. The first incident happened in 1997 when Rocco killed an American. After months of relative quiet, violence flared up

again, following an argument between Rocco and another American over a girl. This led to retaliation after retaliation, leaving more than ten young men dead and several others wounded. Although Anthony tried to control Rocco and the emerging new gang, the Cat Pounds, he, in the end, was also caught in the violence and killed in late 1998.

Gangs territories in Heideveld after 1995. Key: 1) American territory; 2) New York/ Cat Pound territory; 3) Junky Funky Kids.

Four months after Anthonys death, Rocco was shot dead. The gang at their heels, the Cat Pounds, was drawn into the conflict because of Rocco, who had become the patron of the Cat Pounds and because they were youngsters living in the lower courts, and hence legitimate targets for American violence. In the first five months of 2001 several different gang wars simultaneously engulfed the city, leaving 103 dead on the Cape Flats, eighteen of them from Heideveld. Around that time, I received a letter from a friend summing up the destiny of the Cat Pounds: "The Cat Pounds have involved themselves with the fight and are busy dying". The story of the rise and fall of New York illustrates a number of points: gangs are peer groups that last a particular span of time; they are partly economic, partly identitary, partly protective entities and they are replies to particular pressures of the street and domination. First the generational issue. New York came at the heels of the Naughty Boys who, however, never developed into a full-blown gang, as they were taken over by New York. We

cab illustrate schematically how some of the gangs in Heideveld around the New York territory developed over time. Approximate year 1970s and 1980s Mid-1980s to mid 1990s Mid-1990s to 2000 Inside territory Sexy Boys New York New York/ Cat Pounds Main opponent Terrible Pipekillers Asbestos Boys Americans

This figure obscures many of the complications and intricacies: Terrible Pipekillers fathered both Americans and New Yorkers. The Asbestos boys were followed by their younger siplings, the Junky Funky Kids, who were aligned with New York in the struggle against the Americans. Furthermore, dozens of smaller groups emerged and disappeared to the extent that Heideveld at no particular time only housed two or three gangs. The account of New York illustrates also that there are clear hierarchical differences within the gang, especially in relation to economic activities. Throughout the decade of New Yorker dominion, the drug trade was the domain of the leaders, first Dickey and his brothers, then Anthony and his brothers. They were subordinates to the drug dealing business of the biggest china in the township, Kelly, original founder of the Sexy Boys. As I have explored elsewhere (Jensen 2000), Kellys biography from street gangster to drug dealer suggests that we need to distinguish between drug dealers (called merchants) and street gangs like New York. Street gangsters and merchants differ on a number of accounts. They use violence differently, they have a different relationship to the state and they have a quite different relationship to territory. Crudely, we might say that the street gangsters often use violence in relationship to the identitary questions of the gang fights and controntation with the police, whereas the merchants violence seems to be subordinated his economic interests. Contrary to the street gangsters wish to confront the police, the merchant would also want a different, corrupt relationship to the police. In the last section, I shall return to the relationship to the police. Finally, merchants are more translocal than the street gangs that are often confined to a few blocks. This translocality is often the result of prison where the merchants established links to other would-be merchants in other areas. As a consequence, residents in the gang territories have very different, but

equally ambiguous relationships with the gangs and the merchant. The young mens gang-related practices were often rendered invisible by the residents who saw them as good sons and respectable fathers (Salo 2004), while recognising that the young men were uncontrollable. The merchants drug dealing practices were also frowned upon while residents recognised the ability of the merchant to control the young men and even assist people in times of need. On the night of his death, residents contemplated the life of Kelly: In the townships there are no banks, only the merchant! Distinguishing between the structural positions of respectively merchants and drug dealers should not obscure that there are important relations between the two. Street gangsters are for instance both front pushers and the main consumers of drugs. However, as we shall return to below, media reports and policies incorrectly conflate the two. What pushes young men into gangs? In order to survive on the streets, young men sought protection in groups that were invariably interpreted through the lens of the gang. Furthermore, for many coloured men prison was not a farfetched possibility but a likelihood that one needed to prepare for in order to survive, and prison lore was transmitted through numerous accounts and stories of ex-convicts. In top of this, due to economic and social marginalization, many coloured men of the township, formally declared unemployable by the state (Theron Commission 1976), needed to engage in informal and illicit activities, as the formal labour market was often closed to them. These illicit, informal or illegal practices became part of the pattern of criminality that made up the gang. Finally, gangs in prison and outside provided the means through which to cope with racial stereotypes and systemic mortification. Through the gangs, the stereotypes could be deferred elsewhere in the construction of a marginal masculinity, or protorevolutionary (Jensen and Rodgers 2009) in opposition to dominant polite (white) society. However, the systems of mortification that infantized and feminized were reproduced on a higher level. This was true not only for those who engaged in gang related practices but for coloureds in general, as they confirmed the perception of coloured men as dangerous. Above, I have outlined some of the push factors that see young men end of in gangs. However, this approach takes as its only point of departure the objective existence of the gang. Empirical evidence from Cape Town suggests

that gangs are more fluid forms than such a view would allow for. Gangsters are not gangsters all the time, and their practices although criminal might not relate to their gang membership, which often does not appear particularly relevant. The Homeboys, a group of young men on the border of American and New York territory illustrates some of these complexities. In 1999, the Homeboys gained reputation as a group or gang. Its status was intensely negotiated but through 1999 a number of developments a territory-like hang-out, a fight with a neighbouring group who had friends with big guns, police attention, imprisonment, their own ritual performances of gangster-style, the promenading of guns, etc seemed to settle the question. Although there were very unganglike reasons for many of these events, the Homeboys were increasingly seen and acted upon as a gang to the anguish of their parents and the adults around them. Especially the struggle with the rivaling group the Junior Mafias was serious. The Junior Mafias were related to one of the Terrible Pipekillers, who traded in drugs and was well connected with the police. Thus, when a community activist called the police to stop the fight, the police officer from the elite gang unit turned out to be the very one with Junior Mafia connections. The people opposing the Homeboys bragged about how much it had cost to have the charges against the Junior Mafias dropped. The Homeboy was subsequently charged with attempted murder. Ironically, the case against the Homeboy proceeded at least partially because the Homeboys did not have criminal connections to the police. On the streets of Cape Town it can be dangerous to be lawabiding. Whether or not the Homeboys would travel the route taken by older gangs was still unsettled in 1999. One of their older relatives stated, himself a long-time inmate in Pollsmoor prison and a member of the Terrible Pipekillers, "If you got a name, you're a gangster. I warned them if they begin with this gangster-shit, they gonna end up dead or in prison". When I returned in 2003 at the back of yet another gang war, except for one all had managed to find their way into polite society and the Homeboys no longer existed as a gang structure. This reminds us that gangs are quite transient but also that the gang is a category that allows particular forms of action and inaction. As Carol Greenhouse asserts talking of crime,

interests of authority and its needs for self-legitimization determine crime, then, not the nature of the acts in question (2003: 276). Hence, what was defined as gangs and especially who were defined as gangsters was not only a matter relating to the practices of young men. Gangs emerged in the intersection between young mens practices, governmental development intervention and policing, as well as the practices of township residents. In this light, gangs became the polyvalent antithesis to polite society; the marginalization of the former traced the outer boundaries of the latter and polite society was, of course, as unstable and constructed as the gang. This consititutes anti-policy (Walters 2008) or governing through crime (Simons 2007) where polite society defers all that is bad to a parasitical entity outside an otherwise healthy socity. In the final section, I shall continue this line of thought as I explore how the state has acted in relation to the gangs, as well as how gangs relate to other violent networks.

Violent networks gangs, vigilante, politics and the state

Contrary to the gangs in Johannesburg, gangs in Cape Town have always had a tenuous relationship to politics. Around 1976, gangs in Johannesburg, the tsotsies, transformed famously into com-tsotsie a hyphenation of comrade and tsotsie (Glaser 2000). Gangs in Cape Town participated only to a limited degree in the struggle against apartheid. In their own minds, however, especially prison gangs were at the forefront of the struggle, fighting institutionalised apartheid everyday in the cell blocks (Steinberg 2004). Contrary to these proto-revolutionary claims, coloured activists suggested that the gangs were used against them. One activist had been deliberately put into a cell with gangsters to be beaten up. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that the gangs were primarily in hostile contact with the police, both before and after apartheid. Gangs were targeted violently by the apartheid state in the same torturous way as the activists (Fernandez 1991). Gang units were established as were the infamous Belville Murder and Robbery unit. In 1994, the new government thought that when apartheid broke down much of the crime and the gangs in the townships would disappear as government entered into a new social contract with the townships. The ANC government increasingly revised their

analysis; after 1998 the gangs and the township increasingly became the main obstacle to transformation and something needed to be done. This rethinking emerged out of the dual process of increased attention to crime among ordinary South Africans and the violent challenge from several local or regional vigilante groups (Jensen 2005). Consequently, the state embarked in a radical revamping of police and criminal justice system, not least the legal provisions enabling the state to wage a war on the gangs on the Cape Flats. In his suggestive analysis, Andr Standing (2006) analyses the fundamental assumptions behind the legal and criminal justice reforms in South Africa to identify what he calls the parasitic model. This model is derived from American mainstream criminology. Gangs are distinct and isolated entities whose main objective is the commissioning of crime with a leadership organised either as a bureaucracy or as a network. They infect economy and undermine democracy. They are in all matters equal to a tumor the removal of which will heal an otherwise healthy social body. According to this model, the solution consists in harsher sentences, criminalising association, targeting the economic activities through asset forfeiture and targeting the gangs specifically through the introduction of gang courts and gang units. Many of these steps have been taken over the past decade. In 1998, the RICO legislation (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), the prevention of organised crime act (Poca) was passed which criminalised criminal gangs (sic). The gang definition of the act was lifted almost unchanged from a Californian act (the STEP act of 1988). Gang courts were introduced in 2003 and mandatory sentencing was introduced in the late 1990s. Most of these assumptions are faulty. First of all, gangs are not the distinct entity the parasitic model would have us believe. Their sole purpose in life is not economic and they are far from the organised outfit they are made out to be, and which they themselves subscribe to. The criteria for gang membership in the legislation are so broad that virtually all, young male residents could fall under the defintion. Finally, the South African state is, unsurprisingly, not a healthy body that is corrupted by the gangs. As the story with the Homeboys illustrates, it is rather that the state corrupts the people in the townships. Elsewhere I have explored the relationship between relationship

between mothers and the young men (Jensen 2008; 2009; see also Salo 2004). Suffice it to say, that in these womens minds, the police constitute the problem, not the boys. 50-year Faudilla exclaimed about the police, Oh, they are corrupt, and continued: The police came here one day and they searched here for drugs and so forth and they took this one guy. Right now I 'm shouting at the police to leave him alone. Then one of the police said I'm interfering with their work! The more they want to grab him the more I fight them. Then this cop stands there with a gun to my head and tells me that I am interfering with his work!
Corrupt stood for the collective category encompassing the different negative, broadly immoral, traits attributed to the generic police officer. To work with

the police could never be positive; in fact it constituted something close to treason. This perception was based in everyday experiences of the police. However, even Faudilla did not hesitate to work with the police when it suited her interests. When one of the main drug dealers of her area was killed, she did not hesitate to volunteer her advice about where the violence emanated from, that is, from across the road in American territory. This suggests that the relationship between the police and the gangs are complex. To understand this, we need to pay attention to the police. As described how above, gangs have a different relationship to police than drug dealers. However, the police cannot be reduced to a monolithic organisation. We can identify at least two different groupings in the police in terms of their relationship with the townships. First there are the uniformed (shift) officers. Most of the corruption is attributed to them, not only among the township residents but also within the police. Detectives and the Crime Prevention Unit frequently referred to their invstigation being compromised by the shift officers. Generally understood as illustrations of lack in moral and morality, I suggest that we need to understand shift corruption in terms of their structural and operational position. Each shift consisted of six police officers and a shift commander, but often they were off sick or a van was broken down. The shift officers had to cover a large area, with some of the highest crime rates in South Africa. The shifts also worked in an environment in which their relation to the people

they policed was often very tense. To make up for their structural disadvantage, the shift officers navigated the townships through the use of safe bases, where their authority was not questioned and where they were relatively safe. In an ironic twist, these safe bases often included merchants. When I went on patrol with the shift officers, they invariably took me past some of the merchants with whom they appeared to be on amicable terms. I was introduced to two of the drug dealers that had been raided by the Crime Prevention Unit during the weekend by the shift officers. In one of them, the shift officers stopped the patrol van, honked his horn and called the merchant to the car who was subsequently introduced as one of the biggest drug dealers and richest men in the area. Whether this particular officer took money from this particular dealer is impossible to know, and it is beside the point, which is that shift officers and drug dealers had no particular interest in antagonizing each other. The rapport helped both sides. The drug dealer affirmed and showed his privileged access to state authorities towards rivals within the townships as well as people who might report him, and the police officer confirmed his relationship with the drug dealer who had at least a measure of control over the street gangsters. This control translated into an equal measure of security for the shift officers, working alone in a hostile environment. However, far from all police corruption emanated from the shift officers. As the case of the Homeboys illustrated, a prominent police officer and a spokes person for a gang-busting special Operation Good Hope affiliated to the people within one of the gangs. From interviewing it emerges that particular gangsters and merchant have developed relations with particular police officers. These relations develop as both police and merchant move up in the world. As an indication, one of the prominent merchants, Rashied Staggie, met with the provincial head of the police in a restaurant. Eminent criminologist Wilfried Schrf suggests that these relations develop over time implicating collegues of the police officers as well, and that these relationships are used in internal struggles among police officers and among gangsters (personal communication with Wilfried Schrf, 1999). Analysing the police in Johannesburg, Julia Hornberger (2004) captures the relationship with the term my police, your police.

The corrupt relationship between the police and the merchants has led to much violence in the townships. They also became the trigger in relation to the establishment of the last violent network that I will present, the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, Pagad. Pagad entered the national consciousness when the organisation burnt, shot and killed a merchant in front of rolling cameras. Pagad was a response to a need on the Cape Flats to confront gangs. Sometimes the need was born of personal experiences, sometimes of a more general fear for personal security or that children might become involved with drugs. Initially Pagad gave many residents on the Cape Flats a sense of power vis--vis drug dealers and gangsters, who had hitherto been untouchable. Although not all drug dealers heeded Pagad's warnings some did. The state was initially quite ambiguous, but it implicitly endorsed Pagad, and the main body of Islam in Cape Town, the Muslim Judiciary Council, likewise supported the anti-crime organization. The initial successes caused a groundswell of support in the general population, if not for Pagad then at least for collective, extra-state action. Pagad was always strongest in Muslim middle-class areas such as Surrey Estate, but the organization could initially field considerable support in the townships too. However, for various reasons support for Pagad began to wane during 1997. Splits between a radical Muslim group, Qibla, and groups concerned primarily with safety began to appear not only in discourse but also in violent encounters between the different groups. As Qibla asserted itself increasingly within Pagad, the organization also lost the support of the Muslim Judiciary Council. Finally, despite its earlier endorsement of Pagad, the state and government also came to view Pagad in an increasingly critical light. Pagad reciprocated the hostility with a pronounced antistate rhetoric and, during 1997, Pagad and the state became each other's prime enemies. By the end of 1997 Pagad had lost virtually all support in the state and among the inhabitants of Cape Town. The state tried its utmost to pin acts of violence on Pagad, and it reconfigured the anti-crime violence as urban terrorism. For three years the police attempted to obtain convictions, but they did not manage to secure lengthy prison sentences for Pagad members until 2000. When the state succeeded the penalty was harsh.

These three violent male networks were locked in a mutual battle, but it was a war without clear frontiers. Gangs were in bed with the police, and some factions of Pagad were rumoured to be in alliance with some of the gangs. Furthermore, residents on the Cape Flats had divided allegiances to the extent that families might even be in internal confrontation as some were members of the gangs while others supported Pagad and/ or the police. This is the real tragedy: while gangs, police and vigilante groups slug it out among and against each other, ordinary residents lives are endangered and compromised.

References
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