Cape Town after Apartheid
Crime and Governance in the Divided City
Reveals how liberal democracy and free-market economics reproduce the inequalities of apartheid in Cape Town, South Africa
272 Pages, 6 x 9 in
- Paperback
- 9780816670017
- Published: June 13, 2011
Details
Cape Town after Apartheid
Crime and Governance in the Divided City
ISBN: 9780816670017
Publication date: June 13th, 2011
272 Pages
8 x 5
"Cape Town after Apartheid is a major contribution to the field of urban studies and criminal justice. It provides a framework for understanding gangs, violence, and neoliberal crime policies, emphasizing how security policies are rooted both in neoliberalism and apartheid-era policy and how they serve to strengthen gangs and fail to stem violence." —John Hagedorn, author of A World of Gangs
"Samara’s book masterfully connects the dots between local segregation in South Africa and what he calls the ‘transnational network of neoliberal urban governance.’ Samara’s brilliant treatment of crime, ‘terrorism,’ and gang violence also reminds us of the profound social degradation that the next struggle for genuine emancipation must confront." —Patrick Bond, University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society
Cape Town after Apartheid focuses on urban renewal and urban security policies and practices in the city center and townships as this aspiring world-class city actively pursues a neoliberal approach to development. The city’s attempt to escape its past is, however, constrained by crippling inequalities, racial and ethnic tensions, political turmoil, and persistent insecurity. Samara shows how governance in Cape Town remains rooted in the perceived need to control dangerous populations and protect a somewhat fragile and unpopular economic system. In urban areas around the world, where the affluent minority and poor majority live in relative proximity to each other, aggressive security practices and strict governance reflect and reproduce the divided city.
A critical case for understanding a transnational view of urban governance, especially in highly unequal, majority-poor cities, this closely observed study of postapartheid Cape Town affords valuable insight into how security and governance technologies from the global North combine with local forms to create new approaches to social control in cities across the global South.
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
Map of Cape Town
Introduction: Urban Geopolitics, Neoliberalism, and the Governance of Security
1. Security and Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa
2. Children in the Streets: Urban Governance in Cape Town City Center
3. Gangsterism and the Policing of the Cape Flats
4. The Weight of Policing on the Fragile Ground of Transformation
5. The Production of Criminality on the Urban Periphery
Conclusion: Apartheid, Democracy and the Urban Future
Notes
Index
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