Cape Flats Research Articles

As die Cape Flats Kon Praat: Locality and the Literature of Precarious Living

This paper discusses the importance of Brian Fredericks’s short story collection, As die Cape Flats Kon Praat (If the Cape Flats Could Speak), published in 2020. The nine stories in the collection present different narratives of male characters and their experiences on the living areas outside Cape Town collectively known as the Cape Flats. These areas are synonymous with poverty and violence, identifiers that simultaneously suggest urgent attention but also reductive stereotyping. Two of the stories in the collection are examined here for information they provide about the intersections between gang culture and family relations, as well as how both are shaped by senses of place. How geographical space (here, space that was engineered during apartheid) influences and is influenced by the movements and actions of people is a point of theoretical interest in this article. This is supported by a short study of the workings of Cape Flats gangs and the transactional role played by violence. Fredericks’s collection joins a growing and necessary library of redress that reflects the value of Cape Flats narratives as essential to South African literature. That this collection includes the language of Afrikaaps, which is undergoing a similar re-evaluation in recent knowledge production, underscores the relevance of newer output that sheds light on the social codes, cultural grammars, and moral economies of a hitherto underrepresented literary region.

The Perils of Service Provision in Unsafe Areas: Providing Continuing Services to Youth during Gang Violence in the Cape Flats, South Africa

Youth involvement in criminal gangs is rife in a particular area of Cape Town, the capital city of Western Cape, South Africa, known as the Cape Flats. But the Cape Flats is not unique and the youth’s susceptibility to join these gangs cuts across cultures and societies. Wherever there is marginalisation and disadvantage, social issues emerge that are difficult to combat because of systemic and structural barriers. Community workers and those who live in these areas are often at their wits end trying to combat the allure that gang membership holds for their teenage children. This article reports on a study that was part of a larger research study conducted between 2016–2018 by social work students at a university situated in the area. The article reflects the findings of the 2018 study that focused on the perceptions and experiences of those who work or provide services in the area. The aim of the study was to explore the participants’ experiences of gang violence during service provision and their opinions about ways to address their concerns. A qualitative approach, utilising an intervention mapping design was used. Individual interviews were conducted with 325 service providers on the Cape Flats. Two main themes emerged from thematic data analysis, namely, impact on service providers and service delivery, and suggested interventions and solutions. The implications of the findings are that the increasing violence has severe consequences on service provision in communities and is disruptive and traumatising to everybody involved.

Inequalities in the Cape Flats: Principals’ perspectives on children’s schooling

Background: A separate, apartheid system of schooling in South Africa entrenched European racialised ideologies of white supremacy that left a legacy of social, economic, and educational inequalities. The 1995 White Paper for Education, the 1996 South African Schools Act, and the Revised National Curriculum Statement outlined steps for equalising education. However, inequalities within the schooling system remain.Aim: The study aimed to understand how principals experience the lasting effects of apartheid-era segregationist policies in primary schools and to document principals’ solutions.Setting: A meeting of principals who work at primary schools in the Western Cape province.Methods: Researchers purposively sampled four principals from the primary schools represented at the meeting, conducted semi-structured interviews with the principals chosen, and adopted an interpretive approach to analyse findings.Results: This study finds from principals’ perspectives that neighbourhood gang violence, and highly unequal funding for schools in different neighbourhoods adversely impact primary school children’s education and principals’ abilities to lead as a result of context, overcrowding and inequality. Principals note that when parent-led programmes such as the Walking Bus produce a positive effect, the government tends to undercut parents’ efforts to work with principals to secure and equalise young children’s schooling.Conclusion: Giving greater governance power to parents and principals may help to equalise the extremes of inequalities in primary schools remaining from Nationalist Party policies of the pre-1994 apartheid era.Contribution: This study contributes to primary school principals’ ideas for improving primary schoolchildren’s education.

Hydropolitical potentialities in a post-'Day Zero' Cape Town: "Sensemaking" and the Cape Flats Aquifer

In the context of the climate crisis, water as a natural resource is under threat globally, and the Global South is of critical interest for political ecological studies. This article argues that environmental crises such as the "Day Zero" drought in 2018 in Cape Town (South Africa) can create possibilities for reformulating the deeply unequal hydropolitics stemming from colonial and apartheid regimes. The drought has enabled the politicisation of underground water, examined through an ethnographic study of a small-scale farming organisation in the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) of Cape Town. While tracking ways to secure the protection of natural resources such as aquifers in urban areas, the article further considers how such forms of activism around underground water have sought to "make the invisible, visible," thereby developing more inclusive forms of sensemaking. By providing an analysis of activism taking place during and after a period of acute water scarcity, it contributes to scholarship on emergent political ecological mobilisation in the climate crisis in the Global South.

Is groundwater running out in the Western Cape, South Africa? Evaluating GRACE data to assess groundwater storage during droughts

Study regionThe Western Cape (WC), South Africa. Study focusThe WC has become increasingly dependent on groundwater in recent years due to repeated droughts. A framework to monitor the regional groundwater levels is urgently required to sustainably manage the WC’s water resources, since the region has inconsistent or unavailable monitoring data. Therefore, this study aims to understand how Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) data can be used to monitor groundwater storage variations (ΔGWS) in the WC. In-situ ΔGWS time-series from twelve aquifers in the WC were compared to GRACE and GLDAS data. New hydrological insights for the regionGRACE terrestrial water storage anomalies (ΔTWS) showed moderate positive correlation (r = 0.69) with in-situ ΔGWS from the Adelaide Subgroup Aquifer (ASA), an unconfined aquifer with large areal extent and large ΔGWS. The Table Mountain Group Upper Aquifer Unit (TMG UAU) and Cape Flats Aquifer (CFA) also showed significant positive correlations with GLDAS ΔGWS of 0.83 and 0.73, respectively. Our results suggest that ΔGWS in the ASA can be monitored using GRACE ΔTWS, while GLDAS ΔGWS data can be used to monitor ΔGWS in the unconfined TMG UAU and CFA. GRACE and GLDAS data may be suitable to monitor groundwater availability in other water- and data-scarce regions of Africa.

Genomic analysis supports Cape Lion population connectivity prior to colonial eradication and extinction.

Cape lions (Panthera leo melanochaitus) formerly ranged throughout the grassland plains of the "Cape Flats" in what is today known as the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Cape lions were likely eradicated because of overhunting and habitat loss after European colonization. European naturalists originally described Cape lions as "black-maned lions" and claimed that they were phenotypically distinct. However, other depictions and historical descriptions of lions from the Cape report mixed or light coloration and without black or extensively developed manes. These findings suggest that, rather than forming a distinct population, Cape lions may have had phenotypic and genotypic variation similar to other African lions. Here we investigate Cape lion genome characteristics, population dynamics, and genetic distinctiveness prior to their extinction. We generated genomic data from 2 historic Cape lions to compare to 118 existing high-coverage mitogenomes, and low-coverage nuclear genomes of 53 lions from 13 African countries. We show that, before their eradication, lions from the Cape Flats had diverse mitogenomes and nuclear genomes that clustered with lions from both southern and eastern Africa. Cape lions had high genome-wide heterozygosity and low inbreeding coefficients, indicating that populations in the Cape Flats went extinct so rapidly that genomic effects associated with long-term small population size and isolation were not detectable. Our findings do not support the characterization of Cape lions as phylogeographically distinct, as originally put forth by some European naturalists, and illustrates how alternative knowledge systems, for example, Indigenous perspectives, could potentially further inform interpretations of species histories.

CLASSIFICATION OF URBAN LAND USE AND LAND COVER WITH K-NEAREST NEIGHBOUR CLASSIFIER IN THE CITY OF CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA – CAPE FLATS CASE STUDY

Abstract. The rapid growth of cities, owing to rural-urban migration and high birth rate has resulted in encroachment of the land use and land cover (LULC) in the Cape Flats, situated north of Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa. PlanetScope imagery and K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) classifier are used to map and monitor the following LULC classes within the Cape Flats; waterbodies, trees, built-up, and vegetation, we further do a time series map between 2016 and 2021.The results showed that LULC changes between 2016 to 2021 are as follows: a decrease of 2.1% in vegetation, 0.4% in water bodies, and 11% in trees. Built-up areas, on the other hand, showed a significant increase of 13.6% over five years. The LULC changes in the Cape Flats were mainly triggered by an increase in built-up areas due to household construction to accommodate the increased population resulting from rural-to-urban migration and high birth rate. Classification accuracy from 2016 and 2021 was as follows; overall accuracy of 98.31% and 0.97 kappa coefficient in 2016, while overall accuracy 96.54% and kappa coefficient 0.95 in 2021. A combination of machine learning and high-resolution imagery showcased that high classification results can be achieved in monitoring subtle LULC changes. We recommended that all relevant stakeholders, including government officials and municipalities, formulate and adopt policies to protect against LULC degradation.

When the Cape Flats speak: Afrikaaps narratives and putting shame in its place

When the Cape Flats speak: Afrikaaps narratives and putting shame in its place

"You are what you eat": Plant-Human Relations in Home Gardens

Gardening has long been conceptualized as a practice that blurs nature-human binaries and connects humans to nature in rapidly urbanising worlds. Based on six weeks of fieldwork on the Cape Flats, this article explores human interpretations of beyond-human connections and experiences that are engendered in their home vegetable gardens. It weaves together ethnographic data and theoretical frameworks like posthumanism, multispecies ethnography and actor-network theory to analyse the inner workings of these relationships. I collaborated with six interlocutors and their gardens to reveal how companionships with plants and their produce complicate, contest or conform to nature-human binaries. In doing so, this paper investigates how through gardening, interlocutors come to recognize otherwise ‘invisible’ elements in the natural world as valued companions that not only co-produce healthy vegetables, but also co-create identities, emotions, practices, and justices. However, this paper also traces the exchanges that take place within the garden, contending that only the gardening agents that are perceived capable of maintaining beneficial reciprocities come to be coded as companions, whilst others that do not become pests or nuisances. Through these insights, it aims to add nuances to the claims that gardening dissolves human-nature dichotomies.

Living the life of floods: Place-based learning in an Anthropocene harmscape

This article explores how place-based learning and the development of landscape literacies unfold in a place suffused with a complex set of risks resulting from inter-operating and intersecting sociohistorical, political and environmental factors. By analysing assemblages of images and accompanying texts produced through a photovoice process undertaken by co-researchers in an informal settlement in South Africa’s Cape Flats, we show that residents are embedded in an ongoing process of embodied place-connectedness that has extensive pedagogical impact. We suggest that the learning that takes place in this harmscape may enable residents’ survival at the cost of allowing for either hope or the possibility of transformative change.

Teachers’ professional development shaped through self-reflection using video-stimulated recall

Background: Self-reflection is seen to be a key factor to individual improvement and development, and thus commendable of investigating. The challenge however is what tools to use to reflect effectively. This study examined the professional development of in-service Mathematics teachers through self-reflection using Video Stimulated Recall (VSR) as a reflective tool.Aim: The aim of the study was to contribute to the body of knowledge of professional development of teachers through VSR.Setting: This article describes an intervention where VSR was incorporated in two primary schools on the Cape Flats, Western Cape.Method: This study implemented the qualitative research paradigm involving four teachers. Data collection consisted of video recordings of lessons and semi-structured interviews after watching the video recording of their own lessons. A minimum of two cycles of observations and interviews were conducted per teacher.Results: After self-reflection, some of the participants altered their classroom practices to enhance the teaching and learning of mathematics while some reflected superficially. The lack of reflecting on their learners’ mathematical thinking and reasoning might have been ascribed to the limitation of viewing only two recorded lessons, the possible inability of the interviewer to probe the participants further or the participants’ inability or unwillingness to reflect deeper.Conclusion: Video-stimulated recall allowed participants to self-reflect. However, this tool should be used over a longer period to significantly influence practice.Contribution: Video-stimulated recall as a reflective tool can be used as an in-house professional development initiative that is customised to the needs and context of the participants.

Goals of Restoration Ecology and the Role of Grasses in the Processes as Seen in Southeastern Africa Restoration Projects

The goals of a “restoration” programme are often not clearly defined, which may radically influence the course of the change effected by the “restoration”. In this paper, I examine many restoration studies worldwide, the goals and the practice that was followed. Grasses often play an important role in both the succession and restoration processes. In Johannesburg, South Africa, wind-blown dust caused by gold mining was a problem in the early 20th century, so the goal was to stabilise the tailings. This was achieved by establishing vegetation on the dumps or revegetation of the land on which the tailings were deposited. Stabilisation of the Cape Flats was the goal in the late 19th century to allow easy movement along sandy roads in the region and marram grass was introduced from Europe specifically for this purpose. Revegetation with a different vegetation type is often a logical option where land use is of paramount importance. Replacement with crop plants or grasses is where the previous vegetation is replaced by an alternative land use that will be of benefit to the local people. The terms “rehabilitation” and “restoration” are often used interchangeably. Early researchers on the subject pointed out that rehabilitation is on the trajectory to full restoration or the original former state of the degraded site. In this review, the rehabilitation processes are discussed following dune mining in South Africa and at sites in Mozambique.

Alcohol Use as a Predictor of Risky Sexual Behaviour among Young Adults in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between alcohol consumption and risky sexual behaviour (RSB). This study further aimed to examine whether alcohol use, gender, and employment status predicted RSB among young adults in the Cape Flats. A better understanding of these predictors could potentially lead to a more thorough comprehension of the relation between alcohol consumption and RSB among young adults within the South African context. The study employed a cross-sectional correlational survey design, with a sample of 1001 participants aged 18 to 25 (51% women), using the street-intercept method. Participants were selected using purposive sampling, with age and geographical location employed as inclusion criteria. We used the Self-Report Risky Sexual Behaviours Scale (SRSBS) and the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT), which were cognitively tested and modified, in English and Afrikaans. The data were analysed via multivariate multiple regression analysis in Stata. The key findings indicate that alcohol consumption is an important predictor of RSB. Alcohol consumption accounted for 23.22% of the variation in RSB. We also found that alcohol consumption and gender were significant (p < 0.1) predictors of RSB, but not employment status (p > 0.01). Being a woman decreased RSB. The model indicates that alcohol use and gender explain 18.41% of the variance in RSB. This study provides support for the growing body of research evidence that has established a significant link between alcohol consumption and RSB, highlighting the need for longitudinal research to determine patterns of risky drinking in the general population.

Bridging unemployment gaps through ICT Bootcamps: A reality or precarity to equitable learning?

In recent years, there has been a paradigm shift to skills development in ICT due to the demand for low to middle-income jobs. We provide an in-depth guide to ICT bootcamps in this article for organizations in developing countries that are interested in participating in producing low to middle-level skills and reducing unemployment rates in previously disadvantaged communities, rather than relying solely on universities and technical vocational education centres. Using questionnaires, data was collected from a single case of an ICT bootcamp located in previously disadvantaged communities of the Cape Flats. The questionnaire was completed by 92 participants. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) was used in this study to analyse the success of ICT bootcamps in the context of skill development. As a bootcamp, SLCA's success is dependent on the degree to which it provides an equitable learning environment that reflects equity, diversity, and inclusion. Making sure students' social, psychological, economic, and academic needs are met is a key recommendation for creating equitable learning environments. Our findings are based on the findings of a single case study. More case studies would strengthen our argument. Nonetheless, we believe our research has provided a solid foundation for future coding bootcamp literature.

Geoethical issues around water security for the City of Cape Town (South Africa) and groundwater resilience in uncertain circumstances: development of the Atlantis, Cape Flats and Table Mountain Group Aquifers

Geoethical issues around water security for the City of Cape Town (South Africa) and groundwater resilience in uncertain circumstances: development of the Atlantis, Cape Flats and Table Mountain Group Aquifers

Towards redress: The ‘not-yet’ future between harm and repair in Cape Town

ImaginingOtherwise was a participatory arts education initiative engaging peripheralised young people to explore how ‘race’ and space are reproduced in the specific context of the Cape Flats, Cape Town, which like all apartheid cities, was a result of violent dispossession by forced removals. There is a need to attend to local, specific accounts of young people and their capacity to resist the ravages of disposability. I bring together youth studies, futures studies and some insights from ImaginingOtherwise, considering processes of listening and participating in gathering, stories of ‘race’, space and dispossession and how these may lead towards imagining other outcomes. What does ‘imagining otherwise’ enable in the afterlives of injustice? Witnessing and truth-telling alone do not equate to reconciliation and we need something in between. I thus take up Olùfémi O. Táíwò’s discussions of reparations (2021), developing a counter-position that attests to Saidiya Hartman’s concept of ‘redress’ (1997). Emphasising the centrality of redress as a worldmaking, future-oriented mode, I argue that in this local and contextually defined project, collective imagining became a ‘doing’ of just futures in the present, and as such, enabled a rehearsal of possible futures between harm and repair. A redressive orientation to futures is not a chronologically linear journey, but one that moves between temporalities. The article proposes that redress is a grounded and collaborative approach that unfolds outside of formal (legalistic, logistical, monetised or material) reparations. Redress is a worldmaking, future-oriented mode and we need creative and collaborative pedagogies to work through the need to break and ‘unmake’ towards a different future.

What Is Wrong with Frankenia nodiflora Lam. (Frankeniaceae)? New Insights into the South African Sea-Heaths.

The taxonomic identity and phylogenetic relationships of several southern African perennial taxa related to Frankenia repens are discussed. In particular, F. nodiflora Lam., a misunderstood species described from the Cape region and synonymised to F. pulverulenta, is restored for plants endemic to salt-pans and riverbeds in the coastal lowlands across the Cape Flats (Western Cape province, South Africa). Further, a revision of morphologically close plants, usually identified as F. pulverulenta or F. repens, also occurring in similar saline ecosystems of the inland western South Africa revealed the existence of two distinct new entities not matching any described taxa of the genus. Molecular analyses of nuclear ribosomal (ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 region) DNA sequence data together with morphological divergence allow recognition of those taxa at species rank, within an independent lineage close to F. repens. In consequence, two new sea-heath species are described in the so-called "F. repens group": F. nummularia from the Nama-Karoo Biome (Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces), and F. anneliseae from the Succulent Karoo Biome (Northern Cape province). Full morphological description and type designation are reported for each accepted species as well as data on ecology, habitat, distribution, and taxonomic relationships to other close relatives are given. Further, an identification key is presented to facilitate recognition of the southern African taxa of Frankenia.

Responsive Measures for Youth Development to Prevent Delinquent Behaviour Among Youths Not in Education, Employment or Training

In this article, I sought to explore the perspectives of young people who are no longer in the education system and who are not working or being trained for work (NEETs) of youth development interventions that can be used to prevent delinquent behaviour among youths residing in the Cape Flats, South Africa. In this regard, convenience and purposive sampling were used to sample 30 NEETs, aged 18 to 24 years. Unstructured qualitative interviews were used to collect the data, and a thematic analysis was used to analyse the data that were collected. The findings revealed that the institutionalisation of youth clubs in the Cape Flats could be the best type of intervention to prevent youth delinquent behaviour. In this article, I recommend a multisectoral approach that would involve joint efforts from civil society and the government with the already existing basic package of support for empowerment of NEETs to strengthen the Presidential Youth Service Programme.

The effect of exposure to community violence on youth on the Cape Flats

The effect of exposure to community violence on youth on the Cape Flats

Mental Health Service Users and Their Caregivers Perspectives on Personal Recovery from Severe Mental Health Conditions in Cape Town, South Africa: A Qualitative Study

Severe mental health conditions (SMHCs) significantly contribute to the global disease burden. In low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) like South Africa, the long-term impact of SMHCs on individuals and their families is serious. However, mental health services focus on clinical recovery, with little attention given to the personal recovery needs of mental health service users (MHSUs) and their caregivers. The CHIME framework outlines five domains characterising personal recovery: connectedness, hope and optimism about the future, identity, meaning in life, and empowerment. This qualitative, descriptive study sought insights from male MHSUs and their caregivers on their perspectives of personal recovery from SMHCs. Four male MHSUs and three of their caregivers were purposively selected from Cape Flats communities in the Western Cape. Data were collected using visual participatory methods, including photovoice, life graphs, community maps, and photo-elicitation interviews with MHSUs. In addition, semi-structured interviews were held with caregivers. Data were thematically analysed, and two main themes emerged: Finding meaningful participation and affirming agency. These themes describe how diverse contextual, socioeconomic, political, demographic, cultural, and spiritual factors help and hinder personal recovery. MHSUs and their caregivers sought support from mental health non-profit organisations (MH-NPOs) because of stigmatising attitudes from their communities. MH-NPOs provided MHSUs with long-term relational support and opportunities to build their capacities which helped them access living, learning, working and socialising opportunities. Understanding the diverse needs of MHSUs and including MH-NPOs in scaling up community-based mental health services in LMICs will enable more accessible services that support personal recovery.