Neighbourhoods In Cape Town Research Articles

Promoting “Cultural Rights” for Inhabitants of Segregated Neighbourhoods in Cape Town, Salvador de Bahia, and Toulouse. From “Cultural Insurrection” to Epistemic Action

Promoting “Cultural Rights” for Inhabitants of Segregated Neighbourhoods in Cape Town, Salvador de Bahia, and Toulouse. From “Cultural Insurrection” to Epistemic Action

Making Demands on Government: Theorizing Determinants of Backyard Residents’ Collective Action in Cape Town, South Africa

AbstractInformality is growing with Africa’s rapid urbanization. Much like residents of other types of informal housing, backyard dwellers face overall poor living conditions and political marginalization. However, backyard residents are in an ambiguous legal area and have been far less politically active and organized to pursue their rights to adequate housing. Using a qualitative case study of backyard residents in three Cape Town neighborhoods, Harris, Scheba, and Rice bridge theories of infrastructural citizenship and collective action to shed light on how informality may undermine collective action, and they identify four factors influencing collective action.

How do we get the community gardening?: grassroots perspectives from urban gardeners in Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT Urban agriculture offers numerous environmental, economic, and social benefits. However, it is often hampered by limited engagement in cities of the global South. This article offers bottom-up perspectives on how to increase the uptake of urban agriculture activities. It draws on urban gardeners’ perspectives in the low-income neighbourhood of Mitchells Plain, Cape Town. The mixed-methods approach combined a questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews with urban gardeners, and interviews with civil society actors and a state official. The results indicate that climate and soil conditions are major deterrents to urban agriculture. However, community dialogues about urban agriculture’s social and environmental benefits could play a crucial role in increasing uptake and in facilitating conversations about urban agriculture and food more generally. The paper offers recommendations for future interventions seeking to promote urban agriculture and support actors in low-income neighbourhoods in Cape Town and other African cities.

Public Space and Everyday Culture

To understand the concept of public space within the African context, we need to unpack the terms ‘public’ and ‘space’. Public space can’t be seen in isolation from the action that takes place within the urban space, the everyday culture that influences public life. The opportunity lies in reviewing the idea of public space from a conventional meaning into one of understanding the fractions of space as co-produced, negotiated, and occupied places in constant change, driven by a continual process and not a desired end-product. In some instances, the fractional space is connected and creates a mesh or network of social infrastructure; in others, the spaces remain individual and active. The short essay offers a series of photo stories to reveal the concept of fractional urban space. The images illustrate a switch in foreground concepts versus the background realities and actions in urban spaces experienced in fragile neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Four spatial frames are interpreted. Firstly, fractional space is described. Secondly, a space of practice remarks on a strategic, and transformative project as a lesson for incremental area-based development. Thirdly, a space of exchange, reveals the social function and production of space within an extraordinary and overlapping micro-space of the city. Fourthly, a space of learning, reframes a critical pedagogy of engaged teaching and learning beyond the academy, co-designed and situated in a ‘real’ public space project. The images offer reflections of fractional urban space in context.

The role of cultural norms in shaping attitudes towards amphibians in Cape Town, South Africa.

Urban ecosystems are increasingly viewed as an important component within strategies for wildlife conservation but are shaped as much by natural systems as they are by social and political processes. At the garden scale, attitudes and preferences govern design and maintenance choices including the decision to encourage or discourage specific faunal presence. At the global scale, charismatic taxa that are well-liked attract more conservation funding and volunteer stewardship. Amphibians are a class of animals that are both loved and loathed making them a suitable subject for comparing and unpacking the drivers of preference and attitudes towards animals. We conducted a mixed methods survey of 192 participants in three adjacent neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. The survey included both quantitative and qualitative questions which were analysed thematically and used to explain the quantitative results. The results revealed that attitudes formed during childhood tended to be retained into adulthood, were shaped by cultural norms, childhood experiences and the attitudes of primary care-givers. The findings are significant for environmental education programmes aimed at building connectedness to nature and biophilic values.

Community policing amidst diversity: exploring the role of inter-group trust in two Cape Town neighbourhoods

AbstractWhy are some diverse communities in sub-Saharan Africa able to achieve mutually beneficial collective action while others remain trapped in social dilemmas? This paper argues that inter-group trust plays an important role in explaining when and where communities succeed in collective endeavours. It develops an argument that illustrates how demographic contextual variables structure patterns of inter-group trust and prospects for local goods provision in diverse communities. It then assesses the argument by analysing community policing in two heterogeneous neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. The paper demonstrates how crosscutting cleavage structures in one Cape Town suburb bolstered the development of inter-group trust across the community, thus helping the community garner participation in community policing. It also documents how reinforcing cleavage structures in another Cape Town suburb has helped to suppress the development of inter-group trust, making the resolution of collective action problems more difficult.

Connecting energy services, carriers and flows: Rethinking household energy metabolism in Cape Town, South Africa

Household metabolism assessments are useful approaches for understanding household energy consumption and identifying intervention points towards sustainability. However, a gap persists in the evidence that associates resource flows to particular groups of people, locations and sectors. This study thus undertook a differentiated household energy metabolism assessment of Cape Town, focusing on energy inflows in the form of energy carriers and throughflows in the form of energy services. This was achieved using household energy surveys and audits across different neighbourhoods in Cape Town. Four different income group profiles were created for total energy consumption, which were further linked with respective energy services and energy carriers. The results show that each income group in Cape Town accesses all 11 services examined, suggesting income is not as strong a limiting factor to achieving services of comfort, cleanliness and convenience. This study suggests that intervention points for improving the sustainability of urban energy systems depend on the profile of the income group. For low- and low-middle-income groups, a shift in energy carrier is suggested to be the first step toward reshaping these energy flows for sustainability. This requires a shift from expensive, dangerous, and inefficient energy carriers to ones that are efficient and safe, with the additional benefit of reducing overall energy consumption. For high-middle and high-income households, sustainability interventions revolve around reducing overall energy consumption, as alternative energy carriers do not play such a prominent role. Water heating and cooking are services which show potential for reduced energy consumption across all income groups.

Home Visiting and Antenatal Depression Affect the Quality of Mother and Child Interactions in South Africa.

To examine whether maternal depressed mood at birth moderated the protective effect of a home-visiting intervention on the quality of caregiving for children growing up in a low- and middle-income country. Almost all pregnant mothers in 24 Cape Town neighborhoods were recruited into a cluster randomized controlled trial matched by neighborhoods to the Philani home-visiting condition (HVC) or the standard care condition (SC). At 3 years after birth, the quality of mother-child interactions between HVC and SC mothers with and without antenatal depressed mood was assessed in a representative subset by rating videotaped observations of mother-child interactions on 10 dimensions of caregiving. As predicted, maternal depressed mood at birth moderated the effect of the HVC on the quality of mother-child interactions. Among nondepressed mothers, mothers and their children in the HVC scored significantly higher on 5 of the 10 dimensions of the maternal-child interaction scale than mothers in the SC: mothers exhibited more maternal sensitivity, talked more, had more harmonious interactions, and had children who paid more attention and exhibited more positive affect. However, being in the HVC did not significantly affect the mother-child interaction scores among mothers with depressed mood. Among HVC children, those with mothers with depressed mood showed significantly less positive affect and talked less with their mothers than children with nondepressed mothers. SC children with mothers with depressed mood were more responsive and paid attention to their mothers than children with nondepressed mothers. Home visiting resulted in a better quality of caregiving for mothers without depressive symptoms. Future interventions need to specifically target maternal depression and positive mother-child interactions. Mentor Mothers: A Sustainable Family Intervention in South African Townships; https://clinicaltrials.gov; NCT00972699; Philani Home-based Nutrition Intervention Program; https://clinicaltrials.gov; NCT00995592.

The potential of urban agriculture towards a more sustainable urban food system in food-insecure neighbourhoods in Cape Town and Maputo

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most rapidly urbanising regions in the world. Achieving food and nutrition security is not only a rural challenge; the access to adequate (in terms of quantity and quality), healthy, nutritious and affordable food is also a growing concern for cities. The latest food crisis (2007/08) put food security back onto the political agenda as food prices increased significantly within just a few weeks and showed the world how vulnerable food systems are, particularly in cities. Food systems describe the ‘farm-to-fork’ processes, pathways and dynamics between interlinked actors and are embedded in a spatial context. The global discourse on food security happens without considering the urban context, just as the global discourse on the urban context happens without considering food security (Battersby 2016: 3). The controversial debate on the contribution of urban agriculture to food and nutrition security frames this study. Based on the perspective of a food systems approach this research seeks to understand the two case areas, City of Cape Town (South Africa) and City of Maputo (Mozambique), through local food production, pathways, dynamics and challenges. This paper shows early results of two baseline surveys amongst urban farmers in both cities, as well as in-depth interviews with urban farmers. Both case studies show similar challenges but different opportunities to increase the potential of urban agriculture to contribute towards a more sustainable food system.

Hy leer dit nie hier nie (‘He doesn't learn it here’): talking about children's swearing in extended families in multilingual South Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper explores family language policy as a conceptual framework for exploring the ideologies around swearing and children in a multilingual family environment. The case study revolves around two young male children born to adolescent mothers living in socio-economically marginalised neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Whilst family language policy research has traditionally investigated children's language learning in multilingual family contexts, this paper focuses on practices and discourses around swearing. The children are raised in a particular type of family: their young parents do not live together, but with their respective extended families. Drawing on recordings of interactions and casual conversations, the paper shows that swearing is an important topic for adults within talk around children's language. General questions around family language policy uncover the participants’ association of children's use of Afrikaans with swearing. Moreover, the interpretation of empirical data brings to the fore the contradictions between language socialisation practices and expressed family language policies around children's acquisition of swearwords. Furthermore, the paper highlights how beliefs around children and swearing are not expressed within the nuclear family as a social unit, but rather along extended family lines – thereby emphasising the processes of ‘family making’.

Ethnic Homogeneity and Community Policing: The Surprising Effects of Social Capital in Two Cape Town Neighborhoods

AbstractUnder what conditions does coethnicity undermine mutually beneficial collective action? One of the most enduring hypotheses in a comparative political economy decade is that ethnic diversity tends to undermine public goods provision. Ethnically homogenous communities are assumed to have a distinct advantage in local goods provision because shared identities tend to facilitate cooperation among coethnics. However, one can observe variation in the success of local goods provision across homogenous communities. To explain this puzzling occurrence, I explore the relationship between coethnicity and social capital, examining how they interact differently in different contexts. Empirically, I conduct an analysis of my own fieldwork on community policing efforts in two ethnically homogenous communities in Cape Town, South Africa. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that, in some contexts, coethnicity facilitates the development of bonding social capital, a type of social capital that constricts opportunities for individual action by creating certain expectations about behavior. In the context of community policing, those expectations can discourage individuals from participating in collective efforts.

Patterns of Alcohol Abuse, Depression, and Intimate Partner Violence Among Township Mothers in South Africa Over 5 Years.

Alcohol is a major contributor to the global burden of disease. In South Africa, alcohol abuse is hypothesized to correlate with women's HIV status, mental health, and partner relationships over time. All pregnant women in 12 urban, low-income, Cape Town neighborhoods were interviewed at baseline, post-birth, and at 6, 12, 36, and 60months following delivery with retention rates from 82.5 to 94%. Women were assessed for any alcohol use, problematic drinking, depression, intimate partner violence, and HIV status. Prior to pregnancy discovery and 5years after giving birth, alcohol use was 25.8 and 24.7%, respectively. Most women decreased their alcohol use during pregnancy. Twenty-one percent reported alcohol use on two or more assessments, and only 15% of the mothers drinking alcohol at 5years were also drinking at baseline. Mothers with depression had a higher likelihood of drinking alcohol compared to mothers who were not depressed only at baseline and 6months post-birth. Mothers who experienced IPV had more than twice the likelihood of drinking alcohol compared to non-IPV mothers at all assessments. HIV positive mothers were more likely to drink alcohol compared to mothers without HIV prior to pregnancy discovery and at 5years post-birth. These longitudinal trends in alcohol use among young women in South Africa represent a large economic, social, and health burden and must be addressed in a comprehensive manner.

Child understandings of the causation of childhood burn injuries: Child activity, parental domestic demands, and impoverished settings.

Burns are a global public health problem. In South Africa, the rate of paediatric burn deaths is 5 times higher than other upper middle-income countries, with concentrations in impoverished settings. Globally, the majority of research focuses on expert and caregiver descriptions of burn occurrence, causation, and prevention, with limited consideration of children's perspectives. This study investigated children's understanding of the causation and prevention of childhood burns. Data were collected from eighteen 10- to 11-year-old children living in selected impoverished, fire-affected neighbourhoods in Cape Town, through 3 isiXhosa focus groups. All focus groups were transcribed, coded, and analysed for emerging themes through thematic analysis. Themes regarding burn causation and risks centred around 4 themes: (a) developmental limits in context; (b) domestic chores, child capacity, and inability to say "no"; (c) inadequate supervision and compromised caregiving; and (d) unsafe structures. Child accounts of prevention pertained to (e) burn injury prevention activities in comprised environments and emphasized child agency, and upgrading the physical environment. The children in this study ascribed burn injuries as the consequence of their developmental limits in the context of poverty, constraints on parental supervision, and unsafe environments. The children recommended safety education and upgrading their physical environments as part of burns injury prevention. The child accounts offer useful insights to inform safety interventions in impoverished settings.

Thirty-Six-Month Outcomes of a Generalist Paraprofessional Perinatal Home Visiting Intervention in South Africa on Maternal Health and Child Health and Development.

Almost all pregnant women (98%) in 24 Cape Town neighborhoods were randomized by neighborhood to (1) the standard care (SC) condition (n = 12 neighborhoods; n = 594 pregnant women) or (2) the Philani Intervention Program (PIP) in which home visits by Community Health Workers (CHW) were conducted (n = 12 neighborhoods; n = 644 pregnant women). At 36months post-birth (84.6% follow-up), PIP mothers were significantly less depressed compared to the SC mothers. Children in PIP were significantly less likely to be stunted (24.3 vs 18.1%, p = 0.013), to have better vocabularies, and were less likely to be hospitalized than children in the SC condition. These data suggest home visits may need to continue for several years post-birth. Sustainable, scalable perinatal intervention models are needed in LMIC.

Feasibility of Using Soccer and Job Training to Prevent Drug Abuse and HIV.

Many young, South African men use alcohol and drugs and have multiple partners, but avoid health care settings-the primary site for delivery of HIV intervention activities. To identify the feasibility of engaging men in HIV testing and reducing substance use with soccer and vocational training programs. In two Cape Town neighborhoods, all unemployed men aged 18-25years were recruited and randomized by neighborhood to: (1) an immediate intervention condition with access to a soccer program, random rapid diagnostic tests (RDT) for alcohol and drug use, and an opportunity to enter a vocational training program (n=72); or (2) a delayed control condition (n=70). Young men were assessed at baseline and 6months later by an independent team. Almost all young men in the two neighborhoods participated (98%); 85% attended at least one practice (M=42.3, SD=34.4); 71% typically attended practice. Access to job training was provided to the 35 young men with the most on-time arrivals at practice, drug-free RDT, and no red cards for violence. The percentage of young men agreeing to complete RDT at soccer increased significantly over time; RDTs with evidence of alcohol and drug use decreased over time. At the pre-post assessments, the frequency of substance use decreased; and employment and income increased in the immediate condition compared to the delayed condition. HIV testing rates, health care contacts, sexual behaviors, HIV knowledge, condom use and attitudes towards women were similar over time. Alternative engagement strategies are critical pathways to prevent HIV among young men. This feasibility study shows that soccer and job training offer such an alternative, and suggest that a more robust evaluation of this intervention strategy be pursued.

Alcohol Use, Partner Violence, and Depression: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial Among Urban South African Mothers Over 3 Years.

Pregnant South African women with histories of drinking alcohol, abuse by violent partners, depression, and living with HIV are likely to have their post-birth trajectories over 36 months significantly influenced by these risks. All pregnant women in 24 Cape Town neighborhoods were recruited into a cluster RCT by neighborhood to either: (1) a standard care condition (n=12 neighborhoods, n=594 mothers); or (2) a home-visiting intervention condition (n=12 neighborhoods, n=644 mothers). Pregnant women residing in urban, low-income neighborhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Home visiting included prenatal and postnatal visits by community health workers (Mentor Mothers) focusing on general maternal and child health, HIV/tuberculosis, alcohol use, and nutrition. Mothers were assessed in pregnancy and at 18 and 36 months post birth: 80.6% of mothers completed all assessments between 2009 and 2014 and were included in these analyses performed in 2014. Longitudinal structural equation modeling examined alcohol use, partner violence, and depression at the baseline and 18-month interviews as predictors of maternal outcomes at 36 months post birth. Relative to standard care, intervention mothers were significantly less likely to report depressive symptoms and more positive quality of life at 36 months. Alcohol use was significantly related to use over time, but was also related to depression and HIV status at each assessment and partner violence at 36 months. Alcohol, partner violence, and depression are significantly related over time. A home-visiting intervention improved the emotional health of low-income mothers even when depression was not initially targeted.

City Without Choice: Urban Food Insecurity in Msunduzi, South Africa

The official moniker of the city of Msunduzi in Kwazulu-Natal is “city of choice.” The economic revival of Msunduzi over the past decade has been driven by the influx of capital to a city that claims to offer significant advantages to the investor. This paper examines whether this marketing ploy has enlarged the choices of the poorer residents of the city, with particular regard to their food security. Using data from the 2008–2009 African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) baseline survey, the paper shows that Msunduzi’s residents experience higher levels of food insecurity than like neighbourhoods in Cape Town and Johannesburg and many other cities in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. Unlike a number of these cities, the food sourcing strategies of households are severely constrained. Urban agriculture and rural–urban food transfers are limited, and the informal food economy is much less significant than elsewhere. The control of the urban food system largely rests in the hands of supermarkets whose location and pricing policies put quality food outside the reach of most poor households. Although many are forced to buy supermarket food, through lack of choice, food shortages and a lack of dietary diversity are endemic. Worst off are female-headed households whose levels of unemployment are higher than average and whose incomes are lower than average.

Homeownership, Privacy and Neighbourly Relations in Poor Urban Neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa

ABSTRACT The South African government has delivered many low-cost houses under freehold homeownership, in part on the assumption that neighbourhoods of homeowners will result in economically and socially viable communities. Drawing on qualitative data collected from four new poor neighbourhoods in post-apartheid Cape Town (South Africa), this article examines how homeowners forge neighbourly relations and construct ‘community’ on the basis of class status, social interactive and sentimental attributes of a sense of neighbourhood. The study found that inter-household familiarity, kin and friendship networks, residents’ perceived commonality and social control and sense of identification with place in new neighbourhoods are generally weak, but with variation between and within neighbourhoods. Acts of mutual assistance and some collective action are attributed to the agency of residents as a mechanism for coping with a common identity of deprivation. The authors conclude that the government's ambitions to create socially viable neighbourhoods are limited by their homeowning residents’ concern with privacy in the context of wariness of intimacy, distrust, fear/ubiquity of crime and violence, fear of gossip and jealousy, and poor sense of identification with place.

Race, attitudes and behaviour in racially-mixed, low-income neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa

The end of apartheid in South Africa has not led to widespread racial desegregation and racial integration. Racial segregation and antipathy appear to have deep and enduring roots. There has been some racial desegregation in middle-class or elite neighbourhoods, due to the rapid upward mobility of some ‘African’, ‘coloured’ and ‘Indian’ people, but very little racial desegregation across most of the country. This article examines exceptional cases of racial desegregation and racial integration in low-income neighbourhoods in Cape Town, where mixes of coloured and African people have been allocated new public housing. Because residents of these neighbourhoods did not choose to live in racially-integrated areas, the study of their evolving inter-racial interactions helps us to understand anew the possibility of transcending racial division in a society like South Africa. The article finds that residents of these neighbourhoods retain a highly racialized discourse and subscribe to some racial stereotypes. At the same time, however, a variety of positive inter-racial interactions occur, and friendships form, beyond people’s expectations. The dominant culture is a racialized but tolerant multiculturalism.