Violence In South Africa Research Articles

Political Violence in South Africa: The Role of Youth

A meaningful understanding of the causes of political violence in South Africa and youth’s role in its denouement must consider some of the historical background to the national struggle for human rights and youth’s specific involvement thereof. The phenomenon of adolescent marchers and activists who characterized the resistance to Apartheid over the last decade has had sequelae and antecedents that reflect the core of the South African dilemma.

Making sense of the duality of social cohesion

This is the editorial for a speical edition of SACQ exploring the links between social cohesion and violence in South Africa.

Making sense of the duality of social cohesion

This is the editorial for a speical edition of SACQ exploring the links between social cohesion and violence in South Africa.

Dictating the local balance of power: Election-related violence in South Africa

The 2009 South African national election has come and gone and was generally regarded as having been a great success. Voter turnout was high and the event took place, virtually without exception, in an orderly and calm manner. Despite this, there were numerous incidents of election-related violence in the build-up to the elections, and a few in the immediate aftermath. The 2009 election therefore cannot be described as having been violence free. That being the case, how should we understand election-related violence in South Africa? Is political violence during election periods here to stay, and is it something that we need to concern ourselves about in relation to future elections?

Anger, hatred, or just heartlessness? Defining gratuitous violence

Violent crime in South Africa is sometimes said to be unusual, because it is perceived to frequently be gratuitous. This article engages with the question of how to define gratuitous violence. If the term gratuitous is understood to mean 'for nothing', gratuitous violence should be understood as violence that is 'low on expressive and instrumental motivations'. Whilst the evidence is that much violence is 'instrumental', violence in South Africa may be unusual but it may be better to articulate this in terms of the concepts both of 'expressive' and gratuitous violence. Gratuitous violence and the apparent cruelty that characterises some acts of instrumental violence also appear to imply that 'empathy deficits' might be a characteristic of many perpetrators of violence.

The war against the causes of crime: Advocacy for social crime prevention in the face of tougher law enforcement

Since the release of the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS) in May 1996, social crime prevention has been a key concept in debates about how to address the problems of crime and violence in South Africa. Many in the civil society policy community firmly believe that social crime prevention, if properly implemented, will be effective in addressing crime and violence. Since the late 1990s there has also been a pervasive sense of disappointment and frustration amongst those who support social crime prevention about what is perceived as a failure of the state to back this agenda. There is a view that this is due to the fact that the state favours 'law enforcement', because it holds out the promise of quick results. It is true that the issue of social crime prevention is entirely absent from the current government discourse on crime, which is characterised by a strong emphasis on robust policing measures. But is it true that the main obstacle to social crime prevention is a law enforcement orientated mindset on the part of government – or are there other obstacles to the social crime prevention agenda?

VIOLENCE IS NOT A CRIME: The impact of ‘acceptable’ violence on South African society

In his book, A Country at War with Itself, Antony Altbeker has highlighted that the extraordinary and distressing feature of crime in South Africa is not how common it is, but how violent. This analysis moves on from that point, arguing that rather than focusing on violent crime as a specific type of criminality, we should examine violence as a separate category that sometimes overlaps with crime and sometimes does not. This shift in focus reveals that it is not South African crime that is so violent, but South African society in general. It shows that many of these forms of violence are both legal and socially acceptable. This includes violence in childrearing, intimate relationships, education, sport, film and television, establishing social identities, and political negotiation, to name but a few significant areas. An examination of these popular and accepted forms of violence provides a revealing analysis of how these patterns are reproduced socially and psychologically, explaining how individuals and groups come to use violence as an everyday strategy of social negotiation. This analysis makes it clear that violent crime is a reflection of deeper patterns of violence within the society, and highlights the importance of including approaches other than law enforcement in reducing violence in South Africa.

WHY LAW ENFORCEMENT IS NOT ENOUGH: Lessons from the Central Karoo on breaking the cycle of crime and violence

A 2003 initiative to develop a crime prevention strategy for the Central Karoo District Municipality helped formulate the ‘life cycle’ that perpetuates crime and violence, which is discussed in this article. Children’s developmental needs are obvious and logical if we are to raise young people with good self esteem, who are capable and prepared to contribute to society in a constructive manner. Yet in the Central Karoo (and many other communities) our children’s needs are being ignored. As a result, children learn to fend for themselves and some quickly tip over from being vulnerable victims to becoming young offenders. This article shows that as long as we ignore children’s needs, we can never build a criminal justice system that will adequately address crime and violence in South Africa. It demonstrates why safety is an issue for society as a whole and not just for the police, courts and prisons.

On the record: Professor Rachel Jewkes

Chandré Gould speaks to Professor Rachel Jewkes, Director of the Gender and Health Unit of the Medical Research Council and a member of the newly formed National Council on Gender-Based Violence. Professor Rachel Jewkes and her colleagues at the Gender and Health Unit have undertaken foundational research on gender-based violence in South Africa for many years; most recently this includes research conducted to assess the levels of rape perpetration in South Africa,and a national study of child and female homicide. The unit has also developed and tested the South African version of the Stepping Stones programme that was shown to be effective in changing men’s sexual risk-taking behaviour and ‘reduced their use of violence’, while also reducing sexually transmitted infections in women.

PARALYSED BY FEAR: Perceptions of crime and violence in South Africa

The findings of the latest Markinor opinion poll on government performance indicate that two thirds of all South Africans believe that government’s ability to fight crime is at its lowest level since 2003 – despite the fact that official crime statistics are going down. But the survey also shows that many people are passive bystanders in the fight against crime and expect government to take full responsibility for bringing down the crime rate. It is argued that it will require a huge concerted and joint effort by government and the public to change the perception of South Africa as one of the crime hot spots of the world.

Curbing the Killing Fields: Making South Africa Safer

South Africa is often held up as an enviable example of a country that avoided a full- blown civil war. Twenty years into the new constitutional democracy, however, the continuation of social conflict and criminal violence begs the question as to whether South Africa deserves to be described as “post-conflict.” In this article, we take stock of contemporary conversations about crime. First, key dimensions of South Africa’s crime problem are described, drawing on a composite report on violent crime published in 2009 by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (Johannesburg). We then focus on three recent episodes to illustrate some of the dimensions of violence in South Africa’s multi-faceted society. Finally, we take stock of some select approaches to dealing with violent criminality and review ideas for containing crime and making South Africa safer.

The South African Constitution as Memory and Promise: An Exploration of Its Implications for Sexual Violence

ABSTRACTThis article considers the South African Constitution as a living text that founds the new democratic state and asks about its politics of memory. By its very nature, a constitution looks simultaneously backwards and forwards: the promise of the constitution cannot be understood separately from its memory of the apartheid past, and vice versa. The past continuously gets rewritten and reframed as we always reinterpret it anew in light of current concerns and power distributions. It is argued that these politics do not fade away but rather intensify as we move further away from the constitutional moment in time. Focusing on the urgent problem of on-going very high levels of sexual violence in South Africa, the article tries to capture the ways in which constitutional memory and promise function and should function in this respect. Two strategies of memory, namely the memorial and the monumental, are distinguished and applied to the constitutional promise to end sexual violence.

Responding to Xenophobic Violence in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Barking Up the Wrong Tree?

This paper highlights the general failure to effectively respond to and prevent xenophobic violence in South Africa and offers critical reflections on reasons thereof. Drawing mainly on the evaluation of a number of anti-xenophobic programmes by government and civil society organisations, the paper argues that past and current interventions, instead of muzzling dogs that bite, have been rather barking up the wrong tree. National government and relevant local authorities have thus far either tended to ignore the problem or categorise violence against foreign nationals and other outsiders as normal crime with no need for more specific or more targeted interventions. Although well-intentioned, civil society efforts to foster peaceful cohabitation and tolerance through social dialogues and campaigns aimed at changing attitudes have also largely proven ineffective in reducing violence. There are many reasons why these interventions continue to fail. Chief among these reasons is the fact that interventions are not evidence-based and are not informed by a clear understanding of the drivers of the violence. Similarly, past and current responses and interventions are based on shaky foundations and untested theories of change. Indeed, by focussing almost exclusively on public attitudes, interventions neglect factors and motivations that trigger violent behaviour; perhaps ignoring that attitudes are not always a good predictor of behaviour. Without a clear understanding of the drivers of the violence and of what type of responses work or do not work, intervention strategies can only be ineffective at best, and counter-productive at worst.

Public order transparency: Using freedom of information laws to analyse the policing of protest

This article discusses two research projects that have used the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) to analyse protest in South Africa and the policing thereof. A total of 23 information requests were submitted on behalf of the two projects, 19 to the South African Police Service (SAPS) and four to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. The article starts by discussing police transparency in South Africa, information on the policing of protest that the SAPS routinely publishes in its annual report, the PAIA framework, and some of the limitations of the projects. It then focuses on insights into SAPS information on levels of protest and protest-related violence in South Africa that emerged from the two projects. This includes information disclosed by the police regarding their use of force during protests, and police accountability for this. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications of and lessons from these exercises in police transparency.

Making sense of the duality of social cohesion

This edition of South African Crime Quarterly is a special edition dedicated to investigating the role of social cohesion in understanding and addressing the problem of violence in South Africa.

Eliminating abusive ‘care’: A criminal law response to obstetric violence in South Africa

This article examines the disrespectful, abusive and violent maternity care that many South African people face. It identifies this conduct as a human rights violation and argues that intentional abusive maternity care should be labelled as obstetric violence, a specific form of gender-based violence, and that it should be criminalised. This approach reflects a nascent global trend to act against obstetric violence, and draws inspiration from statutory crimes introduced in Venezuela and Mexico. Building on the Latin American experience, the article proposes how the current legal conception of obstetric violence should be further developed to suit the unique position of pregnant people in South Africa.

The second wave of violence scholarship: South African synergies with a global research agenda

Violence is a serious public health and human rights challenge with global psychosocial impacts across the human lifespan. As a middle-income country (MIC), South Africa experiences high levels of interpersonal, self-directed and collective violence, taking physical, sexual and/or psychological forms. Careful epidemiological research has consistently shown that complex causal pathways bind the social fabric of structural inequality, socio-cultural tolerance of violence, militarized masculinity, disrupted community and family life, and erosion of social capital, to individual-level biological, developmental and personality-related risk factors to produce this polymorphic profile of violence in the country. Engaging with a concern that violence studies may have reached something of a theoretical impasse, ‘second wave’ violence scholars have argued that the future of violence research may not lie primarily in merely amassing more data on risk but rather in better theorizing the mechanisms that translate risk into enactment, and that mobilize individual and collective aspects of subjectivity within these enactments. With reference to several illustrative forms of violence in South Africa, in this article we suggest revisiting two conceptual orientations to violence, arguing that this may be useful in developing thinking in line with this new global agenda. Firstly, the definition of our object of enquiry requires revisiting to fully capture its complexity. Secondly, we advocate for the utility of specific incident analyses/case studies of violent encounters to explore the mechanisms of translation and mobilization of multiple interactive factors in enactments of violence. We argue that addressing some of the moral and methodological challenges highlighted in revisiting these orientations requires integrating critical social science theory with insights derived from epidemiology and, that combining these approaches may take us further in understanding and addressing the recalcitrant range of forms and manifestations of violence.

From ‘Mother of the Nation’ to ‘Lady Macbeth’: Winnie Mandela and Perceptions of Female Violence in South Africa, 1985-91

From ‘Mother of the Nation’ to ‘Lady Macbeth’: Winnie Mandela and Perceptions of Female Violence in South Africa, 1985-91

Using Fairy Tales in the Foundation Phase Reading Classroom to Raise Awareness on and Mitigation against Gender-based Violence in South Africa

Using Fairy Tales in the Foundation Phase Reading Classroom to Raise Awareness on and Mitigation against Gender-based Violence in South Africa

The 'Zero Tolerance Village Alliance': A promising intervention for addressing sexual and gender-based violence in rural communities

Background Worldwide, few countries have higher rates of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) than South Africa [1]. From 2013 to 2014 alone, nearly 50,000 rape incidents were reported to the police in the country [2]. This predicament affects the young and the old: the majority of sexual violence survivors presenting at Thuthuzela Care Centers are less than 18 years of age (60%), and 40% of all rape survivors are pre-teens under the age of 12 [1]. Nonetheless, annual reporting rates of rape in the country are comparatively low, with only 1 in 9 rapes reported each year [3]. Furthermore, the issue of sexual violence in South Africa is compounded by the linkages between such violence and HIV seropositivity [4]. Given these realities, this study sought to assess the effects of an intervention geared toward positively influencing negative community norms related to SGBV.