Full Text Available
Note: Clicking the button above will open the full text document at the original institutional repository in a new window.
State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development
One of the more speculative tasks of this book is to assess what impact those gangs are likely to have on the changes urban South Africa will undergo in the last two decades of the 20th Century, be it peaceful, reactionary or revolutionary. A rather more immediate task, and a necessary precursor, is...
Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Department of Sociology
2016
|
| Subjects: | |
| Tags: |
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1867613328240541696 |
|---|---|
| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Pinnock, Don |
| author_browse | Pinnock, Don |
| author_facet | Pinnock, Don |
| author_sort | Pinnock, Don |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | One of the more speculative tasks of this book is to assess what impact those gangs are likely to have on the changes urban South Africa will undergo in the last two decades of the 20th Century, be it peaceful, reactionary or revolutionary. A rather more immediate task, and a necessary precursor, is to explore the functions of these gangs and the causes of their existence. But this immediately leads us into wider and deeper areas, to poverty, social dislocation and strategies of class defence. And within and beyond these conditions can be found an ongoing struggle for survival, a class struggle, and the outline of the state itself. (It is here that one encounters a strange paradox: a system which upholds law and order while at the same time creating the preconditions for its breakdown.) But we must start with the street gangs. A count in 30 areas on the Cape Flats during 1982 found in daily existence 280 groups who identified themselves as gangs. Nearly 80 per cent of the gang members interviewed for this study said their group was more than 100 strong, 54 per cent put the figure at 200 and several as high as 2000. An extremely rough estimate gives a figure of 50,000 youths who would define themselves as gang members, or about five per cent of the city's total population. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/19514 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:34:23.309Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publishDateRange | 2016 |
| publishDateSort | 2016 |
| publisher | Department of Sociology |
| publisherStr | Department of Sociology |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/19514 State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development Pinnock, Don Criminology Gangs Economic History One of the more speculative tasks of this book is to assess what impact those gangs are likely to have on the changes urban South Africa will undergo in the last two decades of the 20th Century, be it peaceful, reactionary or revolutionary. A rather more immediate task, and a necessary precursor, is to explore the functions of these gangs and the causes of their existence. But this immediately leads us into wider and deeper areas, to poverty, social dislocation and strategies of class defence. And within and beyond these conditions can be found an ongoing struggle for survival, a class struggle, and the outline of the state itself. (It is here that one encounters a strange paradox: a system which upholds law and order while at the same time creating the preconditions for its breakdown.) But we must start with the street gangs. A count in 30 areas on the Cape Flats during 1982 found in daily existence 280 groups who identified themselves as gangs. Nearly 80 per cent of the gang members interviewed for this study said their group was more than 100 strong, 54 per cent put the figure at 200 and several as high as 2000. An extremely rough estimate gives a figure of 50,000 youths who would define themselves as gang members, or about five per cent of the city's total population. 2016-05-09T08:58:23Z 2016-05-09T08:58:23Z 1982 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19514 eng application/pdf application/pdf Department of Sociology Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Criminology Gangs Economic History Pinnock, Don State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| title_full | State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| title_fullStr | State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| title_full_unstemmed | State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| title_short | State control and street gangs in Cape Town : towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| title_sort | state control and street gangs in cape town towards an understanding of social and spatial development |
| topic | Criminology Gangs Economic History |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/19514 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT pinnockdon statecontrolandstreetgangsincapetowntowardsanunderstandingofsocialandspatialdevelopment |