 
# Violence, Inequality and Transformation: Apartheid Survivors on South Africa's Ongoing Transition

Jasmina Brankovic, Brian Mphahlele, Sindiswa Nunu, Agnes Ngxukuma, Nompumelelo Njana and Yanelisa Sishuba

Published by

DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development

Johannesburg

Copyright 2020 Jasmina Brankovic, Brian Mphahlele, Sindiswa Nunu, Agnes Ngxukuma, Nompumelelo Njana and Yanelisa Sishuba
Acknowledgements

We are grateful, first and foremost, to the apartheid survivors who took the time to share their knowledge and experiences with us, and to the children and grandchildren of survivors for sharing their perspectives.

We thank Khulumani Support Group at the national level and especially the provincial executive committee and area committee members across the Western Cape for their help in shaping and implementing the project.

We also thank the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation for supporting our work and providing spaces for our meetings.

Our heartfelt thanks go to Shirley Gunn, Nomvula Dlamini, Chris Colvin, Mabel Fonutchi, Marianne Brittijn and Charles Maisel for encouraging and strengthening our efforts.

We are indebted to Mercy Brown-Luthango and Susanne Buckley-Zistel, and to Anna Selmeczi, for their generosity and invaluable feedback on drafts of this book.

For their careful translation and transcription work, we thank Ntombiza Lingani and Vinkosi Sigwegwe.

We extend our gratitude to our families and close friends for providing the inspiration and support we needed to see this project through.

We thank our cooperation partner Heinrich Böll Foundation Southern Africa for their valued engagement and long-term support, and for funding our participatory action research and the publication of this book.

We also thank the Foundation for Human Rights for funding the planning meetings, trainings and other activities that underpinned the research.

The support of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development towards this research is hereby acknowledged. We thank the CoE in Human Development for their financial support for the production, dissemination events and convening of authors and contributors associated with this book.

Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at here are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to our funders or organisations.
Contents

Introduction

Post-Apartheid Developments and Survivor Activism

Social Transformation and Understandings of Transition

Inequality and Violence

Participatory Action Research with Apartheid Survivors

Tracing Violence, Inequality and Transformation through Generational Narratives

Chapter 1. Democratic Transition and Stalled Transformation

Apartheid Survivors on New Freedoms

Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty

Racialised Inequality

Economic Liberalisation

Corruption

Limited Impact of Political Participation

Broken Promises of Transition

Chapter 2. Socioeconomic Drivers of Violence in a South African Township

Unemployment

Restricted Access to Education

Inadequate Social Facilities

Urbanisation, Migration and Competition for Resources

Alcohol and Illegal Drugs as Sources of Income

Effects of Spatial Apartheid

Chapter 3. From Drivers to Acts of Violence

Nothing to Do

Hunger

Household Pressures

Youth and Social Status

Substance Use and Dependence

Community-Based Crime Control and Vigilantism

Xenophobia

Pathways from Marginalisation to Violence

Chapter 4. (Inter)Generational Responses to Inequality and Violence

Older Participants on Self-Discipline and Guilt

Young Participants on Striving and Shame

Seeking Agency amid Structural Barriers

Women and Social Mobilisation

Between Self-Blame and Government Accountability

Chapter 5. Apartheid Survivors and Strategies for Social Transformation

Work and Empowerment

Education and Youth Development

Service Delivery and Old Age

People-Driven Transformation

Engaging with the State

The Struggle for a Just Transition

Conclusion

A Transformative Approach to South Africa's Ongoing Transition

Survivor-Centred Transitional Justice

References

About the Authors
Introduction

Apartheid will never come to an end, because you will never be equal to someone who has something while you have nothing, whether you like it or not. (G1)

Five years ago, a member of the South African apartheid survivors' movement, Khulumani Support Group, challenged participants at a violence prevention workshop in Cape Town and took the discussion in a fresh direction. Comparing her experiences of oppression under apartheid and what she sees in her work as a community-based activist in a local township, she argued that the high rates of violence in the country will not fall as long as it continues to be among the most unequal societies in the world. This statement, often echoed by other apartheid survivors (Adonis 2017), inspired us—members of the Western Cape branch of Khulumani and a researcher from a partner organisation, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation—to collaborate on a research project. We sought to understand how apartheid survivors, whose activism bridges the past and the present, see the relationship between inequality and violence two decades after South Africa's transition from a white supremacist regime to a representative democracy. We also sought to identify the strategies survivors use to address socioeconomic drivers of violence in their neighbourhoods, which tend to be in historically marginalised areas with high levels of violence.

The project aimed to foreground the knowledge and solutions of Khulumani members, whose voices on the socioeconomic challenges of political transition have not been sufficiently amplified. We intended to use what we learnt to improve our advocacy and community-based interventions. To meet these goals, we adopted the participatory action research approach, which endeavours to ensure that those directly affected by a problem, who have the largest stake in resolving it, are the ones who drive applied research on it. As such, the project was designed and implemented at every stage with and by Khulumani members. This book, which presents our findings, is built around the narratives of the research participants. Through extensive quotes, it emphasises apartheid survivors' articulations of their challenges and the strategies they have developed to address them, while situating their voices in the context of public discourse and the literature on violence, inequality and possibilities for social change in South Africa. In the spirit of continuing collaboration, we decided to make our research freely available in this open-access publication.

We found that apartheid survivors who deal with violence every day see it as a complex web with many interwoven and multifaceted drivers, and with effects that themselves become drivers of violence. The research participants agree with fellow Khulumani members, asserting that the racialised inequality of colonialism and apartheid has been entrenched in the democratic period. They point to the lack of opportunities that continues to mark their neighbourhoods on the periphery of Cape Town, which, when thrown into relief by the privilege of other South Africans, creates a sense of 'stuckness' and a set of pressures that serve as pathways to crime and violence. In participants' view, racialised inequality keeps generation after generation of apartheid survivors and the majority of black South Africans in poverty. Awareness of structural causes of ongoing inequality, which exists in tension with internalised shame for not being able to achieve economic success despite the democratic transition, facilitates violence. These findings suggest that, while breaking down types and causes of violence in order to identify linear relationships is analytically useful, such a piecemeal approach may prevent understanding of the complexity of violence, its histories and what is needed to address it. We argue that a big-picture approach that encompasses the breadth of continually interacting causes and effects of violence within a locality, including the socioeconomic context in which violence is couched, is needed to develop more effective violence prevention strategies.

Our research also demonstrates that Khulumani members view the transition in South Africa as ongoing, rather than as a short phase that ended with the mainstream transitional justice measures implemented by the state in the 1990s and early 2000s. Participants highlight the continuities between the apartheid and democratic periods and situate contemporary issues of inequality and violence within the context of transition. Moreover, they continue to envision and work towards the possibility of a just transition. The approach of the members we worked with is largely based on community-based interventions that build on the local knowledge, collaboration and mutual learning of those most affected by past and present-day violence and exclusion. It also highlights the need for dialogue, knowledge exchange and cooperation among people of different backgrounds and generations in local areas and Khulumani families. This approach demonstrates the importance of addressing historical injustices, structural inequality and their long-term manifestations in societies undergoing transition over time. As we asserted elsewhere, "We need redress for the inequality entrenched by the apartheid system, in addition to apartheid-era violence, in order to see social transformation in the future" (Mphahlele et al. 2016).

###  Post-Apartheid Developments and Survivor Activism

In line with apartheid survivors' reflections, public discourse in South Africa has increasingly focused on rising inequality and its historical roots over the past decade (e.g. Gerardy 2011; Molefe 2012; Philip 2015; Nambo 2016). The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis saw a global rise in concern regarding widening economic inequality and its negative effects (Grisold and Theine 2017). What set South Africa apart from other countries was its recent history of systemic racism, its much-lauded transition to democracy under a black majority government, and the expectation of social transformation that accompanied democratisation in 1994, both locally and internationally. As the 20th anniversary of the first free elections came and went, the promises of transition became increasingly difficult to reconcile with South Africa's recurring status as one of the most unequal societies worldwide (WB 2012; 2018). Moreover, the country's inequality continued to be racialised, with 64.2 percent of black South Africans living in poverty, compared to just 1 percent of whites (StatsSA 2017b). Public discourse on inequality therefore centred on lack of social transformation and the ongoing racialisation of poverty, wealth and access to life opportunities.

This came to a head with the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall student protests in 2015, which saw students across the country confronting colonial and apartheid legacies in the education system and calling for free tertiary education as a way to begin addressing racialised inequality. While South Africa has had a rich history of popular mobilisation from the start of the democratic period (Ballard, Habib and Valodia 2006), the 2015 protests received significant media attention because they involved students from diverse economic backgrounds, and because, in a dramatic fashion, they distilled anxieties around rising inequality that had been building in the public sphere (Ngcaweni and Ngcaweni 2018; Booysen 2016). Protesting students often couched their demands in a critique of the political transition, which they argued betrayed the marginalised black majority by securing the power and wealth of the white minority and side-lining attempts to ensure redistribution (SABC 2015; Langa 2016; Grunebaum 2018). We began our interviews with apartheid survivors just as the student protests hit their stride and inspired a new round of debates on how to reduce inequality in post-apartheid South Africa.i

As primary actors in South Africa's transition, Khulumani members are uniquely positioned to comment on the extent to which the country's transitional arrangements have responded to the inequality entrenched by apartheid. Khulumani Support Group was formed in 1995 to assist survivors in accessing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which operated from 1996 until the publication of its full report in 2002. The commission is an early example of transitional justice, a field that emerged in the 1980s to facilitate transitions from dictatorship to democracy in Latin America, and quickly became the go-to approach for states seeking to address legacies of systematic human rights violations, whether they had undergone regime change or not. As a field of theory and practice, transitional justice is usually associated with a set of defining mechanisms, namely prosecutions, truth commissions, reparations and institutional reforms (Kritz 1995; UN 2004).ii Following the negotiated peace settlement between the apartheid regime and the South African liberation movements, the democratic government established the TRC. In the context of an uneasy truce, the truth commission represented an effort to ensure a degree of accountability while avoiding the possible pitfalls of Nuremberg-style prosecutions on the one hand and blanket amnesty on the other (TRC 1998–2002).

Mandated by the 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act to provide "as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent" of the gross human rights violations committed under apartheid, the TRC investigated abuses committed by actors on all sides of the conflict. Using an innovative approach, it extracted testimony from perpetrators by offering them amnesty for politically motivated crimes while threatening them with prosecution if they did not cooperate. It also sought to be 'victim-centred,' providing survivors with the opportunity to share publicly what they went through and developing recommendations for a reparations programme (TRC 1998–2002). Many of Khulumani's members registered with the TRC and provided written statements, with some giving testimony at public hearings. Through their participation, members grounded the commission's work in survivors' narratives of the political, social and economic subjugation they or their family members experienced, and helped legitimise the new government's attempts to draw a 'bright line' between the apartheid past and the democratic future (Daly 2008).

In the process of assisting survivors with TRC applications and appeals, providing them with individual and group counselling, and pressuring the commission to reflect their demands through advocacy and awareness raising, Khulumani members often employed the mainstream transitional justice framework used by the TRC (e.g. Kritz 1995). Focusing on violations of civil and political rights, members called for individual and collective reparations for all who self-identify as survivors; accountability for those responsible for committing grave abuses; truth telling through memory initiatives, dialogues, repatriation of remains and other national and community-level activities; and institutional reforms aimed at preventing further abuses (Madlingozi 2010).iii Many also engaged with some TRC commissioners' discourse around the potential of these processes to birth reconciliation by enabling individual and national healing from the traumas of the past (Colvin 2018; Kesselring 2016; Fullard and Rousseau 2008). Christopher Colvin's (2018) analysis of the discussions that accompanied the founding of the Western Cape province branch of Khulumani in 2000 suggests that survivors' decision to use this framework was in large part a strategic one. By engaging with the TRC on its own terms and working to make the transition more victim-centred, Khulumani members gained credibility, visibility and a publicly accepted claim to redress. The choice of framing also distinguished them from other civil society groups calling for social change in the country.

Accordingly, much of the literature on apartheid survivors and Khulumani focuses on their activism in relation to mainstream transitional justice. This literature has, for example, examined survivors' experiences and perceptions of the TRC (Wilson 2001; Ross 2003), deployment of international transitional justice norms (Norval 2009; Bond and Sharife 2009; Kesselring 2016), and approaches to trauma and psychosocial interventions (Hamber 2009; Field 2010; Colvin 2018). In so doing, it tends to restrict Khulumani members to their positionality as 'victim-survivors' of events in the past. It emphasises how they relate to their pain and victimhood, to other survivors, and to transitional justice and human rights norms and institutions. While this positionality is central to Khulumani members' activism, and while the literature provides insight into their responses to transitional arrangements, the movement's aims and activities have evolved over the years as the South African context has changed.

After the TRC closed its doors, Khulumani kept growing. Attracting people who self-identify as direct as well as indirect victims of apartheid violence, the movement eventually gained more than 100,000 members across branches in all nine provinces of South Africa, many of whom never registered with the TRC (KSG 2017). Among others, members are former political prisoners, torture survivors, ex-combatants, activists injured during anti-apartheid protests, bystanders affected by security forces and liberation movement operations, and family members of victims of enforced disappearances and other grave violations. Headed by a national steering committee and supported by a national office, the provincial branches work at the grassroots level, including through local area committees. The large majority of the members are black South Africans and women, mostly over the age of 50, including within the leadership of the movement's provincial branches.

Over the past two decades, Khulumani has continued to work on mainstream transitional justice issues, providing social and trauma support to survivors while advocating for reparations, prosecutions, truth recovery and institutional accountability. It has joined a number of international, regional and national networks and coalitions working on similar issues, including the South African Coalition for Transitional Justice, and worked with academic and civil society researchers examining mainstream transitional justice concepts and practice (KSG 2017). Since the early 2000s, however, it has also looked outside these boundaries and increasingly focused on addressing racialised inequality and the ongoing poverty of most of its members (Brankovic 2018; Madlingozi 2010). While economic marginalisation has been a concern for members since its founding (Colvin 2018), by 2010 "socioeconomic transformation" had become a strategic focus for the movement (email communication, Khulumani director, 1 August 2017). Reflecting the diversity of priorities across provincial branches, Khulumani members have acted on this strategic focus by, for example, establishing community-based income-generation projects and social enterprises, engaging in protests and advocacy regarding access to clean water and sanitation in townships, and offering trainings in subjects ranging from literacy to information and communications technology. Members have also analysed socioeconomic challenges in partnership with young people through citizen journalism, youth dialogues, school workshops and the performing arts.iv

Through this work, Khulumani has highlighted the effects of apartheid on the economic and social prospects of generations of South Africans (Mattes 2011; Holborn and Eddy 2011; Sulla and Zikhali 2018), including its own members and their children and grandchildren. It has demonstrated members' concern not just with the past but also with the present and future. The movement's 2016–17 annual report states, "Khulumani's work has... moved beyond its focus on apartheid atrocities to dealing also with post-apartheid gross violations," noting that

Khulumani has pursued its objectives of contributing to the building of an inclusive, just and peaceful society in which the dignity and agency of people harmed by gross violations of human rights, are restored through its key objectives. Primary amongst these is its advocacy for a people-driven transformation of the society with its existing deep structural forces that have shaped and sustained injustices, inequalities and exclusions over generations. (KSG 2017: 7)

The report goes on to identify "transformation" as one of the movement's objectives, with its aim being

to support community struggles for social and economic justice that transforms the structural injustices of apartheid and neocolonialism through:

\- Victim empowerment programmes;

\- Trauma-informed community development;

\- Popular education that advances peoples' emancipation; and

\- The promotion of an inclusive citizenship founded in people's historical and cultural narratives. (KSG 2017: 11)

Yet, Khulumani's shift towards the socioeconomic and members' articulations of transformation have not received much scholarly or practitioner attention to date.

###  Social Transformation and Understandings of Transition

Given Khulumani's use of tropes of mainstream transitional justice, it is tempting to interpret the movement's engagement with transformation as emerging from critiques that have dogged the TRC since its early days, despite its status as a global model of transitional justice. The main critique relating to transformation has been that the TRC's focus on civil and political rights abuses side-lined the economic, social and cultural rights violations and structural injustices that underpinned apartheid. The TRC thereby signalled that dealing with a few 'bad apples' who committed violations like extrajudicial killings and torture was enough for the country to unite and 'move on' from its past (Mamdani 2000; Bundy 2000; Wilson 2001; Gready 2011).v Furthermore, its human rights-based approach served to individualise both responsibility for and suffering from the violations in a way that eclipsed collective experiences and the structural violence of colonialism and apartheid (Mamdani 2002; Madlingozi 2007; Meister 2011). Citing the Eurocentric and liberal influences that shaped the TRC, some argue that the commission normalised individuation, legalism and a focus on civil-political rights violations to the extent that it contributed to a breakdown of collectives and activism around social transformation in South Africa just after the political transition (Comaroff 2005; Robins 2008; Sitze 2013).

Many Khulumani members have indeed criticised the operations and outcomes of the TRC, noting that the commission did not reveal much new information on crimes against them, facilitate dialogue with perpetrators at the community level, or offer the closure they expected (Van der Merwe and Chapman 2008). Nonetheless, their critiques centre far more on what they refer to as the "unfinished business of the TRC" (KSG 2017: 10). This unfinished business relates, first, to the large percentage of TRC recommendations the democratic government ignored, particularly regarding reparations. It relates, second, to the lack of follow-up by government and civil society on larger issues raised in the TRC's public hearings and final report that reveal the profound and intergenerational effects of various forms of apartheid oppression (Moeti 2013; Brankovic 2013).vi In this second sense, it concerns transformation as framed in Khulumani's 2016–17 annual report and suggests that what is unfinished is the transition. For apartheid survivors, the transition to democracy is ongoing and will remain so until there is palpable social transformation.

Khulumani's approach to the TRC therefore fits not so much among critiques of the commission as it does among debates about what a successful transition looks like (Murphy 2017). As Madeleine Fullard and Nicky Rousseau (2008) note, many TRC commissioners and staff members were themselves critical of the narrowness of the commission's focus, but they followed the precedent set by other truth commissions at the time, which, like those in Argentina and Chile, had similarly narrow mandates. More important, they understood the commission as "but one of a number of institutions and initiatives designed to tackle the apartheid legacy" (226). Indeed, the democratic government undertook extensive institutional reforms in the mid-1990s, including adopting a progressive constitution and legislation, establishing a set of independent state institutions to support constitutional democracy (such as the Human Rights Commission and the Public Protector) and fostering the growth of a strong and independent civil society. The TRC expected these reforms to complement and build on its work in dealing with the past. While South Africa today is a functioning democracy, the reforms did not manage to ensure that half of the TRC's recommendations were implemented (Harris and Hatang 2012), let alone contribute to significant changes in the majority of apartheid survivors' lives.

Such outcomes, which are common in transitional justice contexts across the world, have given rise to a body of literature on transformative approaches to transitional justice. This literature, which in many ways builds on critiques of the TRC, argues that in its connection to liberal democratisation, mainstream transitional justice tends to promote Western European approaches to justice that foreground retributive approaches (McEvoy and McGregor 2008; Okello 2010; Kagoro 2012), individualise both responsibility and suffering (Mamdani 2000), and side-line socioeconomic rights violations (Laplante 2008; Arbour 2007). It holds that the mainstream approach, which is premised on transitions being short-term events that require technical solutions, privileges rapid legal-institutional reforms that often have little relevance to local populations and serve to obscure structural drivers of conflict (Sharp 2015; Gready and Robins 2014), while supporting economic liberalisation that can exacerbate social divisions (Sriram 2007; Gready and Robins 2019). In response, and drawing on strategies from other fields such as peacebuilding and development (Jones, Baumgartner and Gabriel 2015; Langford 2019), transformative approaches go beyond the human rights biases at the root of transitional justice to address structural, collective and historical injustices. While diverse, they tend to valorise local and context-responsive solutions and grassroots efforts. They promote measures that acknowledge and counter the power differentials in knowledge production by foregrounding local and indigenous knowledge, as well as community-based initiatives guided by the demands and needs of those most affected by past harms. This includes efforts to go beyond just consultation and to promote broad-based participation, particularly of marginalised groups, including women (Buckley-Zistel 2016).

Examples of transformative approaches to transitional justice include 'distributive justice,' which promotes non-recurrence through investigations of structural inequality and measures that ensure progressive redistribution of resources, particularly of land (Bergsmo et al. 2010); 'reparative justice,' which stresses the centrality of victims' voices and their right to legal and moral remedies for historical injustices (Mani 2005); and, perhaps most prominently, 'transformative justice,' which emphasises long-term, iterative processes over short-term technical measures, broad participation and local rootedness over external solutions and preconceived outcomes, as well as acknowledgement of the extent to which unequal global and national power relations shape transitions (Lambourne 2009; Gready and Robins 2014; Evans 2019). Transformative approaches point to the fact that transitions are not short-term, time-bound events. As a result, many assert that dealing with the past calls for long-term and varied processes that take into account the historical underpinnings of recent conflicts, the continuities between past and present abuses, and the need to return to issues of the past again and again, using measures that are adapted to the local context and its shifting political, economic and social realities (McAdams 2011; Gready 2011).

In practice, transformative approaches face a number of challenges, including lack of political will, self-serving elites, resource constraints, the potentially conservative rather than transformative aims of locally rooted practices themselves, and limitations on the extent to which local practices can be scaled up to the national level and beyond (McAuliffe 2017). More fundamentally, as Paul Gready (2019) argues, transformative approaches raise questions regarding what transformation actually looks like, who determines this, and whether transformation can be effected through incremental reforms or requires a more radical agenda that eschews the premises of liberal democratisation. A further question is whether these approaches can and should be part of transitional justice—which is already hard-pressed to deliver on its goals of accountability, truth recovery, reparation and reform in the service of non-recurrence—or whether they represent separate efforts towards social change. Part of the concern is that they do not centre and rely on the state as much as mainstream transitional justice approaches do, acknowledging that the state, with its power and obligations on the one hand and its frequent absence or even complicity in (continuing) abuses on the other, is an ambivalent actor. Gready suggests that instead of placing different actors and concepts such as state and civil society, top-down and bottom-up, international and national, or conflict and postconflict into opposition as binaries, we might explore how ideas and activities at the grassroots, national and international levels cut across, involve and affect each other in ways that lead to transformation. We consider this suggestion later in the book.

Khulumani's declarations regarding socioeconomic transformation echo in many ways the principles behind transformative approaches to transitional justice. In his work with Gready, Simon Robins (2019) acknowledges that these approaches remain largely normative, as they have not been widely applied or tested in transitional contexts. Highlighting the centrality of grassroots efforts to transformative approaches, he argues that "future research should seek to explore how communities make their claims (and what those claims are), what framings they use to advance their issues, and what forms of organization and action they develop." He adds that "such an empiricism can acknowledge that ongoing practice is likely to be a richer source of strategies and approaches for achieving transformation than any effort to find a single overarching theoretical framework that can advance justice" (313). Among our goals is to provide just such a case study, with the benefit of foregrounding strategies developed by survivors of gross rights abuses in a country considered a model of transitional justice.

###  Inequality and Violence

Research with survivors in different country contexts indicates that while they value mainstream transitional justice aims such as accountability and truth recovery, they tend to prioritise establishing physical security and accessing livelihoods ahead of pursuing these aims (Robins 2011b; Vinck and Pham 2014; Firchow and Mac Ginty 2019). The Khulumani members we worked with identified similar priorities. We chose to focus on violence, first, because security is a pressing issue for these members. South Africa consistently has among the highest rates of violence globally. At 36.4 murders per 100,000 people (SAPS 2019), South Africa has the fifth highest murder rate in the world (UNODC 2019). According to recent research, South Africa also has the highest rates of intimate femicide in the world, twice the global average rate of child homicide, and nine times the global average of violence among youth (Langa and Bowman 2017). Studies suggest that violent crime affects black South Africans living in marginalised areas far more than other groups in the country (Silber and Geffen 2009). Khulumani members noted that their everyday experiences are marked by crime and violence, and by developing strategies to cope with and reduce violence.

We chose to focus on violence, second, because the issue of livelihoods is crucial for Khulumani members, and using violence as a lens provides insight into lived experiences of struggling to access life opportunities in the context of grave inequality. As this book will show, violence is a common thread that connects diverse aspects of racialised poverty—unemployment, restricted education, inadequate social facilities, among others—and highlights how they contribute to each other. Violence is also a manageable frame that our interviewees could use to talk about the structural constraints they face, and that we could use to grasp the socioeconomic legacies of apartheid and the implications of the democratic government's policies for people living in marginalised areas. Participants' responses regarding crime and violence provide insight into the strategies apartheid survivors and their families use to address their marginalisation, and how the everyday in the post-apartheid present informs their approaches and activities as part of Khulumani.

In line with Khulumani members' assertions, international and South African research suggests that inequality is indeed a driver of violence. While quality of policing, incarceration rates and historical crime levels play a role, as do degrees of democratisation and identity-based social divisions, inequality has been shown to be a key driver of violence that heightens the effects of these other drivers globally (Altbeker 2008). This has led some to identify it as a "super-driver" of violence, "because it underlies many of the other manifestations identified as 'causes' of violence" (Langa and Bowman 2017: 12–13). As a result of underreporting and differences in data collection methods, among other factors, the availability and accuracy of national data on violence varies too much to allow a definitive assessment of the extent to which inequality causes violence (MacDonald 2002). Regardless, cross-country studies based on statistics on violent crime show that the Gini coefficient and other measures of income inequality have a robust effect on levels of violence (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Butchart and Engström 2002; Fajnzylber, Lederman and Loayza 2002a; 2002b). While a handful of country-specific studies show a correlation between inequality and crime but not necessarily violent crime (e.g. Nilsson 2004), most demonstrate that greater income inequality is related to higher rates of violent crime around the world (Machin and Meghir 2004; Brush 2007; Choe 2008). Research on South Africa shows that inequality has a strong correlation to violent crime (Harris and Vermaak 2015).

As Geoff Harris and Claire Vermaak note (2015), the traditional explanation of the relationship between inequality and violent crime, emerging from economic theory, is that prospective criminals choose to engage in crime based on an analysis of the benefits of crime compared to the potential costs and penalties of being caught. From this perspective, the benefits are more likely to outweigh the costs in marginalised areas, where crime prevention tends to be under-resourced. More important, crime may appear as the most realistic avenue to a better life in these areas (Becker 1968; Fajnzylber, Lederman and Loayza 2002a; CSVR 2009). Additional explanations, emerging from sociology and criminology, relate to the strain of not being able to achieve economic success via legitimate means as a result of unequal access to life opportunities. From this perspective, awareness of the injustice of unequal opportunity results in frustration and anger, which are then expressed through violence (Cohen 1971; Agnew 2012). Beyond frustration and anger, individuals report feelings of guilt, shame and self-doubt emerging from being unable to provide for themselves and their loved ones, which some argue provoke a sense of insecurity and an attendant desire to save face in response to any indication of disrespect from others (Gilligan 2000; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). Especially in contexts that hold out the promise of socioeconomic equality, inclusivity and progress, marginalisation may evoke a sense of failure and humiliation that invites transgressive acts, specifically violence, as an assertion of power and dignity (Young 2003). These dynamics are said to play a particular role for men, especially young men, in our patriarchal system, given the construction of men as emotionally resilient and powerful providers (Langa and Bowman 2017; Ratele 2008; CSVR 2009).

According to Antony Altbeker (2008), South Africa's history and the promises of transition have heightened the strains of inequality. Altbeker notes that the apartheid state's creation of rural areas to house the black population, its expansion of colonial policies that pushed the black population from independent farming towards wage labour, and the strict control it exercised over the movement of black South Africans working in urban areas ensured that these workers' income from the formal economy remained bound to the rural economy their families participated in, which had the effect of depressing their wages. The constraints this placed on the process and benefits of urbanisation, combined with apartheid policies that ensured superior education, skill building and employment opportunities for generations of white South Africans, entrenched race-based inequality in the country (Seekings and Nattrass 2006). This structural inequality was heightened by the incremental decline of the mining and agricultural sectors under apartheid, as well as the growth of capital-intensive industries and production at the expense of labour-intensive ones, which accelerated with the economic liberalisation that accompanied democratisation (Bhorat et al. 2014). These shifts have favoured educated and skilled workers in the formal sector while pushing unskilled workers into the increasingly low-income informal sector, which is difficult to leave without social networks that are tapped into opportunities in the formal sector and in economic centres (WB 2012).

The growing number of skilled black South Africans in the post-apartheid economy, while creating more inequality within that racial group, has not to any significant degree decreased racialised inequality (Altbeker 2008). This is in part because constraints on education, skills and opportunities tend to be passed down from one generation to the next within families, particularly in the socioeconomically and geographically peripheral areas in which the majority of black South Africans continue to reside (De Lannoy, Leibbrandt and Fram 2015). Altbeker (2008) argues that expectations of social transformation raised by the political transition have only thrown into relief the limited life opportunities and relative deprivation many face, as well as the low likelihood that this situation will change, giving rise to frustration, anger, shame and other responses that facilitate violence.

In urban South Africa, violence and crime often go hand in hand, and crime tends to be more violent than in most contexts. To explain this, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR) argues that the normalisation of extreme violence as a legitimate conflict resolution tactic under apartheid has contributed to an ongoing 'culture of violence' in the country (CSVR 2007; Simpson 1993). A historical ambivalence towards the criminal justice system, continual exposure to violence in the household and the neighbourhood, and acceptance of carrying and using weapons to resolve disputes or assert dominance serve to produce violent criminality, and reproduce it over time, even in cases where a crime may not appear to necessitate violence (CSVR 2009). Moreover, as much as socioeconomic exclusion undergirds these dynamics of violence, violence may in turn worsen exclusion. Given the higher rates of crime and violence in marginalised areas in the country, it is low-income households that are more commonly affected, whose income suffers as a result, and whose savings are depleted by coping with the medical and other consequences of violent crime (Altbeker 2008). Here, marginalisation and violence perpetuate each other.

The range of this literature suggests the complexity of motivations behind the high levels of violence in South Africa. In discussing our research plans with Khulumani members in the Western Cape, we understood that the project could not focus on one or two motivations or causes for violence, let alone one or two forms of violence. In line with critiques of South African violence research by Brett Bowman and colleagues (2015a; 2015b), we adopted the view that violence is not an example of linear causality but rather functions as a web of multiple, diverse and interconnected causes and forms, with effects that themselves become causes. In this 'web of violence' (Hamby and Grych 2013), acts and types of violence are rooted in a specific context, interact in more than one episode, change and shift location over time, and blur the perceived line between perpetrators and victims, who in fact often change roles depending on the situation. The approach encompasses interpersonal violence within the household and the neighbourhood, along with collective and politically oriented violence related to the community. It also takes into account cycles of violence and ways in which forms and consequences of violence are reproduced across generations (Langa and Bowman 2017).

Building on the quantitative analyses that characterise much violence research, we decided to use qualitative research based on participatory methods to try and capture the full scope of the web of violence that Khulumani members describe. In this way, we sought to enter into "a stronger and more robust engagement with the 'why' rather than the 'what', 'where', 'when' and 'how' questions that remain overly determining of the violence research agenda worldwide" (Bowman et al. 2015a). Through apartheid survivors' narratives, we examine inequality as a super-driver of violence and seek to think in new, locally grounded ways about addressing violence in the context of South Africa's transition.

###  Participatory Action Research with Apartheid Survivors

In order to access and foreground apartheid survivors' narratives, we began our collaboration with the understanding that we would conduct participatory action research. At its best, this approach promotes equitable partnerships between outsider 'experts' and those affected by the challenge in question, while encouraging mutual learning and cooperation. It highlights the value of context-specific knowledge and has the potential to lead to interventions and benefits at the local level that go beyond just having a research publication in hand (Bradbury 2015; Cornwall 2011). In large part, we decided to use this methodology so that we could explore how staff in a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) could work on equal terms with survivors of past human rights violations. CSVR has partnered with Khulumani on transitional justice advocacy and numerous research projects and interventions since 1995. As often happens between survivors' groups and well-funded professional NGOs in transitional contexts (Brankovic 2018; 2010), CSVR has faced push-back from Khulumani members who argue that it, at times, seeks to claim ownership of the movement's origins and subsequent initiatives, increase its legitimacy and revenue by virtue of its partnership with Khulumani, and impose external agendas on grassroots members. Moreover, after years of watching various international and local researchers record apartheid survivors' stories and never return to share the findings, let alone contribute to the well-being of the movement or its members, Khulumani developed a research protocol that requires prospective researchers to submit not only a proposal and proof of ethical clearance but also a statement regarding how the project will contribute to survivors' empowerment (Madlingozi 2010). Aware of the power differentials in research and other forms of collaboration, Khulumani members push partners to address them.

The participatory action research methodology allowed us to explore new ways of working within the partnership between the two organisations. In addition to yielding knowledge regarding apartheid survivors' understandings of the relationship between inequality and violence in the context of transition, it promised to give rise to opportunities for all of us to learn new approaches, build on existing skills, and use them to develop evidence-based interventions that would eventually benefit Khulumani families. It also allowed space for us to address differences and challenges that might emerge within the team (Bergold and Thomas 2012; Barretau et al. 2010). Aiming to go beyond the limited forms of participation Stanley Biggs (1989) termed 'contractual,' 'consultative' and 'collaborative,' which to different degrees place the outsider expert in control of participatory projects, we adopted a 'collegial' approach to our relationship. This means that we worked together as colleagues as we made plans, collected and analysed data, and sought to act on the findings. In pursuit of inclusivity, buy-in and sustainability, we also engaged with different representatives of the Khulumani area committees in the Western Cape, first in determining the focus and activities of the project and later in implementing every phase of it.

In the end, the project, which ran from 2015 to 2016, had two components: research and 'capacity building.' In the first component, Khulumani's provincial executive committee, with the approval of local area committees, selected four long-time, active members of the movement, Brian Mphahlele, Sindiswa Nunu, Agnes Ngxukuma and Nompumelelo Njana, to be researchers on the project. In line with a desire to bring young people into the movement and build the skills of youth in Khulumani families, they also included the daughter of a Khulumani member, Yanelisa Sishuba. Brian Mphahlele and Sindiswa Nunu were fieldworkers on an academic researcher's survey-based study some years before, while the others were new to research. The Khulumani researchers worked with Jasmina Brankovic, a senior researcher at CSVR, to implement the participatory action research study, which included research design, planning, monitoring and evaluation, data collection, data analysis and writing, all done collaboratively. Each of the six researchers brought different strengths to the project that we sought to acknowledge and utilise, ranging from facilitation skills to mobilisation, conflict management, media engagement, interviewing and writing skills. In this vein, while Jasmina Brankovic wrote this book, we consider it co-authored because it is a product of our collective efforts on the project.

In the second component of the project, Khulumani members from around the province gathered for a strategic planning meeting, during which they used our initial research findings to develop a five-year plan for addressing inequality and violence that also fit with Khulumani's objectives at the national level. They worked with external facilitators to design a series of trainings—on research, advocacy, writing, fundraising and project management—tailored to assist members with implementing the new plan. Elsewhere (Sishuba et al. 2017), we detail the many challenges elicited by the participatory action research approach, as well as its benefits. We also offer some lessons we learnt, including on the value of negotiating levels of participation, the risk of 'NGOisation,' the role of regular learning, monitoring and evaluation processes in teambuilding and conflict management, and the importance of participant compensation and transparency in funding allocations.

As agreed during the research design process, it was the Khulumani researchers who conducted all the interviews with the project participants. Our rationale was that interviewees would likely feel more comfortable and open to discussing the project's difficult topics with researchers who are familiar to them, have had similar experiences and speak their mother tongue. The 77 semi-structured individual interviews we did, along with four focus group discussions, were transcribed and the majority translated from isiXhosa into English. In the process of planning the project with representatives of Khulumani area committees, it became clear that members perceived young people in their teens and early 20s as the main perpetrators of violence in their neighbourhoods. For this reason, they requested that our research focus on generational differences in attitudes towards inequality and violence, and the interventions this information might suggest for Khulumani. As a result, we decided that about half of the interviewees would be Khulumani members above the age of 50—reflecting the age range of the large majority of members—and the other half would be young people between the ages of 16 and 26 who are children and grandchildren of Khulumani members. We ended up interviewing 36 Khulumani members and 29 young people. The remaining interviewees were a mix of Khulumani members and relatives between the ages of 27 and 50. At 10 participants, just over a quarter of the older Khulumani members we interviewed are men, which is in line with the gender ratio and predominance of women in the Western Cape membership. We also interviewed 11 young men and five men between the ages of 27 and 49.vii

We had hoped to conduct research with members of all the Western Cape area committees, including in towns like Worcester and Paarl, in order to get closer to a sense of the strategies used by the approximately 15,000 members in the provincial database. We ultimately chose to limit our interviews to residents of Khayelitsha township, which is located about 30 kilometres from the centre of Cape Town. The decision was guided by funding and time constraints as well as the need to stay within Cape Town, as extended travel and fieldwork presented potential health and safety risks for the older researchers in our team. Khayelitsha is home to three Khulumani area committees, which are among the most active in the province. The committees are based in Kwezi Park, Site C and Site B, areas that reflect the mix of formal and informal settlements in the township. Two of the Khulumani researchers are residents of Khayelitsha and long-time members of local area committees. In keeping with the project's participatory approach, the three area committees put forward names of potential interviewees, most of whom ended up being the participants in our research.

Khayelitsha, which means 'new home' in isiXhosa, was established in 1983 in line with apartheid spatial planning laws. According to the 2011 census, it is the largest township in Cape Town and houses about 400,000 people, although the number is likely significantly higher and growing. Just over 98 percent of residents self-identify as black South Africans and most are isiXhosa-speakers. Residents of Khayelitsha face among the highest rates of both poverty and violent crime in the city, province and country. In the 2011 census, 24.8 percent of households reported that their income is less than 3,200 rand per month, 30.1 percent reported it is less than 1,600 rand per month, and 18.8 percent reported that they have no income at all (StatsSA 2012). In terms of violence, Khayelitsha consistently has a murder rate of 100 to 150 per 100,000 residents (Edelstein 2014), which is three to four times the national average. At the time of our research in 2015, despite fluctuation between years, already high rates of violent crime had risen over a five-year period, even in light of underreporting. For example, murder had increased by 5.5 percent, attempted murder by 47.1 percent and aggravated assault by 47.5 percent (SAPS 2015). While residents of Khayelitsha are particularly burdened by the challenges we address in this book, Khulumani members from around the province noted that the participants' narratives reflect their own experiences of inequality and violence.

As we have noted, our book is based on and composed around the narratives of the participants in our research. It presents extensive interview quotes to reflect the multiplicity of participants' views as accurately as possible. The transcribers we worked with were careful to include the full interaction between the interviewers and interviewees and reflect responses such as pauses and laughter. Where the interviews were in isiXhosa, the transcribers provided both direct translations and translations capturing nuances like idioms in order to help with the analysis. The interview excerpts we reproduce here have been lightly edited to make the text easier to read and to better capture the flow of the narratives. We used narrative analysis to look at what the interviewees' stories and responses say about how they make sense of their everyday lived experience (Riessmann 2008). Taking an inductive approach, we used thematic analysis to trace patterns in the interviews, as well as our field notes, meeting notes and other materials gathered during the project (Guest, Macqueen and Namey 2012). In weaving quotes into a coherent narrative and locating the narrative in the context of other research and public discourse, we attempted to intervene as little as possible with participants' articulations of their challenges and the strategies they have developed to deal with them. We see this as being in line with our commitment to foregrounding the knowledge and solutions of apartheid survivors, in and on their own terms.

It is important to note that we do not pretend to represent the full lived experience of the participants here. As Jacob Dlamini (2009) argues, there is a tendency in research on townships to erase the class, gender and other differences among residents, portraying them as a homogeneous group of disadvantaged black South Africans. A related tendency is to paint townships as devoid of life, memory and individual experiences, as sites ready to be moulded rather than places with their own histories, and as stages for crime and squalor. Dlamini notes, "To define townships in terms of their problems is to reduce township residents themselves to problems—instead of seeing them as people _with_ problems, some of which are personal and others collective: just like every human being on earth, in fact" (118, emphasis in original). A young participant in our research similarly observed, "I can say Khayelitsha has good things happening, has bad things happening, but people like to highlight the negative things instead of highlighting the good things" (59(y)). Our book deals with the difficult subject of socioeconomic drivers of violence, and the thematic approach may have a flattening effect in terms of representing the daily life of the participants. We want to stress that the everyday in Khayelitsha and within Khulumani families contains a wealth of experiences, including many moments of solidarity and joy, which may not be captured in this text.

###  Tracing Violence, Inequality and Transformation through Generational Narratives

In Chapter 1, we look at how apartheid survivors and young members of Khulumani families discuss the legacies of past oppression, the interventions of the democratic government and the possibility of social transformation under current conditions. The interviews note that racialised inequality and the exclusion from education and mainstream economic life that characterised everyday life for black South Africans under the previous regime continue to be reproduced across generations in Khulumani families in Khayelitsha. Critiquing economic liberalisation and the growing acceptance of corruption in the country, participants, especially young participants, convey disillusionment with democratic governance and political participation.

Going into detail regarding socioeconomic marginalisation in Chapter 2, we discuss participants' assertions that they are increasingly reliant on wage labour at a time when economic policies and business practices combine with limited access to all levels of education to shut them out of the labour market. The interviews note that urbanisation and migration are increasing competition for existing employment and other opportunities in Cape Town, while putting added pressure on the low number and quality of social facilities in Khayelitsha, with one result being that increasing numbers of residents are involved in the illegal sale of alcohol and drugs. These narratives highlight that spatial apartheid and racial inequality continue to underpin participants' post-apartheid experiences.

In Chapter 3, we examine pathways by which marginalisation leads to violence. The participant narratives argue that the enforced inactivity and hunger brought about by unreliable employment, along with household pressures, the struggle for social status and the effects of substance dependence, combine in various and complex ways to push residents, particularly young people, towards crime and violence. They note that, in the absence of quality policing and an effective criminal justice system, residents turn to community-based crime control and vigilantism to address violence, which renders other residents and particularly African non-nationals in the township vulnerable to violence.

Looking at the web of violence woven through socioeconomic exclusion, in Chapter 4 we consider generational and intergenerational responses to the challenges it presents. Through narratives around bans on corporal punishment, older participants discuss young people's fragility and lack of self-discipline, and young participants discuss communication problems in their households. Both express self-blame and a sense of failure, but also continually return to the role of government in enabling violence and inequality, arguing that its policies prevent economic autonomy and promote dependence on the state while claiming the opposite. Pointing to growing inequality and disunity among black South Africans, young interviewees question the value of political participation and social mobilisation, while older ones, specifically women, observe that everyday responsibilities motivate their investment in grassroots activities and community organisations.

Turning to strategies for transformation in Chapter 5, we start by noting that participants' tactics for reducing violence largely focus on addressing the causes and manifestations of socioeconomic marginalisation we discuss in the rest of the book. We outline participants' current and envisioned strategies for increasing access to livelihoods, promoting youth development and improving service delivery, not least for the elderly who most rely on it. These strategies mostly emphasise self-funded initiatives, collaboration, mutual training and knowledge exchange, as well as intergenerational dialogue, learning and mentorship. Interviewees place value on local knowledge and solutions, arguing for a transformation agenda that is people-driven while demonstrating that the struggle for a just transition requires continual adaptation to political and other shifts in the country.

After an overview of the arguments in the book, we conclude with a reflection on the state of South Africa's ongoing transition. We argue that the strategies of the interviewees and the Khulumani members who helped us implement our project suggest new, more inclusive and contextually grounded ways of thinking about the country's transitional justice process. These go beyond mainstream transitional justice concerns, respond to the evolution of the South African context and represent an updated idea of a survivor-centred process, which draws from and feeds into the literature on transformative approaches to transitional justice. The expanded form of transitional justice suggested by the participants' approach could provide a new tool and platform for addressing inequality and its effects in the country.
Chapter 1. Democratic Transition and Stalled Transformation

The difference with this democracy is that we are no longer fed like dogs and we use the same toilets, because back then there were separate toilets for non-whites and whites. Now we use the same trains and buses. That is what made us lose focus and think we are free. But we are not free. (42)

The 1994 democratic elections were a watershed for the Khulumani members we interviewed, who reflected that they expected the advent of a black majority government and democratic freedoms to manifest as substantial changes in their daily lives. While they were quick to acknowledge the political and social shifts that have occurred, members noted that, on a fundamental level, the socioeconomic repression of apartheid simply turned into the socioeconomic marginalisation of democracy. This chapter outlines the perceptions of Khulumani members and young participants of the reasons behind the limitations to change and the ongoing transmission of poverty between generations in their families. These hinge on the continuities between apartheid and post-apartheid inequality, where privilege is linked to race, and the argument that the policies of economic liberalisation the democratic government embraced soon after the political transition not only failed to address this inequality but deepened it. They also relate to the corruption participants view as pervasive in government and spreading to all sectors of society, which they indicate is reflective of growing inequality among black South Africans and betrayal at the hands of liberation struggle leaders who accessed political power.

The narratives here demonstrate that socioeconomic abuses underpinned civil and political violations under the apartheid regime, with participants noting that taking part in the struggle exacerbated these abuses and deepened their intergenerational effects. At the same time, they focus primarily on the democratic period, discussing the apartheid past mostly with reference to its effects on the present and highlighting the influence of post-apartheid developments on participants' evolving activism. In their interviews with the Khulumani researchers, Khulumani members talked about apartheid repression but did not engage in TRC-style 'traumatic storytelling' regarding their individual experiences of violation (Colvin 2018). Their centring of the present indicates the need for research that looks beyond Khulumani members' positionality as 'victim-survivors' of the past or their engagement with mainstream transitional justice concerns. In fact, participants of all ages do not frame their reflections in terms of the failures of the TRC. They concentrate instead on the government's responsibilities to marginalised apartheid survivors, and to the majority of black South Africans, after democratisation. This approach emphasises the government's lack of follow-up on the country's official transitional justice process and participants' conviction that the transition will not occur until state and society face up to racialised inequality and embrace measures that address it (Moeti 2013; Brankovic 2013).

In their perceptions of transition, participants echo other South Africans, who already in 2000 were found to be "much more likely to emphasise the realisation of socio-economic outcomes as crucial to democracy than they are the key procedural components such as regular elections, multi-party competition or freedom of speech" (Mattes, Davids and Africa 2000: 7).viii As noted above, the Western Cape branch of Khulumani explored the viability of activism relating to socioeconomic exclusion at its founding in 2000 (Colvin 2018), identifying it as an issue of transition. Nearly two decades later, participants emphasise that social transformation is ever more central to democracy and a peaceful society. But the long years since 1994 have left them doubting whether they can expect the state, whoever is in charge of it, to cooperate with them to create change.

The disillusionment with political participation discussed in this chapter and questions regarding the responsibilities of the state towards its citizens are revisited later in the book. For now, we focus on interviewees' reflections on new freedoms and the absence of social transformation in their lives, as experienced at the most intimate and everyday level.

###  Apartheid Survivors on New Freedoms

The participants' narratives acknowledge that the political transition brought with it freedoms denied to black South Africans under apartheid—the period when "black people," a young woman said, "were treated like slaves because white people were in power" (73(y)). The interviews focus in particular on increased freedom of movement and speech, improved social assistance, and shifts in social norms regarding relations between racial groups and roles ascribed to women. Overall, however, participants indicate that few of the freedoms promised during democratisation have come to fruition. The findings suggest that, like 48 percent of black South Africans surveyed in 2015, most interviewees do not see the country as a democracy with just minor problems, let alone a full democracy (Lekalake 2015).

Looking at civil and political rights, participants primarily highlighted the benefits of freedom of movement. Describing the violent enforcement of apartheid pass laws and other regulations that restricted the activities of people outside their racially designated areas, a Khulumani member said, "The boers [Afrikaners] were setting dogs on us, arresting us for the passbook, deporting us to Mthatha [now in Eastern Cape province] on buses" (16). Another recalled, "It was said that this side is for blacks only and this side is for whites only, but now you are allowed, you can walk everywhere" (53). Under democracy, "you are not restricted entry anywhere, you are not asked to show your passbook—that is what is better" (47). Young participants also stressed this difference, with one observing that "you could not move without carrying a passbook and you could not go to places for white people, you could not use the same toilet as white people, you could not sit where a white person had sat" (38(y)), whereas "now black people go anywhere, there is no place we are restricted from" (66(y)). In addition, a number of participants asserted that "now we have freedom of speech" (G1). Noting that in the past "black people's voices were not heard," a young woman said that today "one is free to speak about what one doesn't like" (73(y)). Khulumani members here emphasised the right to discuss violations from the past and present in public, with one member noting, "We speak freely about being victims, there are no secrets now" (5).

Participants furthermore acknowledged the advent of certain social policies and socioeconomic rights, focusing mainly on improved social assistance. They highlighted the expansion of categories of social grants and an increase in the extent of and access to social grants over the years since 1994 (Brockerhoff 2013).ix Many noted that one or two monthly grants, while not enough to cover all their needs, have kept their households from starving when income from piecemeal or other work was limited (28, 36, 45, 47, 53, 51(y), 52(y), 55(y), 56(y), 64(y), 67(y), 70(y), 71(y), 76(y), 77(y), 79(y)). Some participants acknowledged that "people received houses" (47) through state programmes (DHS 2019), observing that "after 1994 what I see is that the government built houses, even though they didn't see that through all the way" (39(y)). Many also highlighted improved access to education and information, commenting that while in the past "access to education was limited, [today] we have more information and we can do more things than people who lived under apartheid" (78(y)). Because of the right to basic education enshrined in the constitution (Arendse 2011), "now education is free," said a young participant. "There are now feeding schemes that feed children at school. The things that are taught are better, and it is more possible to be taught in your own language than in the past, as in the past Afrikaans was the medium of instruction. So now each person has a right to know whatever they want to know" (73(y)). "My mother studied up to grade 8," noted another, "there was no option to go higher than grade 8. There was no way forward. Schools were far away, but schools now are not as far. They are nearer and easier to reach" (39(y)).

Linked to access to education and freedom of speech, some participants pointed out that women and girls have a wider range of life choices and opportunities available to them, suggesting that with more rights came a loosening of social restrictions. "Girls these days are able to work for themselves. Even if they were married and divorced, we do not have a problem," said an older woman (40(m)), while a young woman asserted, "We are more advanced than before because we can do things that people long ago could not do, like now we have female police officers" (78(y)). While the interviews demonstrate the disproportionate impact of inequality and violence on women and girls in Khayelitsha, which we discuss in coming chapters, women participants acknowledged a positive shift in perceptions of women and their abilities since the democratic transition.

Beyond these shifts, many participants identified the greater possibility of socialising with South Africans from other racial groups as a novelty of the democratic period. Recalling the extent to which apartheid shaped all interactions in everyday life, a Khulumani member who had been a domestic worker for a white family remarked, "Back then you needed to have your own mug and spoon [at work]. Now things are different. By the time I stopped working I was able to sit at the same table with white people" (24). A young participant observed, "We now stay together, dishes are put in one spot, whether you are black, whether you are white, you eat in the same place, you use the same things" (71(y)). Using another intimate social space as an example, a Khulumani member said, "Before it was rare to find churches with white congregants, nowadays we worship with white people" (5). "You can be friends with a white person" (76(y)), commented a young participant, with another noting, "I started seeing white people coming to our areas same as black people. You wouldn't see that before. Sometimes they come to visit black people they study with" (66(y)).

While the rights and other developments discussed in this section were named as tangible signs of social change, participants qualified each one, indicating that while positive they are often not fully realised. As the text here and in Chapter 2 shows, conditions of life in Khayelitsha effectively limit freedom of movement and access to education and information, social security and assistance, and decent housing. They limit the extent to which freedom of speech means that people are heard, not to mention the effect of changes in women's life opportunities in Khayelitsha and black South Africans' relationships with white South Africans. Furthermore, other civil-political and socioeconomic rights provided for in the South African constitution—even the right to life, political participation and equality before the law—are either absent in the interviews or described as failed projects. For Khulumani members who were marked by the liberation struggle and have advocated for the country to redress its apartheid past, the lack of transformation around them is a stark and painful indication of a stalled transition.

###  Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty

Stressing the extent to which poverty continues to characterise apartheid survivors' lives, the narratives of both older and young participants outline how lack of education, skills and opportunity continue to haunt survivor families. "I don't see any difference," declared a Khulumani member. Describing her situation over the two decades since 1994, she added, "The only difference is that we are free. We do sit at the same table as whites and talk to them. Apart from that, everything is the same" (G1). "We Khulumani members," said another, "we are still under the oppression we were under before, we are still fighting" (34). Young participants agreed. "I do not see anything that has changed," said one. "Apartheid still exists, even now after the vote, it still exists" (58(y)). Another said, "I don't see any difference at all, sister. It is still the same. There is still oppression" (55(y)). Their statements found an echo among the children of Khulumani members in Gauteng province, one of whom noted, "We are still struggling. Things are still the same. Nothing has changed" (Adonis 2017: 17). Reflecting on this sameness, a 33-year-old woman observed,

Back then you knew you were fighting white capital, you wanted to bring it down, you wanted the black liberation movement to be in power, and you had this beautiful picture you were painting that you would be free, you would have a job, you would be able to afford to go to school, and all those things. Now you can see that it was all a dream we wished up, that we could never wake up from, because it's really not materialising. Twenty-one years of democracy and we are not yet really free. (50(m))

The main indication that apartheid survivors continue to be, according to a Khulumani member, under the "yoke of oppression" (3) is that poverty has been transferred from one generation to the next in their families. Confirming research on the intergenerational nature of poverty in South Africa (De Lannoy, Leibbrandt and Fram 2015; WB 2012), Khulumani members argued that inadequate or disrupted access to education under apartheid, combined with limited access to the kind of formal and skill-building work that enables the accumulation of life savings, constrained not only their own life opportunities but also those of their children. "We did not get an education," commented a Khulumani member. "Had we received an education we would be in a better position and working in better jobs.... We would not be poor and our children would not be poor" (47). "The apartheid era affects me even now," reflected a young participant, "because I am still facing that poverty, because back then our mothers did not have the opportunity to study" (G1). Another argued that "the poverty we have now is the poverty we were in before. The way we were oppressed or the way our parents were oppressed is the reason the youth and the current generation is still suffering, because our mothers and fathers they could not get proper jobs, the right jobs, so that they could prepare for the future of us, their children" (22(m)). Khulumani members pointed out that the structural constraints on black South Africans under apartheid were exacerbated for those who participated in the liberation struggle or were directly affected by it. One participant noted, "We elders left the Eastern Cape poor, we came here and we did not live properly. The boers chased us. We ran while pregnant with these children. And now, when we are supposed to be free, we are not free. We are still oppressed even now. We find that the children are traumatised because they are born into the same poverty we had long ago" (G1).

Participants suggested that if the continuum between apartheid and post-apartheid socioeconomic exclusion is not understood and interrupted, the intergenerational transmission of poverty and its negative effects will not end. Young participants articulated it this way:

Since you were born in that shack, you will give birth to your own child still living in that shack. (46(y))

A mother who grew up in poverty raises a child in poverty, so that does not end poverty. There is now the youth and they are bringing up another generation, and that generation too will grow up in the same poverty. (77(y))

I thought by now my mother would be better off because I would be doing everything, everything for her, but I can't because there are no jobs. I feel a lot of pain. (58(y))

For them, as the next section details, the obstacles to breaking out of poverty lie in large part in the inequality that restricted their parents' and grandparents' life opportunities.

###  Racialised Inequality

The intergenerational transmission of poverty in Khulumani families, according to participants, has its roots in the race-based inequality instituted under colonialism and apartheid. While inequality between various racial groups comes up in the interviews, the narratives focus overwhelmingly on the enormous gap between black and white South Africans. They argue that white South Africans have not adequately acknowledged their families' privilege and responsibilities in relation to inequality, and that many have gone to great lengths to secure their financial dominance. Figures relating to income and asset inequality are suggestive in this regard. In 2014–15, households headed by white South Africans were still making about 4.5 times the income of those headed by black South Africans. White households also received four times the percentage of their income from capital compared to black households, which tend to have far fewer assets (StatsSA 2017a).

Drawing a link between apartheid-era and present-day experiences of racialised inequality, a young participant noted, "Black people were different from white people because of their skin colour. Black people didn't have many opportunities. Now you find that black people still work for whites because of what happened back then. They don't have a choice because they missed out on the opportunities to get skills, experience and education" (G2). Another asserted, "Poverty is something designed for black people, because there is no white person who faces such poverty" (G1), with a third adding, "You won't see white people staying in shacks with no electricity or running water" (58(y)). While some participants discussed the possibility of addressing this structural inequality, suggesting that "we all need to be on the same level, white, black or whatever colour need to be on the same level, and things will be better" (17), others saw little chance of significant change: "Apartheid will never come to an end, because you will never be equal to someone who has something while you have nothing, whether you like it or not" (G1).

The argument that racial inequality in South Africa is based on historical economic inequality was put forward by a number of participants. "We are still not equal," remarked a Khulumani member. "A black person is not equal to a white person because they don't have money" (47). Interviewees observed that most white South Africans continue to benefit from privilege institutionalised in the past. They noted that it is passed down from generation to generation, much as poverty is passed down among most black South Africans (Lam 1999). As we discuss in detail in Chapter 2, this privilege is visible to participants in white South Africans' accumulated wealth, access to economic centres, social networks and quality education, and their associated access to skilled employment, business ownership and other opportunities. "Whites get money from their families," said a young participant. "The way they are treated can never be the same [as us]. They have money from a young age. Their money is kept in banks. While they study, they already have their own money waiting for them" (66(y)). "There is inequality," observed another, "because although white people oppressed us and that time has ended, they are still able to continue with their lives as before, because white children are able to go to school and finish schooling unlike the children here in the township" (69(m)). As a result, said a third participant, "the difference between me and a white person at the age of 32 is that a white person has a good job, stays in a good flat and drives a good car, while I am struggling helping my mother who is still working as a domestic worker" (G1).

A number of participants pointed out that white South Africans have generally not addressed their families' role in entrenching and benefitting from racialised inequality. One young participant stated, for example, "They never gave back for all the time we worked as slaves for them.... They did not give anything back. Their children have progressed far in education, while we are the ones who are outsiders in education. They were the ones who got to sit at the table. All their generations are financially stable. So those people should help fix the system" (75(y)). In fact, participants said, many whites moved their capital abroad and engaged in corrupt business and banking practices to ensure their personal wealth remained intact, instead of paying the correct amount in taxes and investing in the local economy in a way that might address inequality. Indeed, research suggests that capital flight, driven by white South Africans, amounted to 5.4 percent of the country's gross domestic product per year between 1980 and 1993, and increased to 9.2 percent after the democratic elections, between 1994 and 2000 (Mohamed and Finnoff 2005). As one Khulumani member put it, "By the time the democratic government took power, white people had already saved their money in different corners, leaving little" (36). Discussing Nelson Mandela's election as the first democratic president, another member noted, "[The outgoing president F.W.] de Klerk did not give Madiba a bag full of money. That is why this country is still suffering. The bag full of South African money is what he never gave to him. That is why white people took business overseas once we were in power.... [Now] the government goes to the World Bank to request money to build things, like roads, hospitals and schools, the same money that white people took" (42). "Since black people came to power in this country, many whites have packed up and left," a third Khulumani member observed, adding,

They closed their companies and people were left with no jobs. Now the black government did not have the companies—that is why black people are not working. After [Mandela] came to power it was written on company gates, "no jobs, no jobs, no jobs," on all the gates. When you went inside, you were told to go look for a job from Mandela. This is what was said in these companies, you were told to go look for a job from Mr. Mandela. That means jobs have been made scarce deliberately because the current government that's in power is not loved, they are fighting it because we voted it in. (16)

These participants joined others in arguing that beneficiaries of apartheid oppression should take responsibility for its legacies. They also argued, however, that the new government should have done more to account for the structural nature of racial inequality in the aftermath of the political transition.

###  Economic Liberalisation

One of the democratic government's main failings with regard to racialised inequality, according to participants, has been its abandonment of the redistributive economic policies promised before regime change, which it initially formalised in the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). While they acknowledge the value of government's expanded social assistance programmes, the narratives demonstrate disapproval of its turn to economic liberalisation. Represented in the interviews by the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme, this turn is portrayed as an external imposition that never fit the specific needs of the country's economy and ended up benefitting only a few. The interviews do not touch on the 2005 Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa, the 2010 New Growth Path or the 2012 National Development Plan, which suggests that participants view these policies and their results as a continuation of economic liberalisation. Although the South African economy has experienced macroeconomic stability and growth in the financial and business services sector since 1994, research shows that it has seen a decline in the manufacturing, agricultural and mining sectors and a growing focus on capital-intensive over labour-intensive exports. Post-apartheid employment growth, which never reached expected levels, has favoured highly skilled workers over medium- and low-skilled workers, who have also been disproportionately affected by a volatile currency (Bhorat et al. 2014; Seekings and Nattrass 2006). The interviews indicate that participants experience the consequences of these developments as their everyday reality.

While the government in recent years has shown a renewed interest in redistributive approaches, participants pointed out that the country's economic growth has still not resulted in new life opportunities for their families. "What we thought is that things would change when black people came to power," said a Khulumani member, "that there would be jobs and that poverty would not become like this, that jobs would be created—the very same jobs that are not available now" (16). In addition, as we discuss in Chapter 2, participants said that their families now face a greater struggle to meet their basic needs. Summarising the reasons for this, a Khulumani member observed,

I am unemployed, I do not work, I am battling for my children to have food on the table.... In the past things were not as expensive, prices were not high. In the past people could eat from their gardens, they were planting. There wasn't suffering like there is now. Now it is difficult, there is nothing happening. You must be 60 years old to receive grant money. There is only crime because of hunger. (54)

Participants discussed the democratic government's expanded social assistance programmes (Joseph 2012), which they said enable their families to keep their heads above water. They particularly emphasised the benefits of social grants, and the need for them. In 2015, social grants were claimed by 45.5 percent of households in the country and accounted for 121 billion rand of the state's annual budget (StatsSA 2016). Interviewees use these grants not only to meet the basic needs of their households but also, in many cases, as capital to start income-generation projects. Most noted, however, that the amount of social assistance they receive—and are eligible to receive—is simply too little to help them get above the poverty line, let alone transform their lives (Nnaeme, Patel and Plagerson 2019). "We are dependent on the grant money," said a Khulumani member, "but it doesn't get us anywhere" (26). In today's economy, as one young participant put it, "The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer" (75(y)).

A central criticism of post-apartheid economic policies in the interviews is that they are not tailored to address South Africa's particular socioeconomic challenges and its most pressing transitional issue: social transformation (10(m), 16, 28, 39(y), 40(m), 42, 50(m), 51(y), 52(y), 54, 57(y), 69(m), G1, G2). Instead, participants described them as an imposition of global norms that are based on a one-size-fits-all approach. As one young participant put it, "We adopted the structure of other places. So they were not ready or they did not check what our structure needs. For example, they didn't check what South Africa lacks in order to develop. They only implemented something new without conducting research on what South Africans really need. They only implemented the plan they had without proper research to see if it will be good for us" (G2). A Khulumani member pointed out that while GEAR could have been effective in 'developed' economies in the global North, it did not fit South Africa's needs. "Our government is very young," she noted, "it is still a baby compared to countries like Britain, America and so forth. Those countries have had many years in power and that is why they have money. We as this government are still crawling" (42).

As implied by the 'baby' comment, some participants explained officials' choices in terms of naiveté upon coming to power or a lack of foresight in the face of poor advice and global trends in economic theory and practice. According to one participant,

When the black government came to power, they were supposed to look at the impact of apartheid and then fix whatever was ruined by apartheid.... They were supposed to solve the key problems at the foundation in order for us to progress. Secondly, our government was never trained to be in power. While they were in exile, they were trained how to get power, how to get rid of the former government and how to fight. That is what they were taught. They were not taught to strategise based on the current situation by looking at what the white government did that led us to this situation.... Our government was supposed to address the earlier structure before our mothers came to Cape Town. They didn't look at that. They only looked at what they could make private. They didn't look at the reasons that led us to be in this situation. (G1)

A Khulumani member similarly argued that officials "did not understand before assuming power the problems they must start with first, they just rushed to power, and now people have a problem with GEAR" (28). Outlining some of the problems caused by this approach, another member observed,

The Freedom Charter [adopted by the African National Congress (ANC) and its allies in 1955] says the people will rule, wealth will be divided. That did not happen. After we got freedom, they introduced something we didn't know called GEAR. After GEAR was introduced they sold all of South Africa. That was done by the government.... GEAR sold everything we had. Government has hardly anything. Everything belongs to outside. Airports don't belong to here, they belong to outside businesses. When you get employed at the Waterfront [Shopping Centre], you get employed through an agent. Some of the money you get there goes to the agent. Where is the living in that? (G1)

A young participant made a link between the political oppression of apartheid and the economic exclusion of the democratic era, noting, "In the past it was the passbook that was needed, you needed to carry it wherever you went, you could not get close to a white person. We voted in 1994. It was said that we are free, but we have been being restricted a lot, because a cow might be taken to a field with grass but it cannot eat the grass, it has to work the whole day and be hungry. We are treated like that. That is the way I personally see this new South Africa of ours" (57(y)).

Many argued that while the democratic transition raised the possibility of new freedoms and opportunities, these opportunities are unevenly distributed (8, 22(m), 34, 51(y), 75(y), 77(y), G1). "Some benefitted, others didn't," remarked a Khulumani member. "That's why it is painful to us. We thought that because there is freedom it would bring us together, not have certain people at the top benefitting and others at the bottom" (34). Talking about black South African youth, another participant noted, "Change came for some people who were successful, who were secured a good future by their parents. Not all of us saw change and came right after 1994" (22(m)). "Nowadays, since we voted in 1994, what matters is money," concluded a Khulumani member. "It is not just discrimination based on race, but also on money" (47). According to participants, the democratic government adopted policies that allowed white South Africans to avoid taking responsibility for apartheid-era inequality, in fact increasing their advantages in the post-apartheid period, while also benefitting a comparatively small number of black South Africans. The suggestion is that in addition to allowing racialised inequality to continue, the government ended up fostering inequality between black South Africans who have connections across the public and private sectors and 'ordinary' black South Africans who do not (see Altbeker 2008). As we discuss in coming chapters, interviewees see this type of inequality not only on a national scale but also among neighbours in Khayelitsha. Another suggestion is that many such connections have been forged and maintained through corruption.

###  Corruption

Many of the narratives identify corruption as one of the main markers of the post-apartheid period (26, 32(m), 33, 34, 36, 38(y), 41(m), 42, 43, 47, 57(y), 64(y), 76(y), 77(y), 78(y), G1, G2). They suggest that corruption is common practice in the public and private sectors, and that it is on the rise. In the form of state capture, nepotism, patronage and bribery, corruption has contributed to inequality by enriching a relatively small number of individuals while preventing many others from accessing opportunities, participants argue. It has also undermined effective governance and the possibility of more inclusive development. The participants' perceptions mirror those of South Africans surveyed in 2015 regarding the extent of corruption among political elites, service-level public officials and influential individuals in the private sector and civil society. Of these respondents, 83 percent said that corruption is increasing in the country and 79 percent said that government is doing an inadequate job of reducing it (TI 2015b).

In our interviews, participants began discussions about corruption with observations regarding government officials, arguing that many use the state to enrich themselves and their families and associates instead of addressing inherited inequality and shortcomings in post-apartheid economic policies, or even ensuring basic service provision. Some suggested that officials from all three major political parties in the country—the ANC, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF)—misuse state power and funds for private gain, with one young participant asserting, "I would like the money to be used to fix the streets and blocked drains, because it is not doing anything now. Otherwise the people on top will just use it, they will fight over it, just like [EFF leader Julius] Malema and [former president Jacob] Zuma" (60(y)). Most, however, identified corruption with the ANC government, noting that it starts as the top, with successive presidents of the country. "There is not a single leader who has helped us," remarked a Khulumani member, "even the late Tata [Mandela]. The way I see it, he was the first one to cheat us. We will blame any president that comes in, but the truth is it all started with him. I think as a leader you need to take care of your people first before you take care of your family" (42). A young participant said, "We can start with the presidents, the people who are in power here in South Africa," arguing that "they steal money and promise us things. They tell us that they are going to build houses for us and instead of building houses they build roads. They use the money to build themselves homes" (39(y)). Many discussed the actions of former president Zuma, in power at the time, who currently faces corruption charges after resigning in 2018 following an impeachment attempt (OS 2018). A young participant, for example, pointed out, "He can take 5 billion [rand] and buy a private jet, take 3 million to build his house because he is the president.... He used people's money, their tax money. Is it 5 million he used to build a house? But he uses 10,000 to build a [state-subsidised] house for us" (67(y)).

A number of participants suggested that corruption as common practice has trickled down from the top to all levels of government—national, provincial and local. While the democratic government instituted decentralisation in order to enable greater political participation and improve service delivery, participants noted that the process has in fact encouraged corruption and patronage, which is a common critique of decentralised governance (Feinstein 2015). "The people we voted for are greedy," stated a young man, "starting with [Zuma], all the way down to his councillors. It is very difficult" (57(y)). A young woman echoed him: "In our government, people in power are corrupt and they influence other people on lower levels to be corrupt" (77(y)). A Khulumani member argued that, as a result, "the government is arrogant. They want to show that they are rich with their families. They do not care about other people. They are now paying for seats. Government is like a company. They want to be rich with their families" (36). Another member observed,

There is a lot of corruption in government. You hear of certain government officials who have been awarded tenders. Those tenders were meant for other people, but they end up with government officials and not with the people. That is why the corruption is not ending. They are corrupt and reserve things for themselves and their friends. They don't consider other people for tenders or wish for them to also succeed. They want to be the only ones benefiting and succeeding. (17)

Referring to a slogan the ANC has been using since the first democratic elections, the young man who talked about greed above commented, "A 'better life for all'? That is for those who are in power" (57(y)).

Although they tended to acknowledge that "there are councillors who work and others who don't work" (43), many participants focused in particular on corruption at local government level. They noted that nepotism and patronage play a role in the selection of candidates put forward by political parties in municipal elections, which often leads to local councillors being inexperienced, ineffective or unfamiliar with local issues because they live outside their ward (37(y), 41(m), 56(y), 57(y), 64(y), 69(m)). "These people select each other based on who is liked," said a young participant. "The person is chosen and knows nothing about what is happening there. The person gets a position as a councillor because people like him" (37(y)). Her observation was echoed by another young participant, who noted, "They don't help us. They are only there for the money. The reason they are there is because people put them there" (78(y)). Some highlighted the inadequacy of local councillors elected by such means, as in one participant's story about finding a space for children's group meetings:

You go to the councillor and you do not find them. When you do meet them they tell you to come at another time. When you come back again at another time they tell you there is no space and they don't know where to find space. They say there is a budget given to councillors to help in the community, they will tell you to wait until such a time as they have the money. You will not know when they have the money in hand or not. They will tell you to wait. You will find out that you are going to wait forever, you will not find anything tangible. You end up giving up because of going up and down to them talking about one thing. You lose hope and give up. (40(m))

Others highlighted the corrupt behaviour of councillors themselves, as in another participant's narrative on the role of nepotism and clientelism in access to information and opportunities in the township:

If you go to the councillor and they look at your face and find that they do not know you, they will not give you any information even though you have heard that there are application forms available from the councillors and you can go obtain them. Let's say maybe you have heard from someone that has already received the forms, when you get there they do not know, they will tell you to pay money, 50 rand maybe. Sometimes you do not even have that 50 rand. (69(m))

One young participant noted that local councillors who are men tend to side-line women residents, describing an attempt she made to access resources for a women's initiative:

When we arrived at that meeting, there were only men in the office. They said we could come in. We were not even given an opportunity to explain who we are, what we are there for. They asked, "Is there a man leading you?" I said there was no man. They said they cannot have a meeting with women because women cannot lead, they must stay home and cook. I said why are they not listening to what we are there for. They said, "We do not have time for that." We were asked to leave, we were expelled from the meeting, and we left. (59(y))

With this narrative, she echoed another young woman who stated, "We do not have power. Government does not consider us much like they do men" (51(y)).

In addition to discussing local councillors, participants argued that inefficiency and corruption are common among the private actors who win tenders from and perform services on behalf of government, as well as the individuals they hire to facilitate and perform this work. Participants suggested that nepotism often plays a role in government's selection of these private actors at the local level, although they focused more on how such actors undermine state initiatives. According to a Khulumani member,

What is happening is that the government releases things from the top and brings them down, but the people on the ground take those things. People will say government is not working, but they are sabotaged by people on the ground. So that is why it seems like the government is not working. [For example] they were renovating houses that were not completely built, that were stopped halfway. The government released money for those houses to be renovated. They went to those places and started working, but the workers did not get paid and stopped working. So we will always blame government. The government does release money to our leaders on the ground and they take the money. It is not that government is not working. The government does work, but the money is misused by our leaders on the ground. (43)

Another Khulumani member made a similar argument, emphasising that the government does not do enough to prevent this type of corruption. "Government just appoints people and does not follow up," she said. "Government allocates funds to people to deliver services; people just use the funds for their personal needs. You ask yourself, 'Why are people still suffering in a certain area when government has allocated funds for that area?'" (36). Several participants highlighted nepotism as a characteristic of such processes and argued that they limit access to opportunities in the township (39(y), 53, G1). "Tenders create job opportunities," noted one participant. "Despite the tenders, there is still poverty, inequality and crime. People get tenders. A person gets a tender here in Cape Town, but takes family from the Eastern Cape. They employ people they know" (G1). A few noted that this practice even marks area or street committees—formal or informal groupings of local residents selected by their neighbours to address community concerns—focusing on nepotism regarding new employment opportunities and bribery in the allocation of state-subsidised houses (12, 43, 46(y), 57(y), 59(y)). Regarding nepotism, a young participant noted, "If a certain mother is a committee member, when there is a vacancy she will take her child. We always talk about how they are going to take certain people for vacancies. They will make a public announcement while knowing that a certain group has already been selected" (46(y)).

In fact, participants argued that corruption, particularly nepotism, affects all spheres of society, not just government and not just at the local level. As reflected in the chapters to come, they highlighted corruption in the business sector, but also implicated academia, civil society and other sectors. One participant summed it up in this way: "There is corruption. In order for you to get a job you need to know someone from inside to get you in. If you don't know anyone then you won't get it. It is the same in university. You need to know someone regardless of your grades" (78(y)). "When you try and confront it," noted a young participant about corruption, "things do not go forward. You try and confront it and it disappears into thin air" (38(y)). Participants suggested that government officials, whether involved in corruption themselves or not, are unable or unwilling to tackle the problem. "We are in a big crisis and we do not know where to find help because government is far from us," said a Khulumani member. "Even if you want to contact government you will find obstacles. There is bureaucracy, but when we voted for them they did not speak of bureaucracy. We were told government is available all the time. It is difficult now. What you find now is just corruption. There is just corruption and misuse of public funds" (36).

While these participants join many South Africans in perceiving corruption as endemic, the country has consistently received a score of 43–44 in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index over the past few years. Countries with a score under 50 are considered to have a serious corruption problem, but it is important to note that two out of three countries included in the index score below 50 and that South Africa's score is in fact about the global average (TI 2015a). In addition, recent research demonstrates that corruption is not a post-apartheid phenomenon, as officials in the apartheid government engaged in widespread corruption in concert with other sectors (OS 2018). This begs the question why participants see corruption as a defining and particularly troubling marker of the democratic period. An explanation may lie in participants' assertions regarding liberation movement leaders who now constitute the ruling majority in government—most notably Nelson Mandela and the presidents who followed him—in 'cheating' ordinary black South Africans.

As suggested by a participant who said, "When we watch television, we see that in politics there is nepotism, people in high positions employ their families" (38(y)), the media has played a significant role in raising awareness of government corruption in recent years. With the media reports that accompanied allegations of corruption against former president Zuma, evidence emerged in the public eye that successive ANC leaders have collaborated with, often white, business leaders since well before the transition (Southall 2016; Onishi and Gebrekidan 2018). The aim of this collaboration may initially have been to bolster their party's power, facilitate a peaceful transition, attract foreign investment or build a black South African middle class to lead the country's social transformation as part of the global market economy. But it also resulted in government officials and their families and associates being at the upper end of the new black middle class at the same time that racialised inequality and socioeconomic marginalisation increased for the majority of black South Africans. For Khulumani members who supported the liberation movements and who self-identify as survivors of apartheid, as well as for young people in their households who have witnessed their struggles, the gap between their living conditions and those of their leaders more than 20 years after the political transition is difficult to reconcile.

###  Limited Impact of Political Participation

As already implied by numerous quotes above, the participant narratives reveal a profound sense of betrayal in relation to the ruling party. They indicate a conviction that black South Africans have not experienced freedom as a result of racialised inequality and intergenerational poverty. As this section shows, they question the value of formal democracy given participants' marginalisation and the point of voting when their demands appear to fall on deaf ears, even when framed by protest. While some of the comments in the interviews touch on public discourse and debates around whether Nelson Mandela and the ANC 'sold out' black South Africans (Child 2018), participants primarily convey disillusionment with political participation and the extent to which the state, no matter who is in power, will ever serve their needs and interests. The results of the 2016 municipal elections suggest that other residents of Khayelitsha may be asking similar questions. Voter registration in the township was low compared to other parts of Cape Town. Voter turnout in the area dropped to 56 percent from 74 percent in the 2011 elections. While the ANC's share of the vote remained high at 72 percent in 2016—reflecting its ongoing strength in the township—the number of votes for the party decreased to 83,714 from 109,399 in 2011 (Berkowitz 2016).

A single participant narrative captures a number of participants' views regarding post-apartheid governance:

Before '94 it was painful because we knew that we were governed by white Afrikaans people. It was painful to even get a passbook. It was the white Afrikaans people, who are not even South Africans, the white Afrikaans people who are not from here, who came here in ships—they told us to have passbooks. It was painful because we felt that there was no other way. But God in his own time freed Tata Madiba and we had democracy. As a result of democracy our country was recognised as the best country and called the rainbow nation, because there are people of different races. We are a rainbow. It is not our country only. That is when we became complacent, believing that we are free. We are not free. I don't know whether we wanted Mandela, but we forgot the struggle continues. We thought that we had democracy once Mandela was free, but there was no democracy. And it is far from existing because the poor are still poor today and will continue being poor. You find that, hey—they were not the only ones, we followed these people in parliament as our leaders, the people who fought racism. Our parents were also there, a lot of parents were also fighting. Now you find that they don't know us.... In a way, Madiba, in my mind, maybe he and de Klerk agreed on something. (42)

According to this Khulumani member, the realisation that oppression and exclusion could occur at the hands of black South Africans who were part of the liberation struggle has taken time to accept. Ignoring their supporters' contribution to the struggle and their needs in the present, former struggle leaders made a deal with the white oppressor, she suggested, both by promoting the idea of an equal rainbow nation and by making arrangements with those previously in power. As the preceding section indicates, these arrangements are perceived to involve leaders not only enriching themselves but also allowing white South Africans to maintain their socioeconomic supremacy. Instead of bringing down "white capital" (50(m)), these leaders collaborated with and bolstered it. For this reason, another participant argued, "the results of apartheid will continue, because the very same government benefits from it. So the link lies here. Until the government goes back to its roots, the fact that many companies are white-owned will not change. Black people will be used as a front while the white people rule" (G1).

Many participants expressed deep disappointment with former struggle leaders' approach to democratisation. Comparing the ANC's promises to the conditions her household is facing, a Khulumani member observed,

We say we are free but we have not seen freedom. This thing of freedom is difficult because of what we were promised before. We were certain that we would be free because it was the first time that blacks would be in power. It was said that there would be schools, children would be educated and there would be jobs. We do not see any of that. Our children are not getting jobs. It is even difficult to get a school. A child will pass matric but cannot proceed to university because these universities want money. How can you educate a child with an older persons grant?... We do not even have places to live, we live in shacks, we were promised houses. People are really poor here, and everything is difficult. (53)

Referring to the first democratic elections, another member recalled, "I thought the ANC government would do a lot of work because of what they said during that time. It was like they would move us from a filthy place and put us in better places. But that is not happening" (43). A young participant echoed the Khulumani members' comments, noting, "People were promised in bold big letters on the road and even on t-shirts a 'better life for all,' a better life for all black people. We did not know that this 'better life for all' meant that we will all die in a hole. I think that is what makes people anxious, because they were also cheated by Tata Mandela" (57(y)).

Participants compared the ANC's repeated promises with the absence of change on the ground, arguing that officials at all levels of government are "far from us" and inaccessible, "folding their arms doing nothing" and "turning a blind eye" to the lack of social transformation in the country and in Khayelitsha (13, 26, 30, 34, 36, 37(y), 42, 43, 51(y), 58(y), 64(y), 73(y), G1). As can be seen from some of the quotes above, a number of participants in this context queried the use of voting and, through it, the degree of democracy that has been achieved in South Africa. According to a Khulumani member,

Ever since we got voting rights, I do not see what we have voted for except that we love our organisations. Otherwise we have voted for poverty.... They are not the government of the people, they are the government of their own homes. They do not care about the people who voted for them. They are saying the poor must remain poor. I do not know what should happen.... Why did we vote? Did we vote for hunger or did we vote to have freedom? We are not yet free, we have not yet gotten freedom, and we will never be free. We are not free yet, we are still wandering around in dirty mud, just like pigs. (36)

"We have not seen democracy," stated another member. Highlighting her identity as an elderly apartheid survivor, she asked, "What has it done for us? We see that it is said we are free, but it's only a few homes that are free. Let's understand this: there are a few homes that are free. We are not cared for as senior citizens. We were supposed to be cared for because we are free. The government we voted for does not care for us" (34). Young participants had similar doubts, with one stating, "It was my first time voting. I was excited. I told myself that I would give my vote to the ANC because I wanted it to be in power, I wanted it to win and it would make changes.... We voted because we need places to stay, we want jobs, we want everything. After voting I did not hear from them again" (46(y)). "When they want a vote they promise that they will do things," said another youth, "but once they have been voted for they don't do those things. They pretend to listen to the complaints people have, but don't.... So that makes people discouraged and they don't want to vote because of the government making promises and not delivering" (64(y)).

Some older participants tempered negative comments about voting with expressions of hope that ANC officials might be convinced to engage properly with their constituents, saying that "people will never be satisfied with what government does" (44(m)) and that "we cannot always criticise the government, we have to criticise and also compliment" (47). One Khulumani member declared, "I will never stop voting for the ANC because the teargas affected my eyes too much in Langa and Gugulethu. I vote for the ANC. I don't care even if it falls to the ground" (43). While to some of these older participants, the ANC is a beloved organisation (36), to others it appears to be more of a known quantity, a familiar actor whose faces and ways they know and can reliably predict (AFP 2019). The interviews suggest that they are not comfortable to the same extent with other political parties and have not seen them working in a way that is sufficiently different to draw their interest or loyalty away from the ANC. Young participants appeared similarly wary of other political parties, as indicated by one young woman's description of election season:

When they campaign for elections, they speak nicely. You are willing to be there. Maybe if a certain party can be in power, maybe there can be a change. We have been voting for certain parties, there is going to be a change, we are crying about jobs as the youth. After a while you decide to join another party because it's like they promise free education and everything. You join, the election comes and goes, and after that it's quiet. They have even forgotten about us, the people they were transporting in Quantums [buses to rallies]. You find out that everything is free, transport is free. You are forgotten, and you are invisible. Only those on top are seen. So where is the change? What must we do to benefit from the change? (46(y))

Young participants, however, were more uniformly negative about political parties and the political process in general, including about the value of voting at all. This can be summarised by the same young woman's statement: "I have no interest in voting" (46(y)). This view mirrors that of many young people around the country, and is reflected in the fact that less than 20 percent of citizens who turned 18 after the 2014 general election registered to vote in the 2019 election (Patel, Sadie and Bryer 2018; Patel and Graham 2019).

A number of young participants expressed interest in protest as a more effective way of engaging with government than voting, joining other young people living in marginalised areas around the country (Runciman 2016). As a form of popular mobilisation, protest has been common in South Africa since apartheid days and has gradually increased in frequency since the mid-2000s, particularly in predominantly black townships and informal settlements (Alexander 2010; von Holdt et al. 2011). Khulumani members largely did not discuss protest, although a few said they support young people marching on government offices, noting that they themselves "show up with placards" (5) when advocating for redress. Young participants, however, focused on protests as a way to make the government 'hear' residents' grievances, especially as a last resort after complaints lodged via informal and official channels are ignored. As one young woman put it, "The community has ways of making the government listen. Sometimes they start with the councillor and state their grievances. When the councillor fails, he sends them to Cape Town. They go there and are not assisted. So now the community decides to throw things on the road, break things and all that, thinking government will recognise them, because they want to bring attention to the things they want" (58(y)). Research shows that protests over the past decade have increasingly featured vandalism, arson and, in some cases, violence—tactics that used to be considered a feature of apartheid-era protests (von Holdt et al. 2011). Some young participants explicitly supported the use of vandalism and violence in protests. For example, when asked what Khayelitsha residents could do to improve their situation, one young woman responded, "We will march to government. If we have to beat them we will and if we have to burn their offices we will. We have been complaining for a long time and they are not making changes" (37(y)). A young man describing residents' struggles to acquire flush toilets instead of bucket toilets in an informal settlement said, "We were putting the buckets in the road. When the workers come to fetch it, we threw it on the ground. We wanted government to hear us" (57(y)). Most young participants, however, talked about protest in terms of peaceful rallies and marches, with one observing that "protests are driven by the desire to show the government that people are fed up with living in such conditions" (64(y)).

A few young participants said that protests in any form have little or no effect, and suggested that they are part of a cycle: residents seeking government's attention, government largely ignoring them until election season, and residents falling for new election promises out of hope, at which point the cycle starts again. A 16-year-old woman summarised this process as follows:

They come to the people asking them what they want so that they can provide it as their government. People state their complaints and they promise but once they are voted in they are the government, they do not care for the people. People end up toyi-toying [marching] because they were promised things, but now the promises are not fulfilled. They are now in office, they have gained what they wanted.... Some people toyi-toyi but there is no meaningful answer from those protests. Some people do marches and others sleep over in institutions waiting for answers, instead what government does is to send police to remove them from those places or beat them. There is nothing tangible that they get after having protested.... Government does not even consider those protests. They consider them when elections are looming, government responds only then to something the people complained about a long time ago. (73(y))

A 28-year-old woman similarly observed,

Even if you do get to parliament there is nobody who cares about you, you cannot state your problem, or even if you state the problem you are not taken seriously. People do go to them, there are these protests that are done to parliament, but they do not come back with answers. Government does not take seriously what members of the community do.... [Yet] when they are campaigning they do not go to the suburbs, where people are comfortable, they go to areas we stay in, where they know they are for poor people who want to hear what they are going to say. They get to us easily, because every time the president is going to come the stadium is full. They speak freely to us, but they don't take the time to listen. (69(m))

These and other comments in this section reveal a population that expected profound social change with the transition to democracy and instead continues to feel not only socioeconomically marginalised but also politically marginalised and unrepresented. This feeling is not limited to the participants in Khayelitsha. The son of a Khulumani member in Gauteng similarly stated,

I am not free in South Africa. How can I be free? I am asking myself each and every day that if I'm really free, why am I suffering. So not much has changed, not at all. Only when you are free from suffering can you say that you are really free. I am a second year drop-out and struggling because of the consequences of apartheid. I am stuck because of the previous apartheid regime's circumstances which led me today to be stuck. (Adonis 2017: 15)

Reflecting the views of participants of all ages concerning townships in South Africa, one of our interviewees noted, "Apartheid played a big role in this poverty, inequality and violence. I think our government owes it to the people to meet them halfway and create projects to come and deal with the problem" (50(m)). Instead, said another participant, "they are not doing enough." Highlighting the dominant perception that government officials are self-interested rather than serving the people, she added, "Maybe they are doing things in the places they live, but not where we live. I don't see anything done here, nothing at all" (37(y)).

###  Broken Promises of Transition

The narratives in this chapter have shown that while participants acknowledge the benefits of the changes that have occurred since the political transition—particularly increased freedom of movement and speech, improved social assistance, and shifts in social norms regarding racial relations and women's roles—they also view them as inadequately realised. More fundamentally, the narratives demonstrate that poverty and exclusion from mainstream economic life are being reproduced in one generation after another in Khulumani families. Participants argue that this is due not only to white South Africans but also to the democratic government not taking responsibility for addressing the unequal access to life opportunities entrenched by colonialism and apartheid.

Khulumani members critique the government's choice to abandon redistributive policies in its pursuit of economic liberalisation, arguing that the blueprint applied in other countries is not suited to the socioeconomic challenges specific to South Africa. They also suggest that these policies have benefitted the same groups that benefitted from apartheid, along with a comparatively small number of black South Africans—a situation exacerbated by the self-serving corruption they say has trickled down through all levels of government and across society as a whole. Khulumani members express disillusionment with former struggle leaders' approach to governance and question the utility of political participation in this context, although they also emphasise the value of representative democracy. Young participants largely agree with Khulumani members' analyses of post-apartheid South Africa, but convey a higher degree of alienation from government and a lower investment in communal mobilisation in pursuit of political and social change.

The narratives frame lack of social transformation as lack of freedom and democracy. They frame it as an issue of transition, which is incomplete because the democratic government has not implemented changes that are in line with the findings of its own transitional justice process. In the next chapter, we examine the manifestations of racialised inequality and socioeconomic marginalisation in depth, based on participants' descriptions of the everyday in Khayelitsha.
Chapter 2. Socioeconomic Drivers of Violence in a South African Township

What is the cause of violence? It is caused by poverty, hunger and jobs being unavailable. (28)

In the context of an incomplete transition, the participant narratives indicate that racialised inequality, the democratic government's economic policies, the prevalence of corruption and the limited impact of political participation combine to constrain the sense of freedom and life opportunities of multiple generations in Khulumani families. In this chapter, we examine how these constraints mark the daily lives of the participants. Because we used violence as a lens in conducting the interviews, we focus on socioeconomic factors that participants argue enable and sustain crime and violence in Khayelitsha. The most pressing factors, according to participants of all ages, are employment and education, which they demonstrate are extremely difficult to access and maintain. While social facilities in the township could ease this access, the narratives show that they are either lacking or low in quality. The existing facilities are said to be under pressure from the growing population of migrants from rural areas of South Africa and from other African countries, whom participants perceive as competitors for the limited opportunities and resources available to them. A final factor is the unregulated sale of alcohol and illegal drugs, which participants appear to accept as one of the few viable sources of income for residents coping with exclusion from mainstream economic life. The participants show how each socioeconomic driver of violence builds on and contributes to the others. The narratives in this chapter make reference to the issues of transition we raised in Chapter 1, indicating the extent to which the failures that followed the transitional justice process have enabled the ongoing marginalisation of apartheid survivors.

The interviews here suggest the degree to which the socioeconomic conditions in Khayelitsha continue to be shaped by spatial apartheid. Entrenching colonial-era segregation and migrant labour practices, the apartheid regime adopted the Group Areas Act of 1950 and a series of subsequent laws that further separated racial groups, ensured the demographic dominance of white South Africans in desirable areas close to economic centres, and forcibly relocated other racial groups to peripheral and poorly resourced locations (Smith 1992; Christopher 2001). Established in 1983, Khayelitsha was planned as a 'dormitory suburb' for about 120,000 black workers with permits to stay in Cape Town—part of the regime's effort to control urbanisation and the spread of informal settlements around the city (Clark 2015; Khayelitsha Commission 2014). Many of Khulumani's members in the Western Cape are in fact women survivors of forced removals and attacks on the squatter resistance during this process (Colvin 2018; Wale 2018). Increasing rapidly after passbooks were abolished in 1986 and especially after the political transition, the population is now above 400,000 and growing, densely packed in about 45 square kilometres. Less than half of residents live in formal dwellings. The township is far from the economic life in the centre of Cape Town, has few local businesses, suffers from inadequately resourced social facilities and services, and faces a serious infrastructure gap in comparison to more central areas mainly populated by white South Africans (Clark 2015). As we noted in the Introduction, the residents, who are still primarily black South Africans, face among the highest rates of unemployment in the city, province and country and almost half the households report a monthly income below 1,600 rand (StatsSA 2012).

This brief overview contextualises the links between the past and the present articulated by the participants, while also suggesting that their experiences of exclusion likely reflect those of many residents of Khayelitsha. The narratives we present in this chapter echo research on racialised inequality in South Africa, highlighting the inferior education, low skill levels and limitations on career progression imposed on the majority population by apartheid's white supremacist laws (Seekings and Nattrass 2006). They demonstrate the consequences of the decline of labour-intensive industries and the focus on job creation in capital-intensive industries that favour highly educated and skilled workers in the democratic period, which have pushed unskilled workers into the low-income informal sector (Bhorat et al. 2014). The narratives show the extent to which limitations on life opportunities are racialised and transgenerational. They also indicate how the spatial apartheid that characterises Khayelitsha contributes to the exclusion of most residents from social networks, information, quality education and capacity-building options that might assist them to access the labour market (WB 2012; De Lannoy, Leibbrandt and Fram 2015).

Before discussing how socioeconomic marginalisation contributes to violence in the township later in the book, in this chapter we present participants' narratives concerning the everyday effects of transitional arrangements and spatial apartheid on their life opportunities and the possibility of social transformation.

###  Unemployment

The participant narratives across the board identify unemployment as the main driver of violence in Khayelitsha. Many start by discussing shrinking access to agricultural land and the impact of urbanisation on urban farming, suggesting that this has resulted in a growing reliance on wage labour at a time of rising unemployment. The interviews demonstrate the extent to which spatial apartheid and lack of social networks limit access to job sources, as well as ways in which racial discrimination and the rise of labour agents constrain employment options and career progression. These factors interfere with participants' ability to acquire work experience, references from employers and specific skill sets, which are required by employers in the democratic period.

While a handful of participants are formally employed, the vast majority are struggling with long-term unemployment. Almost all live in multi-generational households made up of several family members who rely on one or two social grants—mainly older persons, child support and disability grants—for a consistent income. Most supplement social grants with what they earn from piecemeal and informal work. This includes hair care and styling, scrap metal collection, waste picking and recycling, child minding, manual labour, and the sale of household items, second-hand clothing or handicrafts. Some plant vegetables in small plots or tubs by their home for household use, selling the surplus when possible. The employment situation of these participants reflects that of many black South Africans living in townships and informal settlements, which are home to 38 percent of the working-age population and yet 60 percent of its unemployed (Mahajan 2014). In 2014, the official rate of unemployment for black South Africans, including active and discouraged work-seekers, was 28.6 percent—compared to only 7.3 percent among their white compatriots (StatsSA 2015). In Khayelitsha, it was 38 percent in 2011, reaching as high as 50 percent for young men up to the age of 23 (Clark 2015).

Comparing the apartheid and democratic periods, participants argued that unemployment is more of a challenge for their families today. Many noted that their households can no longer rely on small-scale and subsistence farming to survive when money is tight (5, 13, 22(m), 24, 28, 30, 36, 42, 53, 54, 57(y), 58(y), 70(y), 71(y), G1). Recalling the past, a Khulumani member reflected, "We did not buy samp [corn kernels] back then, you would crush mielies [maize]. You were not buying beans, you would plant them" (53). Participants observed that they have less access to agricultural land, both because their families migrated from rural to urban areas and because the population of the township continues to grow due to ongoing urbanisation, which is decreasing the amount of land available for urban farming. Urbanisation spiked when restrictions on freedom of movement were lifted with the end of apartheid, and it has continued to rise under the democratic dispensation. From 2001 to 2011, the population in South Africa's metropolitan areas grew by more than 25 percent, compared to 10 percent in the rest of the country (Turok and Borel-Saladin 2014). Participants observed that this trend is due to the deterioration of land quality, frequent and more intense droughts, and rising agricultural input costs, which have made farming less economically viable in today's economic climate. In addition, the higher rate of unemployment in rural areas and a loss of interest in subsistence farming among young people have pushed increasing numbers to move to cities in search of income (24, 25, 28, 36, 57(y), 58(y), G1).

Given their reduced access to rural and urban farming, participants noted that they are increasingly reliant on cash to feed their households. At the same time, food prices are on the rise (3, 32(m), 36, 52(y), 53, 54, 72(m), 76(y)). "We are hurting now because food prices have gone up," observed a Khulumani member (36). A young participant agreed: "Prices have increased and we can't afford things" (76(y)). Research confirms that unemployed South Africans and those drawing social grants tend to be disproportionately affected by price changes and inflation fluctuations (Oosthuizen 2013). In this context, survival depends on finding work and earning wages. Yet, even as they become more dependent on wage labour, participants said, jobs are harder to secure. One participant summed up the dilemma:

Now people are free, but the problem is the way of life, because people do not farm anymore. People live from money now. People stay in cities now, not in villages. Staying in cities forces people to use money, although money is not available because of the scarcity of jobs these days. So this is what I think is the main thing. The difference during the apartheid era was that our people were able to do things for themselves. Now people are unable to do things for themselves, they are only dependent on jobs, jobs that are not available. (22(m))

Interviewees argued that employment was more readily available during apartheid. They acknowledged that black South Africans represented cheap labour under the regime and noted that jobs were poorly paid and far inferior to those reserved for whites. They nonetheless argued that the access they had to regular and often formal work is preferable to the lack of jobs today (8, 12, 25, 34, 47, 51(y), 67(y), G1, G2). "In the past we had less hunger, there were jobs," recalled a Khulumani member. "Even if there were three of you in the household, you were all working. The money was little but you were able to get what you need" (8). In addition to doing domestic work, many of these participants worked in the manufacturing sector, specifically in the electrical, metallurgical, textile and food industries. Now, they said, such jobs are far and few between. Indeed, research shows that the manufacturing sector declined significantly after apartheid, shrinking by 20 percent since 2001 alone (Bhorat and Rooney 2017).

Participants said that in today's tighter job market, it is necessary to know people who are employed and can share information on new jobs and provide access to job sources. As discussed in Chapter 1, they noted that most of their family members, and other residents of the township, are not tapped into such social networks. Due to racialised inequality, participants argued, they have far less access to social networks in economic centres than white South Africans do (Lam 1999). "Inequality makes people unable to progress," remarked a young participant. "As black people, even if we try and start things we cannot succeed because we don't have the networks or sources of funding" (77(y)). Increasing nepotism and other forms of corruption make finding access even more difficult. While participants noted that nepotism affects all spheres of society, they focused on the private sector with regard to locating jobs. "You can go and submit your CV at a company if you are with somebody who knows people there," said a Khulumani member, adding, "Before, while we were still working, you could just carry your bag and go search for a job. Now jobs are accessed through somebody. Children submit CVs but they do not get them" (26). A young participant said, "Owners of companies are not giving us a chance because when there is a vacancy they speak to one employee and that employee will go look for cousins and friends" (46(y)).

The interviews also indicate that living on the periphery of Cape Town limits participants' access to information about employment opportunities. "Things don't come to us," said a participant, "they end up with the people who have information. Sometimes we are sitting here in the township, we don't have the information about upcoming jobs" (69(m)). Lack of access to job posts is linked to the limited number of facilities where participants can use the internet, look at job boards and find other resources designed for job-seekers. In addition, participants noted that their freedom to take transport to the centre of Cape Town to access such resources or to look for work directly from employers is curbed by having little to no income to spare for transport, particularly as this would commonly require far more than just one trip. Discussing the experience of a young person in her neighbourhood, one participant observed, "He feels uneasy asking his parents why they do not work, he can see there are no jobs, they cannot go out and search because there is no money, there is money for bread only maybe. Where is he going to get transport money to go search for a job so that he can help them?" (40(m)).

The majority of participants reported that when they do hear about job opportunities, they submit application after application without receiving a response. Many attributed this to racialised inequality in the private sector. They noted the prevalence of white South Africans among business owners and managers, arguing that since "we are employed by them" and "it is they who have businesses" (16), "you hardly see a black manager or one working for a big business. They are always employees. You hardly see a black person hiring a white person" (64(y)). Participants observed that white bosses prefer to hire white employees. "White people are in power here," said a Khulumani member. "Apartheid still exists and it is the reason they will take the white child even if the black child is at a higher level" (43). "What I have seen here in Cape Town," said a young woman, "is that it's white people who are working" (58(y)). Some asserted that white employers also prefer to hire coloured over black applicants, referring to the controversial claim that the Western Cape's coloured population benefits from the legacies of the apartheid-era _Coloured Labour_ Preference Act.x A young participant narrated her experience thus:

When you get to these offices you bump into coloureds and white people. A person will smile and talk to you nicely, say that they will call you. You will never receive that call. I do not know if it was a black person if they would do the same thing white people are doing to us and treating us the way they do, because you end up not being called. Many places are run by white people and coloured people. (46(y))

Several older participants noted that, in their experience, this type of discrimination worsens with age: "No company wants to employ you by the age of 45, as though you are old" (42).

Participants furthermore reported that when they are hired for a job, they often encounter discriminatory and exploitative business practices. "Race is still a factor," said a Khulumani member.

It is possible for a white person to get hired, even though they don't know the job. You, the black person, knows this job, the white person although they do not know the job will be your manager and earn more than you. You are training them in this job, they direct you to do the job they don't know themselves, that is a common occurrence. Even in the company I used to work for, that was happening. (16)

Several noted that they have been given lower wages than their colleagues because of race and asserted that they had seen white and coloured employees promoted over black colleagues (16, 17, 21, 46(y), 58(y)). According to a Khulumani member, "We are starving because a white person is not on the same level as me. Even when it comes to money, even when I have a job at the same place as a white person, they will have more money than me" (21). "They will first employ the white person then the coloured person and you [a black person] will be last, even though you are equally educated," said another member. "Once they employ you and realise that the black person is outperforming the white or coloured person, they will not promote you to the same level as the white or coloured person, you will be on a lower level" (17). A young participant agreed: "The job is the same, the qualifications are the same, but we are not equal. That's what I do not understand, that our things are the same but we are not equal. We wear the same gowns, we have the same diploma if it's a diploma, but we are not equal" (46(y)). Another noted that this dynamic has a disproportionate impact on black South African women: "When it comes to salaries, it is proven that a woman earns less than a man, and that is not right" (78(y)). Racialised inequality manifests not only in hiring practices, career progression and salary levels, participants said, but also in job security and performance appraisals. As a young woman put it,

There is a lot of apartheid here in the workplace. Nothing has changed. For example, if you are working somewhere and you are employed with a white person, when they retrench you they do not retrench the white person.... And if you have done something at work you will be in trouble and the white person is not going to be in trouble. (58(y))

Confirming research on employment trends in South Africa (Bhorat and van der Westhuizen 2013), participants also discussed the rise of temporary employment that accompanied post-apartheid economic liberalisation. They particularly focused on employers increasingly using labour brokers and recruitment and employment agencies to access workers. Interviewees noted that formal employment usually means working through agents who claim a portion of their salary, hire them on short-term contracts and as often as not do not renew those contracts. One participant pointed out, "Jobs are now controlled by agencies. They are the ones that take jobs to people. The same agencies take a cut of the money from your salary for placing you in a job. They take money from the same income you are supposed to use to deal with your problems at home" (G1). "I could not realise my dreams because of how we live," observed another. "You work for six months through an agent and then you are told there is no more work" (60(y)). It is this aspect of the post-apartheid economy that prompted a participant to ask, as we mentioned in Chapter 1, "Where is the living in that?" (G1). A few participants suggested that businesses use agents to avoid providing job security and to weed out hires who might question their labour practices. "It is companies employing cheap labourers," said a Khulumani member. Referring to migrants from abroad—a topic we discuss below—he added, "The foreigners you see filling jobs, because it is said they are cheap labour, they do not strike, they accept what they are given" (12). Linking this narrative to racial inequality, another noted that employees found through agents "accept whatever the white person says" (43). While temporary employment services have opened doors to jobs and South African labour law provides some protection to employees, participants said that these jobs do not amount to decent or reliable work and in fact tend to exacerbate the precarity of their situation.

Importantly, the participants quoted here largely talked about low-skilled work. They observed, however, that even low-skilled jobs require applicants to have work experience, references from previous employers, and specific skills. The requirement of work experience is particularly difficult for young participants, who do not have social networks that provide them with the part-time after-school jobs or entry-level positions often available to their white peers (35(m), 37(y), 41(m), 42, 51(y), 53, 58(y), 61(y)). "When you look for a job, they say they want people with experience," remarked a young woman. "Where are you supposed to get it, coming from school?" (61(y)). An older woman agreed: "A child fresh from school is asked to have two years of experience. Maybe you have never worked as a domestic worker before, but you get asked for a reference. You don't get accepted without a reference" (35(m)). This requirement is especially challenging for young women who leave school with a child to care for and support. Older participants who have work experience, meanwhile, face the challenge of employers demanding not only good references but also recent ones. This is difficult to provide for participants who have not worked for a number of years, for example because they were caring for grandchildren or sick relatives. A Khulumani member read this as racialised inequality in the context of post-apartheid employment trends: "These days the white people are indifferent. If your reference is from way back, you don't get the job. I worked in Blaauwberg for 20 years and my employers left. When you advertise for a job, they ask you for a recent reference. All that is in line with apartheid and because you are a black person" (G1).

Many participants questioned where they could acquire the skills required by today's employers. Several noted that while primary and secondary schools provide a general education, they do not provide the kinds of skills that interest employers (10(m), 45, 47, 50(m), 54, 69(m), 75(y), 77(y), G1, G2). "Even if they have matric certificates," remarked a Khulumani member, "our children do not get jobs as there are no skills provided" (54). Another observed that while people with work experience usually "learn skills from jobs," young people facing today's unemployment rates "are not getting jobs. There are no places that train them so they can have skills. Our children don't have the skills to work" (47). Several Khulumani members asserted that under apartheid, employers would provide basic skills training in the workplace or at facilities close to townships, in addition to meals and free transport to work in some cases (8, 12, 25, 34, 47). Describing a training programme she participated in as a young woman, one member said, "Once you finished your training there you would get a job. I got my first job through that place. I worked at a restaurant. I got a certificate after training there. I am not saying these are worse times, but they could look back at some of the things that were done [in the past] and bring them back. I am not talking about passbooks, but things that will help people, like training" (47).

Most participants discussed the dire need for trainings to "improve the skills of those who can't afford to go to university or college after school, after matric, to have skills that are sustainable, that help them develop" (50(m)). They noted, however, the lack of training centres and information on training opportunities in the township, as well as the difficulty of enrolling in training programmes in other areas and paying the transport costs to get there over time. "We have a brain," said a young man, "but we have one problem, which is how to acquire skills. You need money to acquire skills" (75(y)). "People don't have money to pay for training," said a Khulumani member (47). According to another participant,

There has been change since 1994.... There were opportunities created, such as that you can also start your own business, do what you like. What is difficult now in this regard is that funds are not easily obtainable. You will have a passion for what you want to do, like maybe opening a hair salon, but you will not have knowledge about things like a business plan. Instead of you getting money, they will say, "Where will you get money?" They will first say, "Draw up a business plan," and you will not know how. What you know is what you want to do. Yes, there has been change, but there are no centres where skills are trained. (69(m))

A significant message in the interviews to highlight here is the participants' desire for decent work—to earn a livelihood and have a chance at a productive life through secure employment. In most participants' view, the only way to begin to access that type of employment is by acquiring an education. A young man effectively summarised the main themes of this section in pointing out the importance of education:

I think the reason for increasing poverty is that in the past our grandmothers were able to plant the fields, plant pumpkins so that when there was hunger they could go reap the harvest. These days we live in townships where there is no space for planting. There is only one thing you can do, which is to go look for a job—the same job that is not available or is scarce, that is for educated people. You cannot find a job if you are uneducated. (71(y))

Yet, the barriers to education in Khulumani families are as structural and profound as those to employment.

###  Restricted Access to Education

After unemployment, the interviews identify restricted access to education as the most significant socioeconomic driver of violence, precisely because it has a negative effect on people's ability to access employment and other life opportunities. They show that the direct and indirect costs of primary, secondary and especially tertiary education often prove prohibitive for Khulumani families. High costs, combined with factors such as household dynamics, social pressures and substance dependence—all aggravated by racialised inequality and marginalisation—push young people towards dropping out of school. Participants nonetheless continue to strive for education in their families, even as what they perceive as the low likelihood of securing employment makes them question the value of their efforts.

The Khulumani members we interviewed did not reach tertiary education, with the majority having ended their formal education during secondary or even primary school. The younger participants had varying levels of education. Some were in secondary school, but many had dropped out. While a few intended to return to school and try for a National Senior Certificate (commonly referred to as a matriculation (matric) certificate), the majority planned to be in the work force and acquire skills informally or, if they could afford it, through short-term trainings or courses. A few young participants were enrolled in a university, technikon or vocational college, and some had been forced to take a break or drop out after a few terms. The young participants' experiences reflect those of many black South Africans today. On average about 50 percent of South African youth drop out of school before reaching matric, usually in grades 10 and 11, and 2011 figures indicate that of those who make it to the matric exam, only 44 percent of black youth between ages 23 and 24 attain the certificate, compared to 88 percent of their white compatriots (Spaull 2015). Looking at tertiary education, research shows that the number of black graduates has increased 16-fold since the 1980s and that in 2012 the higher education system produced 1.8 black graduates for each white graduate, compared to 7.9 white graduates for each black graduate in 1986 (van Broekhuizen 2016). Nonetheless, black students at the tertiary level, especially those in universities, face far greater obstacles in terms of enrolling in and completing degrees and diplomas than students in other race groups, particularly those who do not achieve high matric results to begin with (van Broekhuizen, van der Berg and Hofmeyr 2016).

Participants in both the older and the younger generation discussed the many challenges they have experienced with regard to education as residents of Khayelitsha. Several began by echoing the young man quoted above and commenting that life opportunities are generally only available to highly educated people in the new South Africa (8, 9, 10(m), 11, 22(m), 30, 57(y)). Some highlighted this as one of the major differences between the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. Noting that "the money was little but you were able to get what you need" under apartheid, a Khulumani member continued, "Nowadays there is a lot of money for those who work, but they do not get equal opportunities, they get opportunities according to their education. Us poor people who do not have anything, we do not get opportunities because we are not educated" (8). Participants observed that, due to racialised inequality, white South Africans have easier access to all levels of education than black South Africans, particularly to high-quality primary and secondary education which sets the foundations for entry to and success in higher education. "I hear people saying black people can also go to school like white people," commented a young participant, "but they can never reach the same quality of education as white people" (66(y)). Another noted, "The difference now is that we don't live in the apartheid era, but we don't see any difference. They sold us the image that we are free, but we are not. They sold us the idea that we can go to white schools. Even there, our parents have to pay" (G1). Race-based inequality is compounded by post-apartheid shifts in education policy and the introduction of school governing bodies that allow significant differences in the cost of public schools (Masondo 2012). "You find that education has a higher price," reflected a 33-year-old participant, "where they say that the more money you have the better quality education you can get. If you don't have money you cannot be educated. For me this is very unfair and is giving rise to this dragon we call inequality, poverty and violence, which is turning South Africa into something ugly" (50(m)).

Leaving aside the quality of education, participants stressed that even though free basic education is now guaranteed to South Africans, it is not truly free (see Arendse 2011). As one participant pointed out, "all the basics of education require money we don't have" (75(y)). While Khayelitsha has public schools that do not charge fees, participants noted that schooling comes with a range of other expenses, including for uniforms, books and stationery, and for transport and extras such as computer time for older learners. Older participants in particular identified meeting these costs as a challenge (7(m), 8, 35(m), 46(y), 49, 53, 54, 63(m), 69(m), G1). Participants also noted that children who cannot afford uniforms and school materials, or to replace them when they are worn, face not only ridicule from other learners but also discrimination from staff, which can affect their confidence and school performance (44(m), 46(y), 57(y), 68(y), 69(m)). For a household relying on social grants for a regular income, these costs can be prohibitive, particularly during moments of crisis, as when a family member requires medical care or a funeral must be arranged. Participants discussed the struggles they face to keep children in school, even while acknowledging that a matric in the vast majority of cases does not open up employment and other opportunities for children (5, 11, 26, 36, 38(y), 42, 43, 46(y), 50, 51(y), 53, 60(y), 69(m)). One Khulumani member remarked, "We see bad things where our children do not have jobs with their educational qualifications, so what is the point of educational qualifications? You spend your pension money educating him, unfortunately you are educating him to smoke tik [methamphetamine], drink alcohol, do housebreaking and all those things" (36). In the same vein, a young participant argued that "having matric is the same as not having any education" (60(y)). These participants recognise that few doors are opened without tertiary education in democratic South Africa.

Yet the obstacles to securing a diploma or degree from a tertiary institution are formidable. Participants noted that many households cannot afford application and registration costs, let alone the annual tuition charged by these institutions (G1). They also pointed to the additional costs associated with tertiary education, such as for study materials, computer time and transport (46(y), 48(y), 67(y)). Households may get into debt to cover such costs (67(y)), which are inflated for students from Khayelitsha because there are no tertiary institutions in the township (39(y), 75(y), 77(y), 78(y), G2). They have to pay for regular transport to and from campus—coping with obstacles such as muggings and strikes—in order to attend classes and access the facilities they need for their studies. As one young participant enrolled in a technikon noted, "On campus we have good facilities like a library and a support group. We work together. When I get to the township I struggle to get all those things I am able to access when I am in town except if I go to the library. Even there I don't get the assistance I need. For example, when I need help with a task and ask the librarian they would tell me that they don't know" (G2).

Participants acknowledged that bursaries and scholarships are available, but argued that there are not enough of them to cover all matriculants and their costs. In addition, bursaries are often reserved for 'promising' students who receive excellent marks and matric results, which marginalises the many who struggle through school both financially and otherwise (2, 3, 7(m), 8, 9, 34, 35(m), 37(y), 45, 47, 48(y), 49, 51(y), 56(y), 60(y), 62(m), 78(y), G1). Another complicating factor is that, if granted, bursaries may end after a year or two, often because a student fails a subject or does not receive adequate marks (8, 37(y), 53, 67(y)). This situation can seem worse than never having had a bursary in the first place. "That destroys the child," said a Khulumani member, "as they cannot see the solution and turn to drugs to try and erase what is bothering them" (G1). Some participants argued that students from township areas are discriminated against precisely because they face such severe challenges in accessing tertiary education, with one noting, "Your child, as someone who does not have any money, will not be accepted [for a bursary]" (35(m)).

A number of participants view the issue to be racial inequality and discrimination by institutions dominated by white management. A participant whose child was rejected for a bursary stated that "they did not provide reasons—it was for being a black person" (7(m)). A young participant noted that for a black youth to be granted access to tertiary education, he or she has to be deemed exceptional by white South Africans. While "whites get money from their families" or are given a spot despite indifferent marks because their families have social connections at a tertiary institution, for black students "it depends on how brilliant you are. They give you that support when they see that you have a bright future. They decide for you according to how you do things. White people decide for black people" (66(y)). Another discussed internalising this requirement, asserting, "You should not study and just be average. You should push more and more" (77(y)). Several young participants talked about racism they experienced during their studies, ranging from rejected applications for student accommodation to discrimination from lecturers. One disclosed, for example, that "the lecturer would walk out whether you understood or not. That is not their problem, especially if it is a white lecturer. The lecturer would use the most difficult language, the one used in companies. If the lecturer saw that the majority is black people, they would not attend class and not even communicate that the lecture was cancelled" (67(y)). Such experiences made studies that were already difficult even more so. These participants discussed the need for tertiary institutions to be established in Khayelitsha. Yet, given their experience of low-quality basic education and inadequate support facilities in the township, some also imagined that "the quality of education wouldn't be the same," noting that "we have that perception that when you are taught something by white people, it has more quality and is superior to everything else" (G2).

These interviews were conducted during the Fees Must Fall protests at tertiary institutions around the country, which, as mentioned in the Introduction, coupled calls for recognition of racial inequality and decolonisation in education with calls for abolition of fees for students who cannot afford them (Ngcaweni and Ngcaweni 2018). While no participants took part in the protests, several discussed their support for the movement (17, 51(y), 54, 67(y), 75(y), 76(y), 78(y)), with one Khulumani member saying that "people are violent, protesting and burning things," because "there is no real solution coming forth that gives them peace of mind" about how to access higher education (17). Since then, the government has announced that, beginning with a gradual roll-out in 2018, students whose household annual income is below 350,000 rand will be eligible for government bursaries that cover tuition fees, prescribed study materials, meals, and accommodation and travel allowances. This is good news and an acknowledgement of the centrality of education to social transformation in South Africa. There is a question, however, regarding how far it will go to address the structural inequality that constrains life opportunities for Khulumani families in Khayelitsha. In interviews with older and younger participants, discussion of plans to save money for tertiary education co-existed with doubts whether the sacrifices required would be worth it, given that black graduates are unlikely to find a decent job even with a degree or diploma. One young participant stated, for example, "most of the time you hear that people have matric, have degrees, but there are no jobs" (38(y)), while a Khulumani member noted, "I have a child who has a degree and she has not gotten a job" (43). Discussing young people, another member said, "Being educated is a loss for them because after graduating our children sit at home. They see that education does not help. They can go drink alcohol with their degrees, master's, because they do not have anything to do" (36). One participant linked these observations to racialised inequality: "The way I see it, jobs are scarce because we are oppressed. We can go to school and have degrees and still struggle to get a job, but a white person gets a job right after matric. It is difficult for us to get jobs even if you have a degree" (60(y)). Recent research to some extent confirms participants' doubts. While the unemployment rate for black graduates is far lower than that for other black South Africans, at 9 percent it is still three times higher than that for white graduates (van Broekhuizen 2016).

In this context, participants spent a significant amount of time talking about secondary school drop-outs, describing experiences in their own households and in their neighbourhoods. These discussions laid out a complex of economic and social factors that contribute to drop-outs which echoed the literature on the phenomenon in South Africa (Hartnack 2017). Several recounted that their families simply could not cover school costs, because a parent died or because a relative living outside Khayelitsha who had been paying the fees lost their job (16, 52(y), 67(y)). A more common explanation, however, was exactly that the costs of pursuing a matric certificate and then possibly several years of higher education appear too high given the low likelihood of success, especially in light of secondary factors that affect the decision (5, 26, 30, 36, 38(y), 42, 43, 50, 51(y), 53, 60(y), 69(m), 78(y)). A major secondary factor is pressure, within oneself or from family members, to contribute to the household income by doing informal and piecemeal work (44(m), 46(y), 57(y), 62(m), 64(y), 73(y), 72(m), 79(y), G1). This pressure comes from "wanting to support your family if they live in poverty," noted a young woman. "The person decides to help their parents. Then the person decides to drop out of school.... Your situation forces you to. You see that life is tough at home. You go to sleep without having anything to eat and decide to quit school and find something to eat at home" (64(y)). Most young participants indicated that they feel the responsibility to provide for older family members and siblings. Several discussed needing to care and provide for babies born to them while they were still in school. A young man stated, "We have to do things for old people, we have children who are dependent on us, do you understand? Their mothers are unemployed, our mothers have old age pensions, so we must assist them, things like that. Now if I must go sit at the desk [to study] the child will be hungry, will not have nappies and all that" (57(y)). Several young mothers, meanwhile, noted that they cannot rely on financial assistance from the fathers of their children and instead have to support themselves, with help from elders in their household (46(y), 51(y), 64(y), G2). "I cannot depend on my child's father working and supporting my child," said one young participant. "A person changes when he meets other girls, so I cannot rely on that. My child is dependent on me, the father assists me" (46(y)). Another commented, "When the child is born the guy is unable to support it, and we depend on our mothers even though they don't have much" (64(y)). In addition, some participants suggested that older family members may say that education is important but tacitly pressure young people to drop out to become providers. Describing relations between parents and youth in her neighbourhood, a young participant observed,

When you do something, they ask, "Where is this going to take you?" You abandon that and then they say, "You left what you were doing. What are you hoping will happen now?" You then go out looking for a job and then they say, "Oh! You left school and now you are after money." Then you become confused and wonder what you are supposed to do. You understand that they are saying those things because they feel how difficult things are and there is nothing in the house. (67(y))

Young participants discussed more than subsistence issues as factors in the decision to drop out. Some talked about envying young people in their neighbourhood who manage to earn enough money to contribute to household income and buy themselves new goods, especially clothing. One recalled, "Since we were growing up together in the same age group, you could see this one has made an effort. He wakes up in the morning to go to work, he is neat, wearing beautiful clothes, not expensive clothes. Such beautiful, neat clothes, not expensive clothes, can make an impression on you. So, yes, I did want to be like him" (44(m)). Not having the funds to dress well, in terms of both the school uniform and fashionable clothes outside of school, was a major motivator for participants who dropped out of school, as old or worn clothing exposed them to ostracism by their peers (25, 36, 46(y), 57(y), 64(y), 66(y)). As we examine in more detail in Chapter 3, several young participants reported that they began engaging in petty theft and robbery with friends, which proved a faster and easier way to access money than work, and soon dropped out of school (46(y), 63(y), 79(y)). Others noted that they and their friends began 'partying,' drinking and using drugs, which distracted them from their schoolwork and eventually led them to drop out (39(y), 44(m), 64(y), 77(y)). One participant pointed out that once you engage in crime or substance use, there is an enormous amount of pressure to remain in that lifestyle, with peers saying "you think you are superior" if you go a different way (46(y)). Another said that once a learner embarks on such activities, he or she is labelled a 'problem child' by school staff and older members of the household, who often end up marginalising that learner: "The child ends up saying why must I go to school if even at home they say I am a skollie [hooligan], so it is better to walk the path the people see me to be walking on" (69(m)). Participants indicated that this type of marginalisation also occurs to schoolgirls who are pulled into relationships with boys who have left school or, especially, with older men in the neighbourhood (42, 63(y), 73(y), 77(y), 78(y), 79(y), G1). If such a relationship results in pregnancy, humiliation at the hands of peers and staff in school further encourages dropping out (58(y), 61(y), 66(y), 73(y), G1). Finally, some participants talked about learners' inability to focus on their studies because they did not have enough to eat at home and because of stress related to "thinking of what is happening at home—the situation of poverty" (73(y)). This observation also applied to young people who have been subjected to violence. Highlighting the effect of violence on girl learners, a participant said, "She is going to be afraid of any man coming her way, she is always fearful, her mind is not functioning well. Even at school she cannot focus, she always thinks about the incident because the offender is in the community" (57(y)). Such a combination of lack of focus, poor marks and marginalisation in school leads to decreasing attendance and eventually dropping out.

Many of these narratives suggest that young people may view dropping out of school as a temporary absence, which then turns into a long-term and often permanent situation. In fact, participants highlighted the difficulty of returning to school, no matter what the reason is for dropping out. Those who dropped out in order to work, and often also as a result of engaging in crime, reported a sense of disappointment, as the income they are able to garner is largely inadequate to improve their living conditions. These participants recalled school as a place to get away from the hunger and stress in their households and as better than sitting around without much to do in the township (37(y), 55(y), 64(y), 66(y)). Despite their regrets, many noted that other people now depend on the little income they are able to bring in (38(y), 43(m), 57(y), 64(y)). Several participants mentioned that drinking and drug use, specifically in terms of the effect on their ability to focus and commit to staying in class the entire day, have made returning to school doubly difficult. As one young woman said, "It is not easy to go back to school. Yes, we were served food and it was nice at school, but now I use drugs and I can't" (55(y)).

A number of participants appeared to have accepted that their schooling is over, suggesting that their mentality changed once they took on adult responsibilities, whether in terms of earning an income or caring for a child. According to one young woman, "The thought that you are supposed to go to school because you are still a child goes away. You now have the mind of an adult, because you have responsibilities to take care of—'I am now supposed to work and face this responsibility.' School ends up not having a place in your mind because you have chosen to be a parent and you are facing the responsibility of being a parent" (61(y)). As a Khulumani member put it, "We don't have any youth. Yes, we have the youth in terms of age. We don't have the youth because they are adults. They are young people who have kids and have their own problems" (42). Other participants, however, expressed hope that they would finish secondary school and attain a matric. While a few participants have enrolled in supplementary courses, the majority noted that they are attempting to save money for such courses but find that it tends to go towards paying for necessities. Some conveyed frustration at feeling locked into being drop-outs, and linked it to racial inequality. According to one participant, "White children are able to go to school and finish schooling, unlike the children here in the township" (69(m)). "Many white people don't have grade 12, but they can show you all their college's certificates," argued a young participant. "But when a black person drops out of school they don't go to college because they don't have money to enrol in college and end up getting into things that happen out there" (39(y)).

Participants indicated that part of the problem for drop-outs and other young people seeking an education is the dearth of facilities that can assist them in the township. "I think the support system in the township is not as good as the one you get in town," said a young participant, "When you get here you don't get anyone to assist you unless you get someone who did the same course as you. Some of the programmes that cater for us as youth in tertiary or secondary are not available here in the townships" (G2). This observation applies not only to education but also to many other aspects of life in the interviews.

###  Inadequate Social Facilities

As a number of quotes in this chapter have suggested, the lack and low quality of institutions, facilities, resources and services in Khayelitsha exacerbate restrictions on access to employment and education among residents. The participant narratives therefore identify the inadequacy of social facilities in the township as a third significant socioeconomic driver of violence. Social facilities may take the form of public services, such as libraries and art and cultural centres; social services, such as community halls, information technology (IT) access points, urban farming areas and local markets; and recreational services, such as parks and sports fields and facilities. They also include education services, such as early childhood development centres, schools and further education and tertiary institutions; health and emergency services, such as hospitals, health centres and clinics, police stations and fire stations; and civic services, such as civic centres, public event venues and municipal offices (CSIR 2015). The interviews point to several of these facilities and the services they can offer as priorities. Their lack, according to participants, undermines not only access to life opportunities but also efforts to engage in what participants deem productive and fulfilling pursuits on an everyday level. The negative effects of issues with each type of facility are compounded by issues with the others.

This problem is rooted in Khayelitsha's history. The township was not designed for the number of residents it now houses and the apartheid government did not invest in building adequate facilities for residents to begin with (Khayelitsha Commission 2014). Although it has increased since the democratic transition, the number of social facilities scattered across Khayelitsha is not enough to serve the local population, and factors such as the risk of crime, transport costs and poor maintenance impede the use of many that do exist. Residents of informal settlements have even less access to these facilities, which participants noted tend to be in formal areas. In addition, they highlighted that the facilities are generally of much lower quality than those in the economic centre and areas where the majority population is white—another manifestation of ongoing racialised inequality. "Why can't we take the types of facilities in town and make them available or accessible where we stay?" asked a young participant, adding, "Racial segregation will never end" (G2).

As we noted in the section on education, participants pointed out the small number of public facilities in Khayelitsha that enable residents to access computers and the internet and find information on job opportunities and other subjects. They discussed public libraries in the area, which are few and far between. "There is only one library, which is in Site C," observed one participant. "That library gives people free internet access for 45 minutes. You can do anything, I mean everything. You can download or apply, whatever you want to do. That library is at the far end of Site C. You have to walk to get there. When you get there you are sometimes told that computers are off or there is no internet" (G1). Echoing another participant's complaints about library staff and resources in Khayelitsha, mentioned in the previous section, a young woman stated, "In town you get different things than you get here in townships. I have studied here in the library. The way they treat us is different from the way we are treated in town. Even the environment is different from the one you would get in town" (G2). Some also discussed the lack of resource centres that can supplement library services, and the fact that a few centres have closed. One participant recalled that "there used to be resource centres where there would be two or three computers with free internet access. Youth would be monitored and be able to do that DTI [Department of Trade and Industry] stuff online. They would be able to check which companies are hiring. Some would be taught how to make a CV and use Microsoft Excel. I mean the basics" (G1).

Linked to this, a number of participants, particularly young ones, noted that there are few public, social and educational facilities where residents can access basic training in subjects such as computer and business skills, as well as vocational skills. They highlighted that such facilities are necessary to assist school drop-outs and young people who do not achieve high marks or matric results to find work. Discussing her desire to start a small business, a young woman noted, "There are no centres where skills are trained, where we can get some skills so that when you move forward to request funds you would have been trained on how things are done, so you know how to speak with people when you must apply for those funds" (69(m)). Beyond such basic training centres, which rarely provide free services in any case, participants highlighted the dearth of further education and training colleges and adult education centres that provide technical qualifications at the end of a course, not to mention institutions of higher education. "Why is there no further education here in Khayelitsha?" asked a young participant, "Why should we travel far to get education?" (78(y)). Finally, several participants noted the small number of subsidised and effectively no-fee early childhood development centres in the township, arguing that they are necessary not only to prepare children for school but also to give their caregivers, especially young mothers, the opportunity to go back to school or access a training programme. A 19-year-old participant with a young child discussed the need for more "free crèches for the young people with babies. They can bathe the baby and take the baby to crèche. The government can supply food and milk so the children can be fed and young mothers can go to school and learn" (64(y)).

A number of participants, particularly Khulumani members, emphasised the absence of social services relating to urban farming, which we touched on in the section on unemployment. The main issue is access to land and infrastructure for planting vegetable gardens, with Khulumani members noting, "we do want to do that but we have no land to plant on" (24), "there is too little space, you cannot plant things" (53), and "you need to irrigate using water but you must pay for water" (5). Another issue is the lack of support in terms of agricultural tools and materials. "I do not have working tools, do you understand?" said one member. "Now when I see things are about to happen [in the garden], I do not have tools. I must go buy gardening sprays because some insects eat the vegetables" (28). Another suggested, "It would be better if we could be provided with seeds, so that we can plant them," adding, "Me at my house, I have a small garden there, but I do not have fertilizers" (36). While some manage to grow food by their homes, they argued that facilities need to be set up to make this a viable way to make ends meet in the absence of other life opportunities. Another particular concern of Khulumani members was the lack of public and social facilities tailored to the elderly, ranging from halls for socialising and to elder care facilities. According to one member, senior citizens "should go to places where they can stretch, places like a gym. A senior citizen should go to the gym even if it is once a week as an elder. There should be places to exercise the knees. We see these things on television in other countries, but we don't have them here" (42). "There is no old age home here in [this area]," said another member, "and you just say 'shame' when you see a senior citizen" (5). This was echoed by a third participant: "We need facilities in the communities we live in. A good example is that there are old people who cannot do things for themselves, so old age facilities should be built" (22(m)).

Bridging older and young participants, a major theme in the narratives was the lack of public, social and recreational services in Khayelitsha to keep young people busy while promoting activities that build their social and life skills. Participants discussed the need for parks and playgrounds for young children, community centres that offer after-school care and activities, arts and cultural centres and programmes that focus on traditional dance and crafts, and quality sports fields and facilities not only for youth but also for other residents. "Children don't have places where they can play," said a young participant. "If young children had places to play soccer they would go and play there. If they had parks they would go and play there. Instead they are at shops asking for two rand so they can smoke [drugs] because they have nothing to do" (78(y)). Discussing township youth, a participant noted, "There is no place or something to keep them busy, something like a playing field for soccer.... There are no facilities to keep them occupied. They spend time with people because there is no work, there is nothing they can do. They are just roaming about" (58(y)). A Khulumani member agreed: "There are no sports fields, there should be fields where children can play soccer and children can learn discipline, then they would concentrate on that" (53). Another highlighted the absence of "halls for arts and culture. There should be things that support children even if they are not working so they are able to keep busy in the meantime while there is no money to study" (35(m)). Reflecting on her own experience, a young woman said, "Us girls tried to start playing soccer but we did not get support. We did not get playing grounds. We played on the road with cars passing by. This is why we end up going to parties because we do not get activities here in Site B and Khayelitsha.... A sports field, swimming pool—those who play football would be able to do so, many sports could be done on one field" (76(y)). The interviewees argued that without facilities to keep them occupied, young people are more likely to become involved in risky behaviour in their neighbourhood, lose interest in productive activities and be vulnerable to crime, violence and other harms in the township (35(m), 37(y), 40(m), 43, 47, 52(y), 56(y), 58(y), 64(y), 66(y), 69(m), 73(y), 76(y), 78(y), G2).

Participants acknowledged that the post-apartheid state has invested in a range of social facilities and services in the township. They emphasised, however, that these services are limited in number and poorly implemented. In the year we conducted the interviews, the City of Cape Town announced that Khayelitsha would be one of nine areas earmarked for investment through its Mayoral Urban Regeneration Programme ("Progress" 2015). Yet, this may not go far in addressing the main problem participants discussed, which is the gulf between the quality of services and social facilities in the township and in the economic centre and traditionally white areas. With regard to education, a young participant said, as noted in the previous section, "I hear people saying black people can also go to school like white people, but they can never reach the same quality of education as white people" (66(y)). With regard to health services, a Khulumani member asserted, "Hospitals in the township are not the same as hospitals in town. They are not the same at all. There is no care in our hospital, no care at all" (43). Speaking of emergency services and inadequate policing in the township, another member stated, "This does not happen in white areas. If a white person calls the police, the police van they will help immediately, but that is not the case with us. We are not safe" (28). The same applied to housing, with participants noting the deficiencies of government-subsidised houses. "There is no difference" between shacks and government subsidy houses, said a Khulumani member, "it is only that it is brick, where sometimes you find the bricks have cracks. You see that you are still in a shack although you are in a house" (9). "Once you get inside the house," said another, "it is 42 square metres. You have six children and you cannot do anything with it. That is one of the problems that makes us just like sardines, the lowest class" (G1).

Spatial apartheid and racialised inequality are apparent to the participants on a daily basis, demonstrating that while the political situation has changed, oppression is not a thing of the past. This awareness, participants suggested, emphasises the sense that they are stuck in their current socioeconomic situation and unlikely to see significant improvement. In the meantime, the continual stream of migrants into the township, they said, is swamping what services inadequate social facilities might be able to provide.

###  Urbanisation, Migration and Competition for Resources

Population growth in Khayelitsha, and in Cape Town more broadly, is framed as another major socioeconomic driver of violence in the interviews. Participants note that it is due to a combination of urbanisation by South Africans and immigration by nationals from other African countries, both of which have continued to increase since the democratic dispensation brought greater freedom of movement within the country and across its borders. Rising by 25 percent, the population of South Africa's metropolitan areas increased at more than twice the rate of that in rural and other areas between 2001 and 2011 (Turok and Borel-Saladin 2014). Much of this urban population growth has occurred in townships and informal settlements, which are "the first recipients of rural (and foreign) migrants in search of work" (Mahajan 2014: 8). Researchers estimate that migration will increase the number of households in major urban areas as much as 71 percent between 2011 and 2030, and that two-thirds of these will be low-income households (Simkins and Fonkam 2018). Validating these findings with regard to Khayelitsha, the interviews suggest that migration results in increased competition for jobs that are already scarce in Cape Town, with one participant declaring, "Jobs are few, people are many" (44(m)). They also imply that population growth is overtaxing the already limited facilities and resources in the township. Some narratives assert that "there is more violence because of the high population" (35(m)), and because of the perceived criminality of African non-nationals, which participants argue ends up deepening residents' socioeconomic marginalisation.

Participants conveyed mixed feelings about urbanisation. They noted that the continuing influx of South Africans from rural areas puts a strain on social facilities and increases competition for limited employment opportunities. Referencing the nepotism we discussed in Chapter 1, they argued that earlier waves of migrants who managed to secure a decent livelihood now choose to offer opportunities to family and friends from their hometown or village rather than to locals in the city. At the same time, they acknowledged the benefits of the link between rural and urban areas, particularly in the form of circular remittances, childcare by relatives and mutual support among people from the same home area (5, 6, 13, 17, 26, 31, 32(m), 33, 34, 36, 39(y), 42, 47, 53, 54, 64(y), 66(y), 69(m), 76(y), 77(y), 78(y), G1). The majority of the Khulumani members we interviewed themselves took part in urbanisation, moving from rural areas to Cape Town in search of economic opportunities and often to join family members who had migrated earlier. Some of the younger participants did the same, although most were born on the outskirts of the city. Maybe because they can understand the motivations behind urbanisation as migrants themselves, participants complained about the numbers of South African migrants but focused more on migrants from other African countries in the interviews.

With regard to non-nationals, the primary concern for participants was again rising competition for work and resources. "Everyone is coming to this country and we don't get the opportunities because of people from these countries crowding in here," observed one participant (35(m)). Asserting that "they take our jobs" (37(y)), most participants noted that African migrants are willing to work for low pay and to perform almost any task, which causes companies to exploit them for cheap labour, decreases the number of jobs available and puts downward pressure on wages (12, 16, 37(y), 43, 46(y), 55(y), 56(y), 57(y), 60(y), 61(y), 62(m)). "Many people do not want those people here," said a young participant, "they want them to leave because they are taking these jobs. Just a small example, you see in construction sites, in construction when you are a labourer your rate is something like 120 rand a day, but for them that 120 can cover two or three labourers" (57(y)). "Employers like them because they are easy to walk all over," commented a Khulumani member, "and this is what leads to us the citizens being hungry. We are removed from businesses because of people from other countries, because they accept whatever they are given, they do not join unions, they do not have meetings that the employer must do a, b, c or d, that the money is too little, it is supposed to be increased at a certain time. Foreigners do not do that" (16). Beyond this, however, participants observed that non-nationals often have higher levels of education than South Africans and that many are skilled in a trade (16, 35(m), 37(y), 44(m), 46(y), 56(y)). As we discuss further in Chapter 3, these capacities bring non-nationals success in economic activities, interviewees noted, which represents another form of competition to South African residents in the township.

In discussing non-nationals' skills, a number of participants referred to their perceived criminal savviness. Like many South Africans (Crush and Ramachandran 2010), they asserted that African migrants are skilled at bribing government officials to acquire residence documents and business permits as well as at engaging in identity theft, bank fraud and confidence scams (16, 37(y), 46(y), 57(y), 67(y), 69(m)). Echoing another participant's observation that many non-nationals "offer bribes" to get what they want (37(y)), a young woman asserted, "Corruption came with them, different kinds of drugs are manufactured by them, fake money is made by them, criminality is done by them" (46(y)). Another noted, "They commit fraud here, doing ID fraud, bank fraud and SMS-ing people that they have won 150,000 rand when you did not enter any competitions" (67(y)), while a third asserted that "there are many cases of people getting robbed at ATMs because there are fraud-related activities on the machines that take your money—those do not come from within, they come from outside" (69(m)). Through such activities, participants suggested, non-nationals access resources that are not rightfully theirs as well as deepen the socioeconomic marginalisation of township residents by stealing from them. Above all, participants identified non-nationals as the main source of illegal drugs in the township (8, 9, 13, 16, 36, 43, 46(y), 55(y), 56(y), 57(y), 58(y), 60(y), 62(m), 66(y), 67(y), 69(m)). Asked where township residents access drugs, a young participant responded, for example, "Most of the time they buy them from these people who are not from South Africa, these foreigners. It is them that are known all over for selling drugs. They sell a lot. They employ them sometimes to also sell so they can get money. It's foreigners mostly" (58(y)). Many asserted that the increased availability of drugs in post-apartheid South Africa has led to widespread substance dependence and upped the rate and intensity of violence in the township, which in turn has deepened socioeconomic marginalisation. Several participants placed responsibility for this on African non-nationals, noting that "these things are brought by them, because when they were not here we did not have all of this—our children are damaged" (8).

Participants made a range of assertions regarding African migrants in Khayelitsha that are built around stereotypes concerning different nationalities—Somali, Ethiopian, Zimbabwean, Nigerian, Congolese, and others. Chapter 3 engages further with perceptions of foreigners and the implications for violence in the township, but for now we note that participants view the influx of migrants, and especially of African non-nationals, as a socioeconomic driver of violence, in that their presence increases competition for opportunities while putting socioeconomic pressure on households through violent crime.

###  Alcohol and Illegal Drugs as Sources of Income

Drinking and drug use are major topics in the interviews, including specifically as socioeconomic drivers of violence. While we examine the reasons for and implications of widespread substance use in Khayelitsha in Chapter 3, here it is important to emphasise that, even as it is criticised, the sale of alcohol and even drugs is viewed with some understanding. Both older and younger participants' narratives describe it as a way for people to make ends meet in the context of high unemployment, and as a particular phenomenon of the post-apartheid period.

Confirming recent research (WCGDoCS 2017), participants noted that regulation of the sale of alcohol declined in the democratic period. They pointed out the proliferation of shebeens—unlicensed drinking spots usually attached to owners' homes—and the sale of both commercial and home-brewed alcoholic drinks at all hours and to patrons of all ages in formal and informal establishments in Khayelitsha. Many observed that the informal trade of alcohol is a reliable source of income, particularly for unemployed women in the township. Given the high levels of competition and the need for proceeds, the owners have little incentive to regulate their businesses when other establishments do not. One participant noted, "For some mothers this is their source of income, they start selling alcohol" (12(m)). A Khulumani member pointed out that "some owners are open until late because it is their source of income" and because they think, "'I do not have a job, I pay school fees for my children with this alcohol money, this is how I live, nobody works here, I can't stop doing this'" (16). A young participant echoed these observations: "It's been a long time that people have been complaining about shebeens and wanting them to close. That doesn't happen because people use them as the source of income. They are making means to fight poverty with these shebeens" (66(y)).

Similar comments were made with regard to illegal drugs. Again confirming research (UNODCCP 1999), participants noted that "during apartheid there were almost no drugs" (60(y)) and that the spike in controlled substances in townships, particularly of tik (methamphetamine), mandrax (methaqualone) and nyaope (a mix of low-grade heroin, cannabis, household chemicals and, in some cases, antiretroviral drugs), occurred in the context of the transition to democracy. This, as we noted in the previous section, they largely ascribed to the opening of borders to African non-nationals, although some argued that white "drug lords" are in fact behind the prevalence of illegal drugs in the country (8, 9, 13, 16, 36, 43, 46(y), 55(y), 56(y), 57(y), 58(y), 60(y), 62(m), 66(y), 67(y), 69(m)). As with the sale of alcohol, participants noted that they understand the motivations of drug dealers. One young participant pointed out, "It enables them to support their families.... It is their source of income, because maybe when they go to search for jobs they do not get them. So one decides instead of going to search for a job and failing to get it they would rather sell something they are sure to gain from. So that is why people decide to sell drugs" (73(y)). Discussing drug dealers, another similarly said, "Coming back to poverty, they are trying to survive so I don't blame them" (39(y)). This understanding extends only to the people who sell drugs in the township, not to the criminal networks that bring drugs into the country and employ neighbourhood drug dealers. Referring to such networks, a participant observed that they are the ones "employing the youth because the youth is unemployed, they are not getting anything, there are no jobs here in Cape Town" (58(y)).

One participant noted that "the boers destroyed everything that was bad" (60(y)), indicating that apartheid-era political and socioeconomic repression ended up limiting the availability and thereby use of alcohol and drugs. Interviewees argued that less draconian municipal regulations, legal measures and policing have resulted in an increase in the informal trade of alcohol, and that the opening of borders and adoption of free trade policies have led to an increase in the availability of illegal drugs. Given the limitations on life opportunities in the township, they said, residents are tempted to seek an income through the unregulated sale of these substances. They acknowledged the socioeconomic need behind this choice even as they discussed the negative impact of alcohol and drugs on life in the township.

###  Effects of Spatial Apartheid

This chapter has outlined the constraints on life opportunities that participants argue affect generations within Khulumani families and serve as the chief drivers of violence in Khayelitsha. The narratives focus primarily on unemployment, noting that the shift away from farming as a way of life has resulted in a reliance on wage labour, at the same time that lack of well-connected social networks, work experience and skills limits access to jobs in an increasingly precarious job market that continues to be marked by racial discrimination. While the job market calls for high levels of education and skills, the interviews indicate ways in which these are difficult to access. The direct and indirect costs of primary, secondary and especially tertiary education are often prohibitive, while the likelihood of securing employment even with an education is low, unless a student is deemed exceptional. This encourages dropping out of school, especially in combination with factors such as household dynamics, social pressures and substance dependence, which can turn temporary absences from school into permanent situations.

The participant narratives highlight the dearth of social facilities in the township that could address some of these obstacles to employment and education, including facilities that provide access to information, capacity-building trainings, urban farming opportunities and productive social and recreational activities. They also point to the low quality of the social facilities that do exist, in comparison to other areas of Cape Town. According to participants, urbanisation within South Africa and the influx of migrants from outside the country have placed pressure on social facilities in the township, in addition to increasing competition for limited employment and other opportunities and resources. This accumulation of constraints on life opportunities pushes numerous township residents into the illegal sale of alcohol and drugs as a source of income. The interviews demonstrate the extent to which each of these issues compounds the effects of the others.

This chapter has expanded on the discussion of transitional arrangements in Chapter 1 by showing the ways in which spatial apartheid continues to give rise to socioeconomic factors that limit opportunity and social transformation. In the next chapter, we explore participants' articulations of how these socioeconomic factors intersect and combine in various situations to enable acts of violence.
Chapter 3. From Drivers to Acts of Violence

The conditions we live in force you to be part of crime, whether you are doing it to buy food or to survive or to fit in. (70(y))

The participant narratives argue that the racialised inequality and spatial segregation of apartheid are entrenched by post-apartheid economic developments in such a way that they make access to life opportunities extremely difficult in Khayelitsha. In this chapter, we present interviewees' articulations of how the resulting socioeconomic marginalisation drives violence in the township. Participants suggest that lack of freedom and opportunity, which are thrown into relief by the privilege of other South Africans, create a sense of 'stuckness' and a set of pressures that enable crime and violence. Starting with having nothing to do and facing the simple fact of hunger, these pressures range from dynamics within the household and peer pressure in the neighbourhood to the consequences of widespread substance dependence, community-based crime control and xenophobia. The narratives indicate that these pressures represent pathways from the socioeconomic factors of unemployment, restricted education, inadequate social facilities, competition from migrants and a reliance on the sale of alcohol and illegal drugs to acts of violence. They suggest that each factor creates multiple pathways that intersect and enlarge each other until crime and violence appear as a nearly unavoidable outcome.

As we noted in the Introduction, Khayelitsha has among the highest rates of crime and violence in South Africa. Its murder rate, which is the most reliable statistic in terms of reported crime, is three to four times the national average (Edelstein 2014). Even with up to 40 percent of crime in the township going unreported and despite fluctuations between years, Khayelitsha over the past decade has had on average the highest number of murders, attempted murders, sexual offences, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and robbery with aggravating circumstances in the country (Khayelitsha Commission 2014). The participants discuss a wide range of violent crimes they have experienced, heard about or, in some cases, perpetrated in their neighbourhoods. These include murder, attempted murder, rape and other sexual offenses, and assault, which they note occur in contexts as varied as intimate partner relationships, domestic arrangements, child care, elderly care, youth gangs, schools, vigilantism and xenophobic attacks. They also include violent robberies, usually with weapons, especially housebreakings and street muggings. The perception is that "there is hourly burglary, there is robbery, there are killings" (44(m)), with the result that "we are like flies here, we are living in fear" (40(m)).

The narratives support research on the link between inequality and violence. They indicate that crime often seems like the only viable solution to the scarcity of sources of income in the township (CSVR 2009; Harris and Vermaak 2015). They suggest that not being able to improve one's economic situation or that of one's household—despite the political transition implying that it should be possible for everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps—gives rise to frustration, anger and a sense of insecurity, which encourage transgressive acts of violence against loved ones, acquaintances and strangers alike (Young 2003; Altbeker 2008; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). The narratives note that patriarchal attitudes combined with continual exposure to violence in the home and on neighbourhood streets normalise violence, entrenching it as a legitimate way to resolve conflict or assert social status, especially given a widespread ambivalence towards the criminal justice system and the use of violence in community-based crime control (CSVR 2007; Langa and Bowman 2017). They also highlight the tendency for violence to accompany crime (CSVR 2009). What the narratives do most, however, is demonstrate the complex relationships between the multiple and multifaceted socioeconomic factors outlined in Chapter 2 and violence. In order to understand violence in the township, participants argue, we have to take a big-picture view and acknowledge the multiplicity and cyclicality of its drivers, its effects and the interwoven pathways between them. We have to see the web of violence in the township as its residents see it (Hamby and Grych 2013; Bowman et al. 2015a).

Subsequent chapters look at the intergenerational implications of inequality and violence, and how apartheid survivors have responded to them. Here, we attempt to capture the full dimensions of the web of violence described in the narratives, starting with a quote that gives some indication of its intricacy:

When we talk about poverty, we are talking about many things. We are not only talking about being hungry in the stomach. You have schooling, but you can't access more education. You have a place to stay, but you do not get services like water, toilets. You vote every year when it is time to vote, you are promised things, they say you will get all those things, but at the end of the day nothing happens. So because of that, you find that the easiest way is to increase the crime rate, when you don't have something to go steal it from someone else, because you can't find a job. (69(m))

###  Nothing to Do

One of the participants' primary articulations of being trapped by the socioeconomic conditions in Khayelitsha is that people "have nothing to do" (3, 22(m), 28, 37(y), 39(y), 40(m), 43, 46(y), 51(y), 54, 57(y), 58(y), 60(y), 70(y), 71(y)). This expression encapsulates the lack of life opportunities in the township, primarily in terms of employment but also in terms of education, as well as the dearth of social facilities to occupy time in what participants see as productive ways. It also captures a feeling of being stuck on the margins, as the widespread lack of disposable income means that people cannot travel easily or frequently outside the township, especially to the distant centre of Cape Town. Furthermore, it captures a sense of being stuck in the neighbourhood, as transportation costs and the risk of crime constrain residents' movement within the township as well. Having nothing to do in these interviews implies not only a lack of activity but also a pervasive sense of there being little than _can_ be done about the whole situation.

One participant summed up the link between socioeconomic stagnation and violence with these words: "What has now increased in our townships is that you hear about a child being raped, a woman being raped and that there is a robbery taking place. Things happen in our townships because we are all doing nothing. We have nothing to do. The father, mother, brother and sister all are just sitting there, nobody does anything. So one ends up thinking about crime because of doing nothing" (22(m)). "The violence mostly happens in the townships we live in because the youth are mostly not working, they sit in the township," said another participant (35(m)), while a young woman noted, "People are just sitting, they are not employed, people are not schooling" (48(y)). A participant in his mid-20s who dropped out of school recalled the warnings of a teacher:

" _Jobs will be scarce if you are uneducated, you will never work. You will not work because you are not educated. What is going to happen is that you will stay in the township moving right around the house to get shade. You will sit in the shade or in the sun. As the day progresses you will move to another corner to get the sun. You will change spots the whole day until the sun sets, you go to sleep, you wake up again the morning, you do the same story, what you did yesterday." This teacher was telling us about this every day. This is now happening. So it is from us not listening. Not listening has consequences. I face the circumstances of something I was aware of. If I drop out of school I will face these problems. Here I am, I am facing them. (44(m))_

This narrative captures an understanding that lack of opportunity impedes personal development, a sense of being trapped in place and, through references to 'us,' the commonness and commonality of that experience across time, previously for the teacher and now for the participant and his peers.

Reflecting on her own history, a young participant noted, "I completed my grade 12. The reason I am not studying is that I don't have money to go to school. We are struggling at home and depend on my mother and we are eight children. She does not have money. We rely on the social grant together with her grandchildren. I got into crime because I did not have anything to do and could not find a job. I met a friend who got me into drugs, dagga [cannabis]. We ended up going around and one of our friends got shot" (37(y)). The interviewee explicitly linked lack of opportunities and her involvement in crime and violence, while suggesting that her social circle and illegal drugs were the pathways that led her from one to the other. In so doing, she joined other participants in indicating that pathways to violence are interwoven, contributing to and thereby perpetuating each other.

###  Hunger

According to participants, one route to violence is the simple fact of hunger—the moment of physical hunger as well as chronic food insecurity with its continual threat of hunger (5, 8, 9, 21, 30, 31, 34, 36, 46(y), 54, 55(y), 57(y), 61(y), 69(m)). A 2013 report indicates that hunger in South Africa is racialised. Of black participants, 30.3 percent reported that they had experienced hunger, as opposed to 1.3 percent of white participants. The same report notes that 32.4 percent of participants residing in informal urban settlements reported experiencing hunger, compared to 19 percent of those residing in formal urban areas (Shisana et al. 2013). Describing the situation among his peers in Khayelitsha, a young participant said, "The people are hungry in the townships. Do you understand? It is not naughtiness, it is hunger" (57(y)). A Khulumani member noted, "You cannot live honestly when you are hungry. You do things for your family. Hunger is dangerous. You do something you were not supposed to do because of hunger" (36). Another member put it even more starkly: "If you could eat a person we would probably eat people sometimes because of poverty" (21).

Linking unemployment and violence via hunger, a young participant argued, "I think if there could be jobs and people are able to work that would be better. That is why there is this crime, violence: people are not doing anything, and they are hungry" (46(y)). A Khulumani member echoed this observation:

The youth, the way they see things, when the family is poor, they will go to school hungry and come home to find that there is still no food. That traumatises the young person and they then see that going to school is a waste of time. They will try to look for a job. And jobs are scarce. And the young person will see that the shortcut to changing things is to rob people. It is not their intention to rob people, but the situation is driving them to take a shortcut. They think that they are trying to escape poverty, but they are getting themselves into extreme violence in the community. (G1)

Discussing his own experience, a participant recalled, "When you are starting this journey you see it as a solution to hunger, because most of the time you hear that people have matric, have degrees, but there are no jobs. So you see the solution is burglary or robbing." He also noted that "payment from work takes a long time, but money from crime comes quickly.... Sometimes it's little money and you just say no, you cannot work for 1,000 [rand] when you can make 1,000 in hours" (38(y)). Hunger in the household calls for a quick solution, and the piecemeal and inconsistent work the participant refers to does not provide sufficient funds to alleviate hunger consistently, day after day, week after week.

Another young participant pointed out, "Initially it was just for them to have something to eat before going to bed. Now this habit goes through their mind and they get used to it and become a major criminal" (61(y)). She indicates that the initial spur of hunger combines with other pathways to lead people deeper into crime and violence. Describing the high rates of violence in the township, a third young participant asserted that it "will never come to an end as long as people are still hungry" (66(y)).

###  Household Pressures

The threat and reality of hunger have an impact on household dynamics, according to participants, which often generates the conditions for violence within and then outside the home. Discussing this route to violence, one young participant stated, "When there is poverty there is no peace. It is not nice when there is no money, no jobs or food at home. Everyone is pulling in different directions. When you ask about that the other person gets angry" (60(y)). A Khulumani member agreed: "It's hunger that creates violence in your home. If there is no hunger, there aren't problems" (13). The participant narratives indicate that chronic hunger, combined with the lack of opportunities to put an end to it, pushes all household members towards violence and affects intimate partners, children, siblings and elderly family members alike. They highlight that patriarchal attitudes foster physical and other forms of violence against women in the home, which serves to normalise violence for children, many of whom end up using it against household members as they grow. The interviews suggest that economic pressures in the household encourage young people to engage in crime outside the home, while the normalisation of violence in childhood contributes to the tendency for crime to be violent. Even if domestic violence is not a factor, young people may engage in crime to help their families financially or to establish their independence, often because their parents and grandparents tacitly encourage them to contribute to the household income in any way they can.

Starting with domestic violence, participants argued that girls and women are disproportionately affected, with Khulumani members particularly focusing on the issue of violence against women in the household (12, 13, 21, 25, 36, 42, 47, 54, 60(y), 62(m), 71(y), 76(y), G1, G2). As one member noted, "Women are abused sometimes by the children, mothers are abused by fathers" (54). In line with findings that South African women face among the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the world (Abrahams et al. 2009), participants told many stories of such violence occurring in their neighbourhoods and in their households (25, 50(m), 54, 69(m), 71(y), 76(y), G1, G2). Several discussed being raised with patriarchal attitudes in the home, noting that "we grew up in a culture where a boy is superior, a boy is superior to a girl" (77(y)), and that "as a woman you are supposed to respect men" (69(m)). They indicated that these attitudes may encourage men to use violence to exert power over their intimate partners, especially in the context of conflict, and pressure women to accept such violence. "Sometimes you find wives being submissive to their husbands," said one participant. "As a result they take these violent acts either in the household itself or outside and think, 'No, I have to be submissive to my husband because I have to do it, I am trained to be the wife that is submissive'" (50(m)). The discussions also touched on the fact that intimate partner violence often includes financial and emotional abuse, with a participant observing, "She is dependent on him in terms of money or whatever, he is able to do anything to her without getting permission from her, like there are instances where you find that you are abused by a man emotionally" (69(m)). The likelihood of this form of domestic violence only increases when the financial situation of a household is dire, participants observed. "The home environment is not pleasant when a man is not working," said a Khulumani member, "there is no peace at home" (47).

Participants also talked about children being subjected to violence by members of their household, including sexual violence, echoing findings that South African children face among the highest levels of domestic violence globally (Jamieson, Mathews and Röhrs 2018). Instead of delving into reasons for violence against children, participants largely chose to foreground the insight that exposure to intimate partner violence desensitises children and makes them more likely to perpetrate violence themselves as they grow up. "Parents drink and shout at each other right in front of them while they are still young to be exposed to that. They shout at each other and fight, throwing bottles at each other at home and in front of the kids. Some children grow up used to that," reflected one interviewee (66(y)). Another pointed out that patriarchal attitudes and witnessing intimate partner violence influence children, especially girls, in the long term: "They see how mom is being treated by daddy and they feel that this is how girls should be, submissive to boys. This also has a lot to do with how a black woman is trained to be at home, submissive to the husband" (50(m)). Participants furthermore observed that as children grow, especially boys, many begin to subject older household members to violence, to the extent that parents and grandparents "find it difficult to confront the child because he is violent" (9). If "the child sees you as the one making things difficult for him, he can even kill you," noted a Khulumani member (16). Touching on an under-researched area, which nonetheless suggests high rates of violence (Kotzé 2018), a number of Khulumani members highlighted the prevalence of elder abuse in the township, discussing the vulnerability of recipients of older persons grants to theft and violence, particularly from young people in their home. A young participant confirmed that in many of these cases "when the elder asks the child about the money the child beats them" (64(y)).

Household dynamics emerging from lack of opportunity—even if they do not include domestic violence—push young people towards violence outside the home, participants suggested. Echoing the narratives in the section above on hunger, one participant argued, "All of this is caused by being unemployed. This causes violence, because in homes parents are struggling, they do not work. You will find most of them are sitting at home with children and grandchildren. Now the child sees this situation as a shame and decides it's better to go and rob and eat [at home]. You will see another one buying a certain item for himself or bread with money from outside" (40(m)). In Chapter 2, we noted that young people feel compelled to drop out of school to help with household expenses. The quote here indicates that some young people turn to crime in order to contribute to the household income, or at least to avoid being a drain on it (56(y), 69(m), 79(y), G2). One participant, a young man, confirmed this and linked it to patriarchal beliefs, specifically concerning men's responsibility to provide for family members: "This issue affects us guys a lot because we don't have patience. In life we can't manage watching our family suffer, we just find a way to get quick money" (79(y)). Referring to township residents more generally, a young woman observed, "A person does not have money and then decides to rob. There are people who come from poor families who tell themselves that I come from this poor family but the situation in the home will be changed by me" (46(y)).

Youth may put pressure on themselves in this regard, or the pressure may be tacitly or explicitly applied by parents or other elders in the home. One young participant, a woman, shared the following experience:

People do things they don't want to do so they don't go to bed with an empty stomach or to make their parents happy. Parents put pressure on you and say, "You don't work. You quit school. You have many children in the house. I have to feed your children, clothe them and also clothe you." So some people think if that is what my mother says let me go out there. When the person gets there they start robbing people.... They don't ask where you get the money from because you are not working and within a week you bring 2,000 rand home. The mother won't ask you anything. She will take the money and fix problems in the house. (67(y))

In this sense, crime can be a means of assisting the household, but also of avoiding the pressures of home and establishing independence from one's family. Speaking from the perspective of an elder, a Khulumani member described a similar dynamic in terms of a parent's self-delusion: "A child goes out and commits robberies and comes back home to say, 'Mommy, here is food.' The parent will think the child is coming from work, but the child came from robbing someone. The parent encourages the child to do that and put something on the table. The parent knows that the child is up to mischief" (43).

Participants also noted that older people may implicitly condone violence by hiding the crimes of young people in their households (9, 16, 35(m), 40(m), 43, 55(y), 61(y), 67(y), 77(y), G1). "Our parents are involved in crime too," said a young participant, "because they defend us and say, 'No, my child slept here,' when I did not sleep at home" (55(y)). A Khulumani member pointed out, "Mothers hide anything that has to do with violence. As a result, they end up being victims. She will wait until it's beyond control. She will take action only when there is no solution for it" (G1). These narratives touch on themes of family obligation and loyalty. They also indicate that in people's minds necessity often outweighs the risks of engaging in crime and violence, which quietly become a legitimate means of ensuring a household's survival.

###  Youth and Social Status

After acknowledging household dynamics, many interviews identify youth violence as the most problematic form of violence in the township (6, 9, 13, 31, 36, 37(y), 50(m), 60(y), 67(y), 73(y), 77(y), G2). Older participants note that children and young people are exposed to crime and violence by spending most of their time out on neighbourhood streets. As a result of limited employment and educational opportunities, dropping out of school or the lack of social facilities and other options for engaging in activities deemed productive, they say, youth have little else to do. As argued above (CSVR 2009), the interviews suggest that this exposure contributes to the normalisation of violence as a means of assuaging hunger, accessing income, resolving conflict or asserting social status and dominance to secure respect. Young participants focus on the ways a desire for belonging and a sense of solidarity in friendship groups encourages participation in violence, combined with coercion through peer pressure. As in the section above, patriarchal attitudes are highlighted as a contributing factor, as is the perceived need to assert masculinity through violence—although the interviews make clear that young women also participate in violence. Some highlight the (self-)destructive and transgressive impulses behind violence, while others emphasise the value in young people protecting their neighbourhoods against criminal incursions from other areas. The two views appear to co-exist in tension with each other in the participant narratives.

Most of the participants discussed 'gangsterism' as a contributing factor in youth violence, referring primarily to informal gangs that mark specific neighbourhoods as their territory. These youth gangs tend to be separate from organised crime networks, although participants noted that some young people align themselves with, work for and eventually join formal gangs. To protect their turf, informal gangs engage in violence and revenge attacks against rival gang members and sometimes rivals' friends and family, often using stones, sticks, pangas and knives, and sometimes handguns. This occurs mostly in township streets, but also finds its way into schools. Members may rob passers-by and break into houses or commit another crime in other neighbourhoods, while to some extent preventing rivals from entering their neighbourhood. Participants noted that some members use traditional herbs to boost their courage and protect themselves from violence and accountability. Alcohol and drug use is a common feature as well, with some members selling drugs as part of the lowest level of an organised crime network (Sefali 2014a; Pinnock 2016). Participants also pointed out that there is a "subculture of gangsterism" (77(y)) in the township, which influences everything from the desirability of certain goods, to lifestyle choices and ways of socialising, to valorisation of violence among young people. While gangsterism came up frequently in the interviews, participants discussed youth violence both within and outside the frame of informal and formal gangs, as something that involves and affects young people no matter what their choices.

Khulumani members observed that adolescents, and increasingly preadolescents, with nothing to do but "stand on the street corners" (36) end up being drawn into violence. According to one member, "We bring our children up with the hope of taking them to important places. Children disappoint their parents and go in the other direction, they do not take the line chosen by the parents, they go outside and get other teachers from outside" (6). Another noted that these lessons are passed down from generation to generation of young people:

When one group grows up you think the robbing will end. To your surprise the younger ones have also been taught this habit. That group passes it on. This habit of violence is long-lasting, it does not stop, whereas everything else comes to an end. Something happens and it passes. People will say that in a particular year there was this and that. This thing does not pass, it has the devil inside, it moves in a circle, because birth takes place. The younger generation is learning this from others, and so it goes on. (13)

A number of participants explained the transmission of violence between generations of young people in terms of a lack of imagination or an inability to envision other ways of living in the township. "As time goes by there is poverty of the stomach and there is poverty of the mind," remarked a Khulumani member. "If you are hungry, the brain also experiences poverty. As a result of this poverty that overwhelms your being, you become violent" (42). "People sometimes wear blinkers and look forward," noted a young participant. "If someone says people should get shot, they will shoot people and rob for a living. The person will focus on that and not look for other opportunities around the community" (67(y)). In line with this, while hunger is a dominant route to violence, participants suggested that the conditions and way of life in the township are such that they influence young people's mindset and affect even youth whose households are not threatened by hunger (26, 44(m), 59(y), 61(y), 67(y)). "You will meet a rich friend," noted one participant, "but find out that he is doing wrong things" (46(y)).

Young interviewees generally delved deeper than older ones into reasons why youth engage in violence, describing the mix of solidarity and coercion that draws people in and makes it difficult for them to stop. One participant observed that when she asks other young people why they joined an informal gang, "the person tells me that they had no choice because their friends are also involved. So I think that is the major problem we face—people don't know how to say no. A person wants to fit in with their group of friends" (77(y)). Explaining his past criminal activities, a young interviewee described a sense of camaraderie so strong that his individual desires were eclipsed by the group's interests and vision for the future. "You are not only thinking of yourself, you are thinking about the group. You are boys and you grew up together," he said (G2). This was echoed by a young woman: "Everything could be right at [a young person's] home, but when they go out they do the wrong thing. This means they meet, there outside, they meet friends, because you cannot do something alone. You start with friends, and once you meet friends you start seeing things the same way as you are walking the same path.... Once you step outside you forget who you are" (46(y)). The young man above noted the difficulty of disengaging from violence: "It is not easy. That is why there is no success among guys my age who are around me. My friends are not even working. When you come up with an idea, to them you are a snob and trying to be better than them.... I mean, why can't we do things together so that people can look up to us in a positive way? It is so hard to put that in their heads because life is like this" (G2).

Several young participants highlighted the link between violence and masculinity, reflecting research findings in South Africa (Pinnock 1997; Ratele 2008). They said that young men who are not prepared to engage in violence are regarded as effeminate or gay, called a moffie and targeted by their peers. A young participant noted, "People obey their friends more than their parents because they don't want to be called a moffie" (73(y)). Talking about his friends, another young participant recalled, "I told them that we should change our lives, get busy, sell vegetables, open a car wash, braai meat and do something. They said I am a moffie" (60(y)). Some of these participants also pointed out that patriarchal attitudes and a desire to assert their masculinity leads young men to abuse young women, if only because they see them as easy targets. "People grow up believing that a girl comes second to a boy," said one young woman. "The boy has more power than a girl. It is just like that saying, 'Girls are allowed to cry, but men don't cry.' If you are a boy and cry you are called a moffie or sissy. So we are identified as weak and unable to fight for ourselves, as people who are dependent. So it is things like that. That is why we are sometimes raped, assaulted, abused" (77(y)). Other young women noted that "boys have things they can do and there is a lot they can do more than us, they see us as weak," and, "people see us girls as objects, they don't see us as people, they see us as weak" (G2).

Youth violence was not always associated with men and masculinity in the interviews, however. Several young women participants admitted to engaging in robberies, assault and even attempted murder, including as part of youth gangs (37(y), 55(y), 56(y), 67(y), G2). Indeed, while the literature on youth violence and informal gangs tends to focus on young men, research shows that young women also participate in crime and violence in South Africa (Vetten 2000; Sefali 2014b). A number of young participants discussed solidarity and coercion in explaining this, as above, but highlighted that girls usually get involved in violence under the influence of young men from school or the neighbourhood, or within their households. "There is an influence from boys to girls of wanting girls to also commit crime," said one participant (G2). Another agreed:

What causes that is desperation. We do get influenced. When you see your boyfriend doing something, you also want to do it because you feel like you are supporting him without knowing that you are being influenced and that it is wrong for you. So it affects you in a way because you end up getting involved. Even now, you find girls who are robbers, selling tik with the boyfriend. They are both cool and see nothing wrong because they are doing it together. So all in all we do get influenced. Sometimes the influence comes from our homes. You would see someone doing something at home and decide to also do it. (G2)

Others, however, described the involvement of young women in terms of a desire for independence, power and respect, perhaps in response to belittling experiences and narratives around gender in the township. "Some girls want to be seen as tough," noted a young participant (G2). Narrating her own experience, another young interviewee said, "I have shot someone and that person is in a wheelchair now. They respect me. They respect me. You see, sister?... They respect me. They fear me. They know if they say, 'M—!' That is my name. They call me by that name when I get up to mischief" (55(y)). A Khulumani member observed, "That is why we say it seems as if girls are even worse than boys as far as violence is concerned" (54).

Participants reported that having status in the neighbourhood is a major motivator for youth violence. Status is linked to money, they said, which is often only accessible in sufficient amounts by engaging in crime. In some cases, status is shown through belongings. As one young participant put it, "You are coming out from school, you have a friend who has a better home than yours, so now you also want to be like him, now you do wrong things because you want to be like your friend" (38(y)). "Today's competition is what destroys us as the youth," said another. "We compete over things we don't really need more of, especially clothes, cars and all those things. You find someone is buying a car, but they don't even own a bed" (G2). In other cases, status is shown by being able to afford a gangster lifestyle, whether one is a member of a gang or not: "I was robbing people so I could smoke drugs, drink alcohol, and to please girls. Your girlfriend needs to know that you are a known skollie _._ Those were things that tempted me" (60(y)). A young woman noted that this applies to girls as well: "It affects girls because some of them try to fit in this lifestyle.... The more people are into this lifestyle of drinking and so forth, the more people get involved in crime because they want money to buy these things" (77(y)). Echoing the observations above that youth influence younger generations, several young participants noted that they modelled their behaviour on the lifestyles of members of formal gangs in their area. Recalling a local gangster, a young participant said, "We used to have a certain role model, with a certain style, like us we liked Rubber's style" (38(y)). Another asserted, "You grow up and see this brother with this and that and also want to have it, but he gets those things through crime" (78(y)), while a third commented, "They see gangsters as cool. We need proper role models that do well, not those that are a bad influence doing wrong things or stealing cars. I think we can fight it by changing our mindset, thinking that you have to be part of the gang to have access to some stuff" (G2). In still other cases, status is shown through physical dominance and a readiness to ensure respect through violence: "One is naughty and the other because of peer pressure must beat him up, or one just does not respect the other one. They quarrel and end up stabbing one another" (44(m)). In this environment, "some want to have a certain status in the township, others want to make their name, they want to be famous that they can shoot. Others want to be seen as someone who is a giant, better than other people" (38(y)).

While many participants described the desire for social belonging and status as the main avenue to youth violence, several described it as emerging from a more destructive impulse: a desire not to gain but to take away, and punishingly. As one Khulumani member framed it, some "tell themselves that other people cannot have things they do not have" (G1), while a young man noted, "This is poverty. If you have something it must be taken from you because you cannot have money while others do not" (57(y)). In line with research on transgressive acts as a release of frustration (Young 2003), one participant observed, "You find that because of the poverty the person feels, they want to go out and snatch your phone. That person is not driven to doing that because of a drug, but by poverty and having the nerve to do something like that. It is because that person lives in poverty and is someone who always wants to do something that is outrageous—snatching and taking without permission" (G1). Some participants argued that this, along with the prevalence of weapon use (CSVR 2009), contributes to the extreme violence that often accompanies crime. "A robber may decide, although he has already grabbed our bags, he decides to kill us," a young woman said, "so now you always have that fear, even if you walk on the road carrying your bag, a person might grab it and decide to stab you as well" (59(y)). A Khulumani member noted, "Once he sees 10 or 20 rand he will chase you for that. You will lose your life because of that 20 rand" (34). Agreeing, another young participant, who was featured in the local media for being a woman in sport, told the following story:

I was robbed. The people who robbed me knew me, they called me over by my name. As they were approaching me, they called my name and I responded. They said, "We want the phone." I said, "I will give you the phone but I want to take my SIM card out."

One had a gun and the other had a knife. The one with the knife, I can say he had revenge on his mind because he was waving the knife in my face saying, "I feel like stabbing you."

" _What are you going to get from stabbing me?"_

" _I want to show you, because I used to see you in the newspapers, isn't it, saying this and that about A—."_

" _This is not going to help either of us because I will give you the phone and you will stab me and then what?"_

The one with a gun said, "Don't stab her. Let's just take her phone." (59(y))

A young man argued that because residents of Khayelitsha are stuck in the township and with the conditions of life there, they engage in crime and violence primarily against other residents, and that this is both a result of spatial apartheid and a contributor to racialised inequality: "Most of the time black people take from black people. White people rarely take from each other. I am not saying that they don't take from each other, they do, but because black people are poor, they deal with poverty by taking from others, because there are no job opportunities" (39(y)).

In describing pathways to youth violence, participants frequently labelled it 'naughtiness' and 'mischief' (6, 16, 17, 44(m), 46(y), 51(y), 54, 55(y), 57(y), 59(y), 69(m), 76(y)). Such terms suggest that this type of violence is childish and a part of growing up that most people leave behind when they become adults. They also imply that while participants disapprove of violence, many consider it to some degree normal behaviour for young people, particularly for young men (Brankovic 2012). In these narratives, youth violence emerges mainly from peer pressure, but it can be harnessed by adults in service of their own ends. In most cases, participants referred to grown men, often but not always members of formal gangs, using young people to expand their drug territory or to rob houses for goods that they then sell (6, 35(m), 36, 38(y), 39(y), 42, 55(y), 56(y), 58(y), 67(y), G1). In some cases, however, they referred to the role young people play in promoting order and safety in their neighbourhoods, mainly by disciplining each other and chasing away or punishing rivals who bring crime to the area (Thomas 2012). As emerged in one interview, "There cannot be anyone from another area coming to rob or break in here while you are here, as the youth" (66(m)). This attitude can be traced to the apartheid era, when youth—specifically young men—were sanctioned in contributing to community-based "crime control" in ways that were "disciplined, democratic and an expression of the will of the people" (Zwelakhe Sisulu, quoted in Super 2015: 4).

While some participants sought to explain youth violence in these familiar terms, they also noted that violence has become so frequent and extreme as to suggest that the same codes and 'rules' no longer apply. The interviews suggest one post-apartheid change that may go some way towards explaining the intensity of youth violence today: the greater availability of alcohol and drugs.

###  Substance Use and Dependence

The narratives in the preceding sections already indicate the extent to which the interviews dwell on alcohol and drugs as pathways to violence. As we noted in Chapter 2, participants argue that lack of employment and other opportunities leads many to compete in the sale of alcohol and drugs as a source of income, making both easily available throughout the township. They indicate that drinking and drug use are woven through experiences of marginalisation and violence in the township, connecting them and augmenting the negative effects of both. While some discuss substance use in terms of following in the footsteps of elders or more commonly as a way of fitting in socially, a larger number suggest that substance use is an attempt to escape the stress of lack of opportunity and threat of violence, which in fact starts people on the road to violence and traps them there. The argument is that substance use increases the likelihood that users will remain in poverty while also intensifying the socioeconomic burden on those around them, in the household and in the surrounding township, thereby opening new pathways for them and others from marginalisation to violence.

Referring to the limited regulation of the sale of commercial and home-brewed alcoholic beverages in the township, participants observed that the availability of alcohol at all hours of the day and night enables excessive drinking, which in turn decreases inhibitions and increases the existing risk of various forms of violence (1, 9, 12, 13, 15, 24, 40(m), 42, 48(y), 54, 57(y), 60(y), 64(y), 66(y), 69(m), 74(y), 76(y), 77(y), 78(y), G1). Some observed that excessive alcohol use in townships predates the democratic transition. As one participant noted, "About these young people who are always in taverns, this has been happening for a long time. It started with elders, and you would find them drinking in taverns. There are also consequences for that. It all starts with using alcohol.... Mother, father and children all come from the same place" (66(y)). In line with this comment, participants indicated that alcohol use "starts in households" (42) and has an intergenerational aspect, with elders' behaviour influencing the alcohol use of younger people in the home. Several also noted that alcohol dependence can entrench the intergenerational transmission of poverty, as elders may use what income they have on alcohol instead of on the needs of their children and grandchildren, particularly in terms of educational costs. "Some parents have money, they have work, but they spend the money on alcohol," observed a Khulumani member (47). Participants further argued that with reduced state control post-apartheid, the availability and use of alcohol has increased. Referring to the proliferation of formal and informal drinking establishments in Khayelitsha, a Khulumani member suggested, "There is violence as a result of residential areas being turned into businesses that sell alcohol and drugs. I think if alcohol was sold further away from residential areas and removed from where we live, the violence would slowly decrease" (42). The growing population and the rising number of unemployed people in the township were identified as contributing to the problem. One Khulumani member pointed out, "They are just sitting, having nothing to do leads to them to do wrong things, they have time for alcohol and so on" (54).

Many argued that alcohol as a route to violence is most prevalent among young people, as "the youth these days are exposed more to alcohol and drugs than the youth during apartheid" (G2). Since "there are many young people in the township as a result of unemployment, people turn to alcohol," noted one participant (60(y)). Unlike in the past when the norm was for young men on the cusp of adulthood to begin drinking, participants said, (pre)adolescent boys as well as girls and young women are also engaging in frequent alcohol use (49, 53, 54, 59(y), 64(y), 66(y), 68(y), 69(m), 73(y), 76(y), 77(y), G2). "Girls did not drink alcohol, girls did not smoke drugs," observed a Khulumani member, "that was done by a few young men. We used to say because he is a young man these are signs that he wants to go for circumcision, these habits show that he is at the stage of manhood, he has the habits of young men. Now, it's boys, girls, young men, all doing one thing" (54). In addition, some said, because there are few other recreational facilities in the township and because residents are largely constrained by having to walk everywhere and the risk of crime, many go to the nearest drinking spot to socialise in the evening: "The only thing you can do at night is go to a shebeen. You cannot do anything sensible at night because you fear getting mugged. You cannot go anywhere" (77(y)).

In the context of widespread drinking, participants said, "you have violence in the taverns" (12(m)) and "now owners drag people outside, you can see that a person died inside, you will see them mopping the place—let me say there is a lot of cruelty" (8). This violence, which participants indicate is usually an argument that turns into a physical and sometimes fatal fight, often spills into the streets surrounding a drinking establishment, making both patrons and passers-by vulnerable to attack (8, 21, 26, 76(y), 77(y), 78(y)). Discussing his own experience with alcohol, a young participant recalled, "We went out drinking together. From drinking together an incident occurred, one of my friends was stabbed" (38(y)). "They get injured at night, they are killed," said a Khulumani member. "My child went to a party at night, he came knocking that night with an open wound" (8). Discussing tavern hours and the associated risks for young women, a participant said, "If my friend and I go out at night, when I come back home I am going to walk, obviously. You will meet a group of skollies who will steal your phone, take your expensive clothing or try to rape you" (76(y)). Participants also noted that alcohol use raises the risk of various forms of domestic violence (12, 21, 24, 25, 36, 42, 47, 60(y), 62(m)). For example, one participant observed that "if a woman is not living under good conditions and a man is not treating her well or he is drinking, when he gets home he beats you up" (24), while another said, "If he drinks he ends up coming at 12 midnight home shouting for the mother to open the door, 'where is my food.' You find out that he is abusing his mother" (40(m)).

Echoing a young woman's observation that people "start with alcohol and get drunk, when they are drunk they want something more than alcohol, and this is where they now encounter different kinds of drugs" (46(y)), many participants noted that alcohol use often leads to drug use in the township. Almost all identified the prevalence of illegal drugs as one of the main problems in Khayelitsha (3, 4, 5, 6, 7(m), 8, 9, 13, 16, 22(m), 25, 31, 36, 37(y), 39(y), 40(m), 42, 45, 46(y), 47, 54, 55(y), 60(y), 64(y), 66(y), 67(y), 69(m), 71(y), 77(y), 78(y), G1, G2), and most argued that drug use is a central pathway to violence, particularly for young people (39(y), 40(m), 42, 44(m), 46(y), 50(m), 58(y), 60(y), 64(y), 67(y), 73(y), 78(y), G1). As noted in Chapter 2, drugs were pinpointed as a distinctly post-apartheid issue. "There were no drugs here before, during the apartheid regime. It was strict at the entry points [to the country]. Now it is just loose at the entry points," observed a Khulumani member (36). Using methamphetamine as an example, another observed,

Before we were working and there was less hunger. Now, now kids smoke tik, they get crazy, you will find them unconscious, saliva running from their mouths.... It is this tik that makes them not to go to school. Once they come across tik their minds stop working.... Those that do these things are not working, they are just sitting in the township. They do not care about anything besides smoking tik. (16)

The cause of this single-minded focus on drugs, they said, is widespread substance dependence. As a young participant put it, "Once you let someone taste drugs that is where I think the problem starts, because you will want drugs forever" (46(y)). While participants acknowledged the role of cannabis, over-the-counter drugs like cough syrup, and prescription drugs such as painkillers in substance use, they focused particularly on the effects of tik, mandrax and nyaope in the interviews.

As the Khulumani member above implied, one consequence of illegal drug use and dependence is a loss of interest in other activities (16). Other members also highlighted the effects they noticed among youth in their households, noting that "you will find a child tired after smoking [tik], unable to do anything and waking up late again" (25), with the result that they are "disabled, damaging their brains with these drugs" (6). As one member commented, "I do not know how these ones that smoke tik can get bursaries because their minds are already damaged by the substances they use" (16). In these narratives, the challenges of accessing life opportunities in the township are rendered nearly insurmountable by substance use and dependence. While some participants acknowledged that people dependent on illegal substances engage in piecemeal work around the township to make money, the majority observed that the lack of employment options, the physical effects of drugs and the repeated need to access drugs make crime the only viable and consistent way to access funds.

A young participant summed up the link between substance dependence and crime: "The more people use drugs, the higher the crime rate and poverty, because the crime increases as a result of people wanting to support their desire, their addiction. In order to support that the person does criminal activities. Increasing crime increases poverty because the person will starve and then do more crime. That is how it is" (77(y)). In line with this, another participant mentioned, "They break into houses, during housebreaking they even open refrigerators and eat food, this means they are also hungry" (69(m)). A third observed, "They decide to go rob people so that they can get money to smoke drugs. They also steal items from their own homes to sell them because they do not have money for drugs to smoke at that particular time. So they steal people's goods or break into other people's houses. They steal those items and sell them and buy drugs to smoke" (73(y)). Indeed, speaking about her own criminal activities, a participant said, "We cannot survive without crime. How will we smoke without committing crime? The main thing is smoking" (55(y)). In these stories, people dealing with substance dependence not only reduce their own chances of countering the stuckness of township life, but also reduce those of other people in their households and neighbourhoods by impacting on their financial and emotional well-being.

Furthermore, participants noted that certain drugs decrease inhibition, impede rational thought and heighten aggression in many users, increasing the likelihood that they will engage in violence. According to a young interviewee,

Once people come across these drugs they go wrong. You can just see them walking, that something is wrong, they look like someone who might attack you. When you are passing him, he will ask you, "Why are you looking at me, my sister?" It is now a big problem, they are very violent when they use drugs, more than alcohol. Yes, you do things when you are drunk from alcohol but I do not think alcohol can make you do things you would do after using drugs. There are lot of drugs in Khayelitsha and they kill people while still young. (46(y))

A Khulumani member observed, "A person using drugs is not reasoning because killing a person is easy to him" (9)—a statement echoed by a number of participants (6, 8, 40(m), 43, 46(y), 64(y), 69(m)). Another member noted, "These children do these things because they have smoked this. They don't even see you. To them you are just like an ant. He comes to you and abuses you" (43). "Drugs is what has killed us in this country," observed a woman participant. "If there were no drugs people would still be alive because many graves were caused by drugs, because a child does crime unconsciously under the influence of drugs because he has smoked. After smoking he goes and kills people" (40(m)). Some participants noted that the widespread availability of guns in the township only increases the probability that such attacks will be serious or fatal (35(m), 36, 40(m), 46(y), 59(y)), highlighting the significant role firearms play in murder rates in the country ("Gun Violence" 2016; CSVR 2009). Linking drug use and the likelihood of rape, a young participant said, "We come across these boys who don't sleep and smoke tik. When you see them you can't run or do anything because they are many and stronger than us girls. We are exposed to rape and so forth, it is up to them. But we are not safe" (78(y)). These observations relate not only to violence against strangers but also against neighbours and family members. As one Khulumani member put it, "He will realise later after killing that he did not realise or mean it" (8). Since crime is intertwined with violence in participants' narratives, and they see substance dependence as both increasing the likelihood of a person engaging in crime and reducing their ability to control their violent behaviour, participants forged a strong link between the availability of illegal drugs and township violence.

Several participants pointed out a further link between drugs and violence: vigilantism. One young woman summarised the relationship as follows:

They mug people or break into people's houses when they are away, they steal those things and sell them to buy drugs to smoke.... They are taking things that do not belong to them, so that puts them in danger of being arrested and put in prison. Some perhaps are not arrested but taken by the community and beaten and killed. Some are thrown in the ocean, they are lost from their families, nobody knows their whereabouts. You find their families looking for them and finding them takes time. (73(y))

###  Community-Based Crime Control and Vigilantism

In order to address high levels of crime and violence, residents of Khayelitsha are often forced to 'take the law into their own hands.' This, the interviews suggest, is its own pathway to violence (12, 17, 21, 43, 55(y), 60(y), 64(y), 66(y), 71(y), 73(y)). The narratives indicate that in the context of an ineffective criminal justice system, residents lean on restorative and retributive crime control methods normalised during apartheid. These include informal discussions and street or area committee meetings aimed at conflict resolution, which may result in a compensation request. They may then escalate to the threat or actualisation of banishment of the suspected criminal's household from the area, and after that to different forms of physical punishment that might culminate in a vigilante killing. These methods often penalise family members of the suspect, mainly older women, and increase their marginalisation. They also pose a threat to community members, as they might result in the wrong person being attacked, a revenge attack being perpetrated or community members being arrested by police. The interviews show, however, that residents often feel there are few other options for reducing the immediate threat of violent crime.

Discussions of vigilantism usually began with complaints about police capacity, visibility and effectiveness in the township and the limitations of the legal system under the democratic dispensation. Echoing the findings of the Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of Police Inefficiency and a Breakdown in Relations between SAPS and the Community in Khayelitsha (2014), participants noted that the number of police allocated to the township is too small for the size of the population, and that the few who are available are poorly trained, underpaid and under-resourced in terms of equipment and vehicles (17, 36, 40(m), 77(y), 78(y), G2). For these reasons, participants said, police usually show up too late to prevent crime and sometimes do not show up at all (5, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 26, 35(m), 37(y), 40(m), 43, 46(y), 51(y), 55(y), 59(y), 60(y), 61(y), 64(y), 73(y)). "They only come after someone has died," observed a young woman (64(y)). They are also slow to provide assistance to victims at police stations, participants noted, and conduct cursory investigations of crime scenes, rarely following up with additional investigations or with victims (19, 20, 36, 64(y), 67(y), 73(y), 76(y), G2). "They don't investigate anything," commented a young man, "they only want obvious cases. They don't want to investigate cases from scratch, they don't want to investigate like police officers. They can't investigate anything from scratch and come up with good results. They don't impress the state or the people" (66(y)). Some participants said this is because police fear residents, worrying that they will be attacked and killed for their weapons, especially after dark, which is also the reason they tend to conduct regular patrols only of those areas that offer a clear line of sight and an easy escape route (16, 17, 43, 46(y), 53, 5(y), 60(y), 61(y), 62(m), 64(y), 76(y), G2). This tendency particularly affects residents of informal settlements in Khayelitsha. More participants, especially young ones, argued that police are corrupt, working with and tipping off criminal networks in the township, selling guns and ammunition to criminals, shaking down drug dealers for cash or drugs, and taking bribes from residents (12, 17, 25, 36, 37(y), 38(y), 40(m), 41(m), 45, 55(y), 56(y), 58(y), 59(y), 60(y), 73(y), G2). A few young participants also talked about police brutality, with one noting, "The police see us as whatever. They don't care about us. They are rough. They beat us and all that" (G2). Of the two cases Khulumani described in its statement to the Khayelitsha Commission, one concerns police brutality against a young person in a member's household (KSG 2012).

Participants argued that poor policing is linked to the laxity of the legal system in a cyclical way. Inadequate police work and lack of evidence lead to cases being dismissed in court, they said, while the courts' overemphasis on due process and leniency towards offenders under the age of 21 lead to low morale among police, who assume suspects will be released (8, 12, 17, 25, 26, 35(m), 37(y), 39(y), 40(m), 44(m), 54, 55(y), 58(y), 60(y), 61(y), 64(y), 66(y), 69(m), 76(y)). Participants of all ages, but especially young participants, argued that apartheid laws and policing practices kept crime under control and that the legal reforms that accompanied the democratic transition—including the abolition of the death penalty and provisions against police impunity—have emboldened criminals throughout the country. These assertions co-exist in some tension with participants' recognition, as we noted in Chapter 2, that policing is superior and crime rates significantly lower in traditionally white areas of Cape Town (40(m), 54, 61(y), 66(y), 67(y), 69(m), 73(y), 76(y), 77(y)) (SAPS 2015). Participants noted that given the absence of a good alternative, residents of Khayelitsha are under pressure to control crime themselves. A young participant explained the relationship between the legal system and vigilantism as follows:

The police don't do anything. They are called and told there is a lot of violence here and they pretend to be on their way. When there is a house robbery they don't arrive until after the incident. They take their time and arrive long after the incident and when the skollie is long gone. The community then decides it is better to take matters into their own hands and beat the skollie when they catch them. But the police see that as wrong when they arrive, whereas the community is trying to end the violence. A lot of youth break into houses. They break into houses they know and take things there or rape minors there and then run. They stay in jail for one week and get released. They don't stay there for long and pick up where they left off in robbing people. That is why the community decides to take the law into their own hands. (64(y))

Before resorting to vigilantism, participants stressed, residents tend to try other means of conflict resolution to address crime and violence, particularly when the offender is from the neighbourhood. One approach is to talk with people suspected of engaging in crime or being on the cusp of slipping into it, particularly young people. "We try, we try to speak to them, they are called," noted a Khulumani member, who added that if this has no effect, "they are beaten by the community" (54). If a crime occurs, the first step is a discussion among neighbours, often overseen by a street or area committee tasked with addressing community concerns, including crime. These committees, which range from formal structures aligned with the South African National Civic Organisation to informal gatherings of local residents, have their roots in conflict resolution and people's justice measures set up in response to the alternating absence and violence of the apartheid regime (Thomas 2012). Describing her own experience, a Khulumani member reflected,

You will hear someone saying, "Your child has taken my belongings." You will be shocked one day when you see them wearing new clothes when you haven't bought anything for them. You did not buy it for them but you see them wearing it. I ask about it, of course, and say, "Take it off and return it. Get out of my house with it." Sometimes I am ordered to pay and I pay because I do not want them to get hurt, because I do not know, maybe they will be killed. After they are killed, how am I going to bury them? In any case I pay that money. (53)

As this quote suggests, people suspected of a crime or those responsible for them are often asked to compensate the victim in some way, usually monetarily. Khulumani members, and some young participants, acknowledged that elders often bear the burden of these processes, both in terms of the additional drain on their income and the negative impact on their social standing in the neighbourhood. As one participant put it, "You will be insulted in the community, whereas it was the child who stole the goods" (5). This burden most commonly falls on older women. "Everything depends on the woman," said a young participant. "A child will rob there and the report will go to the mother" (37(y)).

"When community members have difficulties, the street committee comes out to look at the problem, meet with community members and solve what would be a problem," said a young participant. She added that when discussions and compensation do not curb crime or when the crime is too serious to address through such conflict resolution measures, residents tend to force the suspected individuals to leave the area. "If someone is from this area and commits a crime, they are asked to leave the area, are given a week to do so and leave the section," she said (61(y)). The threat of violence is implicit in the request to leave. If not heeded, residents may ransack, knock down or set fire to the suspected criminal's home. As another participant stated, "In our area we go there and tell them, 'You smoke drugs, you sell drugs, we are going to demolish the house.' We expel them from the area instead of killing them.... It is better to expel him and his family" (40(m)). Here, again, other members of the household, usually older women, bear the burden of the financial and other effects of being forced to leave their home or having it destroyed. If this still does not address the problem, participants said, residents turn to violence, usually beating the suspected criminal as a group. Speaking of her own experiences in her neighbourhood, a young participant said, "They beat us among these houses. I even have wounds and feel sore because of the beatings. I broke into some house and stole a TV there together with my friends. After we stole the TV, they caught us. In fact, they caught me. They chased us and beat us. The only person who really got hurt is me. My body is sore" (55(y)). This type of violence is intended to impose order in the neighbourhood and change the behaviour of suspected criminals through punishment, as many would with children. "We are disciplining them when we do that," asserted a Khulumani member (21).

Participants indicated that when these forms of vigilantism fail, the remaining option is to kill suspected criminals to remove them from the community and to serve as a warning to others. "People end up taking the law into their own hands because of the lack of response from the police," said one participant. "Let's say your child was murdered and the person who killed him is mocking you, walking up and down the streets. He is going to kill another person because he was not arrested" (36). Another described vigilante killings as self-defence against revenge: "The reason for us to kill the offender as the community is that if we do not kill them, when they are released from jail they are going to kill me. It is better that they do not exist" (40(m)). "Our sons they rob you even in broad daylight," observed a third. "On the streets you cannot go to protect or defend the victim because they will come to you as well, they will rob your house, so this is a problem" (12). Participants also noted that the rise of substance dependence in the township has decreased the efficacy of disciplinary measures, leading to cycles of crime and vigilantism that often end in death. "A person who smokes drugs gets beaten by the community, they then take a decision that they are not going to steal again," reflected a young participant. But when they need funds to buy drugs, she said, "after the pain stops they do the same thing again, doing criminal activities, robbing other people" (73(y)). These quotes apply largely to suspected criminals who live in or close to participants' neighbourhoods. Offenders who come in from other areas and are strangers to local residents are at far higher risk of being beaten and killed if they are caught, including through the apartheid-era method of being 'necklaced' with a car tyre and set on fire (12, 43, 63, 64(y), 55(y)).

An additional form of vigilantism participants highlighted is that practiced by neighbourhood watch groups, community police forums and other residents who organise themselves to patrol their area and engage in various crime prevention efforts. While these were largely praised or called necessary in the interviews, a number of participants complained that some members are overly zealous and tend to suspect all young people of crime and violence. "They do patrols now," said one, "so if you walk at night there is a punishment. [They think] it is us the youth who are causing problems by walking around at night. Be it a boy or a girl, when they see you at night you must be punished" (76(y)). "People complained that the patrollers would just beat anyone they come across at night without asking them anything or searching them first," noted another (61(y)). Some young participants took part in patrols and in other vigilante actions, but several said they avoided intervening in any way because they might be accused of being on the side of the suspected criminals or of working with them. According to one young man, "Should something wrong maybe happen in our presence, some people would think we did it. They would say we sent people to rob them while we pretended to be protecting them. We don't think people trust us and no one will listen to us. People will think we are only making a plan to get something to eat." He went on to say that young people are often suspected of crimes just by virtue of having been seen with suspected criminals: "Sometimes you find that it is someone you know [who was caught by residents] and you were seen walking with. You don't even know where they stay. You just see them around. It's just that there is a lot happening out there. Maybe you just shared a cigarette they were smoking or you were smoking. You just know them because you saw them once. When they do something wrong, you get into trouble just like that, because people saw you with them" (66(y)). Speaking about her grandchildren, a Khulumani member echoed the young man's observation: "Maybe you were not among those who robbed others, but the people will count you in as well. They will claim that you were also there" (17).

Overall, participants argued that it is police and the courts that encourage vigilantism by not doing their jobs properly and then punishing people for attempting to control crime themselves. This leaves residents in a catch-22. A Khulumani member told the following story:

Violence, the community tried to fight it, because there is an organisation that was formed to fight crime committed by our children. They stood up when your child killed somebody or did a robbery. They called this organisation M—, they said they are M—. They would go to search for the perpetrator at his home, take him outside his home, beat him and kill him. But our sons did not listen despite this. The police stood up and fought this organisation to stop its actions. People were arrested. The community was expected to collect money to bail them out or get them released. The organisation ended and the community moved backwards. It was said that we must not take the law into our hands. When someone was caught doing a robbery, the police were called. They would take him in the police van. You would see him the next day, passing your house when he was just arrested by police. The community called the police, asking why do we see somebody in the streets that we handed over to the police. The police said it's not them, it's the magistrate who released him, not them. The community rose up again because violence was increasing... [and] killed a robber last year, they put him in a ditch. I have not yet seen them here in the area. They are still in custody. (12)

In fact, the second case mentioned in Khulumani's statement to the Khayelitsha Commission describes police inaction that resulted in a vigilante murder, which led to the arrest of "some of the community members that contributed in the murder" (KSG 2012). In the moment of a vigilante attack, any resident who is close by may watch or take part, regardless of age, gender or other identity marker. As one participant suggested, residents take the risk of being arrested because they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good of the neighbourhood. "If we kill them, it will be as a group," she said, "only one person will be arrested and found guilty" (40(m)). Part of the risk calculation may be that police often do not make arrests in incidents of vigilantism, as they usually arrive after the fact and, in some cases, look the other way. As one young participant said, "[police] do not want to arrive during the crime, they want to get a report of what happened from the community" (73(y)). Another noted, "They are called and told what is happening and don't come, or they come after the incident. The police we have nowadays say, 'Beat him, we will arrest him when he is injured'" (60(y)).

Given the various risks associated with vigilantism—attacking the wrong person, revenge attacks by criminals, being mistaken for a criminal, being arrested by police—many participants said that they keep to themselves and try not to get involved. Yet, vigilantism is part of life in Khayelitsha. In the year we conducted our interviews, police reported that up to nine vigilante attacks, namely murders, attempted murders and assaults, occurred in the township per month (Dano 2015). In terms of socioeconomic marginalisation, crime and violence place additional pressure on households that are barely getting by. When nothing else seems to work, participants indicated, vigilantism is a legitimate response. Yet, as the interviews show, community-based conflict resolution and crime control measures—ranging from compensation orders, to banishment and vandalism, to severe physical punishment—themselves place pressure on suspected criminals and members of their household, deepening their marginalisation. In this sense, they represent a multivalent pathway from exclusion to violence. This does not even take into account the long-term emotional and psychological impacts of such measures on everyone involved.

A final point: research on vigilantism suggests that while residents seek to control crime and violence against their neighbours, they largely do not intervene in crime directed against non-nationals in Khayelitsha (Gastrow and Amit 2012). In addition, non-nationals who are suspected of engaging in crime and violence are largely not included in community conflict resolution processes by their neighbours. They tend to be treated as outsiders, which renders them more vulnerable to vigilante attacks (Super 2015). The next section discusses the outsider status of non-nationals in the township, and xenophobia as another pathway to violence.

###  Xenophobia

As we noted in Chapter 2, participant narratives identify migration to Cape Town, particularly from other African countries, as a socioeconomic driver of violence in Khayelitsha. They focus on non-nationals as a source of competition for life opportunities and as contributors to crime and widespread substance dependence. With many comments like "they could easily take over the country" (57(y)), the interviews indicate an anxiety regarding the number of non-nationals in the township and their perceived shrewdness in accessing opportunities, lawfully and otherwise, compared to South Africans. This anxiety, which the interviews suggest emerges largely from participants' sense of being stuck without a way out of their socioeconomic situation, opens its own avenue to violence. The outsider status of non-nationals, meanwhile, keeps residents from seeking to block this particular pathway to violence.

Mirroring findings from across South Africa (Crush and Ramachandran 2010), research shows that xenophobic attitudes and violence are widespread in Khayelitsha (FH 2017). Participants' narratives suggest that they have diverse attitudes and mixed feelings towards non-nationals and the violence against them. Several participants acknowledged the fact that other African countries hosted freedom fighters and exiled activists during the liberation struggle. "It is okay to welcome them," said one participant, "because while it was difficult for us during those [apartheid] years people could go to their countries" (69(m)). A Khulumani member remarked, "They are human beings. We were also once refugees in other countries" (36). In addition, they noted that non-nationals have valid reasons for coming to South Africa, acknowledging that most flee violence or lack of opportunity in their countries of origin in order to build a better life and support family members with remittances. As one participant put it, "South Africa is a rich country. Everybody in Africa wants to come to South Africa because they know that in South Africa life will be better. There are fewer opportunities where they come from and more opportunities in South Africa. So they come here with their skills to South Africa, they use their skills, work, and they send the money back to their homes" (44(m)).

Despite such statements, many participants conveyed antipathy towards non-nationals, based not only on the issues of competition and crime raised above but also on non-nationals' success compared to South Africans in the township. According to a young participant,

We are now unable to benefit from anything because of the people who are here because of hunger in their countries, who are running away from war. That's not bad in itself, but when they get here now they are cleverer than us. When they look at us, they see fools. When they search for a job they get it, but when I search for a job I do not get it. Why? So this is what I want to know, where the confusion is. Which method do they use that we do not use? (46(y))

A Khulumani member, meanwhile, indicated the breadth of areas in which he sees non-nationals succeeding: "In businesses, it is these people who are employed, whereas we are dying of hunger. Those who don't work there, they are selling things, they sell tik as well, they sell anything. These days us citizens of this country, we are unemployed while they are earning" (16). A number of participants revealed an anxiety that, given their comparative success, non-nationals could take over the country. One participant said, "They came here and took shops and everything, they took everything, and that is why people are shocked" (43). "We will end up with no money here, we will end up being refugees," argued the same Khulumani member who acknowledged non-nationals as human beings, adding, "This is Congo already here and it is still going to be Congo because we are fast asleep. By the time we try to raise our heads it will be too late" (36). "I get scared sometimes," observed a young participant, "it's like we are going to be governed by these foreigners now. We are going to hear that a foreigner is going to be our next president or they are going to form their own party. It feels like it could happen" (66(y)). These statements were linked to observations regarding non-nationals' higher levels of education and skills, as well as their savviness in accessing opportunities via government, business and criminal networks, as discussed in Chapter 2. They suggest an insecurity among participants regarding their own abilities and reasons for being stuck in their situation. As a young participant said after expressing fear and anger at non-nationals' achievements, "We could go to them and ask them to teach us the things they can do. We can learn from them and sell so we too can get something" (37(y)).

In addition, participants highlighted that, economically, non-nationals rely on their own social networks and keep to themselves. A young participant noted, "They are always using their own system" (46(y)), while another said, "They are doing it their own way. You might see only two people [at a shop] and then find out that there are about 13 or 14 people staying in that house. So they back each other up.... They are only interested in money. They are working for money in numbers" (57(y)). "Those are black people," said a third, "some of them are here to look for a way to survive. But then they don't work together with us. They just come and change things and do things that suit them. I see that as wrong" (60(y)). One participant remarked, "Those people won't listen to us. They have their own way of thinking" (37(y)). The interviews suggest that participants resent and in some cases feel threatened by non-nationals' perceived insularity, aside from their skills and abilities.

Of those asked whether they think violence against non-nationals is valid, most participants said they do not. They tended to place responsibility for the influx of African migrants on the democratic government, as well as for a solution to the problems it poses. "I oppose assaulting people," said a Khulumani member. "They should not be assaulted. We have let them come in, so government must come up with a plan" (43). "I am going to blame the government," said a young man, "because it is government that creates conflict between us, because these people get permission to enter here from the government." He also noted, "We are full of hunger and poverty in our minds. What we associate with those people is violence. A fight can just break out sometimes because many people do not want those people here, they want them to leave because they are taking these jobs" (57(y)). Several participants reported a sense of ambivalence regarding this violence, particularly as a solution does not seem forthcoming. As one young participant expressed it, "I don't think it's right, but I also think it is right" (60(y)). A few, however, were clearly on the side of using violence to force non-nationals out of the township and the country, arguing that "it is just better to beat them so they go back" (37(y)).

One young participant discussed violence against non-nationals in terms of participating in robberies of local shops owned by non-nationals. "We rob the Somalis," she said. "These people are not from here. They are from other countries that we don't know. We rob them and break into their places." Asked whether she sees the shopkeepers as human beings, the participant responded, "They are not people to me, sister. They are people to others. To me they are the ones who cause problems for us" (55(y)). These statements fit with recent research, which suggests that African non-nationals who run businesses in Khayelitsha are at particularly high risk of being victims of violence. Although non-nationals—primarily Somalis—run about half of the businesses, 96.5 percent of the business robberies reported in 2011–12 were committed against foreign-run shops in the township, as compared to 3.5 percent against South African-run shops. In addition, about 40 percent of these robberies involved murder or attempted murder (Gastrow and Amit 2012). While government officials and others have suggested that such robberies are opportunistic crimes and not xenophobic attacks (Polzer and Takabvirma 2010), participants' narratives indicate that part of the reason these businesses are targeted is because they are run by non-nationals, and more specifically because they are symbols of non-nationals' capability and their separateness. As we noted in the section on vigilantism, non-nationals' outsider status, which participants argued is self-imposed, also keeps them beyond the potential protections offered by community-based conflict resolution and crime control measures, which in turn makes them an easy target for crime and violence.

Outsider status can also make non-nationals more susceptible to vigilante attacks. In line with recent research findings (HSRC 2019), the interviews indicate that non-nationals are more at risk of attack because residents associate their nationality with criminality. In complaining about government efforts to address vigilantism, a young participant demonstrated the thinking behind such an attack on a non-national: "Drugs do not come from nowhere. These things are common now that we have foreign nationals here, which means they are the suppliers of drugs. So the plan is still with the government because government is the one that defends these people. When we stand up in the community, doing away with what they are doing and beating them, government arrests us" (57(y)). One aspect of this attitude is that while non-nationals are perceived as the main source of drugs in the area, participants do not see them affected by drugs to the same degree as South Africans. "Children from other countries get here and do important things," said a Khulumani member, "whereas our children's situation is deteriorating because they are busy with drugs. These drugs that are sold are not used by foreign children but by the local children. You see, they take these drugs and kill people" (9). Another participant remarked, "I heard foreign nationals with my own ears. What they say they will do here is give South African young men drugs so that they cannot think straight and then they will take over South Africa" (69(m)). The participants in this case resent certain non-nationals not only for the drug market in the township and its effects, but also for appearing to succeed in the trade while avoiding its pitfalls.

Overall, while there may be many pathways to violence against non-nationals in Khayelitsha, the interviews suggest that they emerge primarily as responses to South African residents' socioeconomic marginalisation. Instead of acknowledging ways that non-nationals are discriminated against and victimised in the country (Dodson 2010; Hassim, Kupe and Worby 2008), participants talk about non-nationals' success, explaining it as a result of their skills, savviness and solidarity. The implication in many of the interviews is that South Africans are lacking in precisely these capabilities and are for this reason mired in their situation. This appears to bring up feelings of anxiety and shame along with a sense of insecurity, which can trigger violence and legitimise that of others (Gilligan 2000; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). As a Khulumani member put it, "We citizens of this country, we are jobless. They are employed. It looks like this country is going to be ruled by them. We South African citizens are poor. That is the reason for the outbreak of xenophobia. It is now South Africans who are poor in their own country" (16).

###  Pathways from Marginalisation to Violence

This chapter has identified a number of avenues by which participants argue socioeconomic exclusion leads to violence in Khayelitsha. In discussing economic, geographical and existential marginalisation, many interviews suggest that there is nothing to do in the township. They indicate that this sense of being stuck in an untenable situation combines with the constant threat of hunger to push residents, especially young people, towards violence as a way to secure a quick income in order to meet basic personal and household needs. Focusing on household dynamics, the narratives indicate that the feeling of stagnation produces frustrations that encourage domestic violence against intimate partners, children, siblings and the elderly, which in the context of patriarchal attitudes has a disproportionate effect on women and girls. In addition, violence is modelled as an acceptable way for children to address conflict and assert power. Another dynamic the interviews highlight is that young people turn to crime so as not to be a drain on household resources, while their parents and grandparents end up being complicit by pressuring them to be providers or looking the other way when they bring home ill-gotten gains.

Beyond household pressures and obligations, the chapter has discussed youth socialisation as a pathway to violence, with participants remarking on the transmission of norms of violent behaviour between succeeding generations of youth in their neighbourhoods. They argue that young people, regardless of gender, are drawn into violence though a mix of solidarity with and coercion from other youth, while a generalised valorisation of the 'gangster' lifestyle encourages displays of status, for example through branded clothing or physical dominance, which in many cases can only be secured through crime and violence. Some see youth violence as driven by destructive and transgressive impulses, while others see it as the usual 'naughtiness' of young people. The argument is, however, that the increased availability of alcohol and illegal drugs, which many turn to as an escape from the pressures of poverty and violence, has led young people to substance dependence, the effects of which land some in violent crime and keep them there while also increasing the marginalisation of the community.

According to participants, under-resourced and corrupt police and the laxity and ineffectiveness of the post-apartheid criminal justice system enable crime and violence in the township. This forces residents to take the law into their own hands, disciplining suspected criminals through neighbourhood interventions, compensation requests, beatings, banishment and, at the last, vigilante murders, which carry the risk of arrest, revenge attacks from criminals and, especially, attacks on innocent people. Non-nationals residing and working in Khayelitsha are particularly vulnerable to vigilantism, while at the same time not receiving community protection from other forms of violence. The interviews suggest that this is linked to their outsider status and insecurities surrounding their perceived ability to achieve socioeconomic success when few South African residents can do the same.

The next chapter goes deeper into the sense participants shared that they are hard-pressed to improve their situation in Khayelitsha. Building on the reflections concerning anxiety and insecurity in relation to outsiders, it looks at the emotional implications of inequality, poverty and violence as reflected in the interviews, focusing on differences in generational perspectives and effects on intergenerational relations.
Chapter 4. (Inter)Generational Responses to Ongoing Poverty and Violence

The older generation might play the blame game, but so does the youth. Because the youth don't understand where the older generation is coming from as much as the older generation doesn't understand why the youth are the way they are today. (50(m))

Throughout the interviews, participants discuss generational differences in perceptions of the web of drivers and effects of violence and the pathways between them. A story sometimes emerges that there is a generational 'blame game' within Khulumani families, focusing on who should bear responsibility for addressing the high levels of poverty and violence in Khayelitsha. The narratives in this chapter suggest, however, that there is more agreement between the participant groups than they expect. They suggest, moreover, that both groups are more likely to blame themselves than each other for not coping better with the challenges in the township or developing better strategies for overcoming them. At the same time, self-blame in the interviews alternates with questions regarding the responsibility of the democratic state, whose post-apartheid interventions participants have found more oppressive than liberating. By examining older participants' statements on inequality and violence, and then those of young participants, we seek to identify how generational and intergenerational dynamics affect participants' sense of individual and collective agency and their approaches to social change. Given that Khulumani is a majority women's movement, we also look at the role of gender in these approaches.

The narratives here support research on the strain of not being able to achieve economic success in a context like democratic South Africa, which appears to extend the promise of socioeconomic equality and progress (Young 2003; Altbeker 2008). They demonstrate that while participants are highly aware of the structural barriers erected under colonialism and apartheid and fortified under democracy, they still shoulder the responsibility for surmounting these barriers, especially for their loved ones. The extreme difficulty of doing so gives rise to feelings of frustration, guilt and shame (Cohen 1971; Gilligan 2000). Comparisons to others who appear able to take advantage of the new dispensation, particularly black South Africans who have met with success and migrants from around Africa, give rise to questions regarding their own worth and encourage a sense of insecurity (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009). These responses represent another layer of hardship in the everyday experience of the challenges in the township, whether violence is taken into account or not.

In the narratives we present here, participants discuss their attempts to take control of their situations. Building on earlier discussions of the relationship between ongoing socioeconomic marginalisation and violence, this chapter delves into participants' expressions of their conflicting desires for state intervention and for autonomy from the state in this regard. A product of transitional arrangements, this relationship to the state, among other factors, informs the range of strategies we will outline in Chapter 5.

###  Older Participants on Self-Discipline and Guilt

Our interviews with older participants, especially Khulumani members, tended to begin with them asserting that young people are the main actors in violence in Khayelitsha. In line with many others (2, 5, 7(m), 9, 16, 19, 30, 35(m), 42, 45), a member remarked, "We cannot run away from the fact that it is our own children and grandchildren who are doing this to the community" (15). Many suggested that youth violence has gone beyond the usual 'naughtiness' of that age group, as we noted in Chapter 3, and that it has increased in frequency and intensity since the democratic transition (8, 13, 25, 26, 34, 35(m), 54, 69(m), G2). This is reflected in another member's observation that "violence has risen compared to before—our children kill, they rob" (8). Several interpreted post-apartheid violence as figuratively and literally directed against elders, with a 90-year-old woman stating, "After the oppression the youth turned against us" (13), and a 79-year-old man commenting, "Our children hate us here. It seems like it would be better for them if we were not here and they were the only ones staying here" (21). As this section shows, interviews with older participants suggest that government interventions are preventing parents and grandparents from instilling respect and self-discipline in youth, with the result that young people are increasingly emotionally fragile and unable to take responsibility for their own well-being, let alone that of others. This narrative is complicated by a sense of personal failure and guilt towards young people that is also present in the interviews.

To begin with, older participants across the board argued that children and young people are disrespectful and disobedient towards adults in their households, neighbourhoods and schools (1, 2, 3, 6, 7(m), 8, 13, 17, 26, 30, 31, 32(m), 34, 36, 41(m), 42, 54, G1). Whereas most young people used to respect and obey not only their family members but also other elders in the community, participants said, they now tend to ignore older people, refuse to assist with everyday tasks or contribute to household income, and even insult their elders by saying they are ignorant or uneducated, when not being violent towards them (1, 5, 6, 8, 13, 17, 26, 30, 32(m), 34, 54). This shift, the interviewees suggested, has made young people more susceptible to the negative influence of certain of their peers in the township. Echoing the participant in Chapter 3 who pointed out that youth "get other teachers from outside" the home (6), a Khulumani member said, "Our children do not listen to us. The teachings we see among our children are from the streets, which will take them nowhere" (26). "They will not learn from me," observed another member, "they say that those are the old ways" (1). A third said, "Girls do not listen, they are more concerned with boys, and boys are concerned with girls. They don't care about what we say. They say our brains are small, that they are the ones with big brains because we are uneducated—they are not afraid to tell us that" (13).

A number of older participants suggested that a major cause of the difference in behaviour is a move away from corporal punishment in schools as well as homes over the past two decades (1, 8, 26, 34(m), 35(m), 40(m), 41(m), G1). According to a Khulumani member,

We were guided by parents instilling discipline to add to the school teachings, and we welcomed those. We have reached this age because we listened to parents. Yes, there was oppression, but we did not have hunger under the oppression because we were ploughing fields and doing everything. Respect among children is the first thing. We were raised under respect by our parents. I knew that, although we were grown girls, I was disciplined at home in this particular way. If outsiders saw that my behaviour was like that of a skollie, my family name would be mentioned—"the way she behaves herself is not like her parents." You were afraid of dragging your family name in the mud. We are thankful for that because we are now here, we have our own children because of respect. (26)

These participants indicated that corporal punishment is crucial to instilling respect and discipline in children and youth, and mirrored other South Africans in noting that it is in fact a form of caring and caregiving (Payet and Franchi 2008). Recalling being punished by her mother as a girl, one participant said,

When she beat me I did not see abuse, because she was disciplining me. She used to sit down with me and say, "Today I am a mother, I have my children and grandchildren. I obeyed the rules, now I am able to live independently. I am preparing you so that when you get married you can be independent. If a man sees you he can see that this child is from a home, she is independent." My mother used to say, "You can't even work because you are sleeping all the time. In order for you to be reasonable you must first listen to me, my child." (40(m))

The argument in these narratives is that the democratic government is undermining elders' authority and ability to provide care to youth by banning corporal punishment. Since the political transition, the government has indeed committed itself to protecting children's rights through international and regional instruments, the constitution and domestic legislation. This has included the incremental criminalisation of corporal punishment in schools, alternative care settings and the justice system, and most recently in the home, where previously the defence of 'reasonable chastisement' could be used (Makwetla 2018). Older participants asserted that because of "the new legislation that we must not beat them" (26) and "because the children of today have rights that come from the government," they "have total disregard for us" (40(m)). Explaining the rise in youth violence in the township, a participant noted, "You can't hit a child in your house or tell them 'no.' They will get you arrested for abuse. That is the reason, because the government brought freedom. Children are free" (35(m)). A Khulumani member similarly stated, "The children we had in the past listened. Children these days can open a case against you to be arrested because they say they are free.... Children are not afraid of anybody" (8). The message is that young people in the township have a strong sense of their rights, which they learn about in school and from each other, and deploy these rights to evade their caregivers' guidance and discipline (8, 26, 32(m), 34(m), 35(m), 40(m), 41(m), 42, G1).

In addition to making young people more susceptible to peer pressure, these participants said, lack of corporal punishment as a tool and a viable threat makes it difficult for elders to teach young people the self-discipline to grow into capable, independent adults and to succeed in life, given the obstacles and dangers discussed in the chapters above. Lack of self-discipline, some indicated, means that young people today are not as strong as they were at their age, in terms of both self-control and emotional fortitude. "Our children grow up very weak, fragile," said one participant, adding,

It is difficult for a child to go search for job. When they go to interviews, you find they make mistakes there, it is even difficult to speak English because discipline starts at home and moves to school. They did not listen to me as a parent and did not listen to the teachers. During the interview the child does not know a thing, it is difficult to answer questions. Now if employed, if by luck they pass the interview, they are late for work, they are not used to waking up early. (40(m))

A Khulumani member, meanwhile, observed,

Our children, especially our grandchildren, they don't think as far ahead as we did. Once they see that there is nothing to eat at home, they go out there and smoke tik. Some drink alcohol. Others take pills and commit suicide, because they are not like us. They cannot stand this poverty. That is why they end up getting into trouble and ending up in jail. You hear that they have stolen something. Once the child sees the situation, they feel they cannot cope with it. "I am only going to school once and tomorrow there is no money." The child stresses. They are not as strong as us. They just think and do. They are not coping with this poverty. (G1)

A number of older participants highlighted the anger and despair they perceive among young people in the township, and the apparent inability among youth to cope with these emotions or envision a better future. "Our children are all the same," remarked a Khulumani member, "they cannot conjure up ideas because of hunger, poverty, and disparity and disunity" (4). "It does something to children if the child sees you hungry, their mother, they lose hope in life," said another (9). Several pointed out that "a hungry nation is an angry nation" (50(m)), with a member stating, "They see us as still struggling, which makes them angry and hurts their spirit and they end up doing things" (G1). Another participant commented, "They leave their homes with anger, they come to vent their anger on innocent people" (7(m)). A Khulumani member echoed this observation, stating, "People here are angry that they grew up with their parents struggling. That is something that makes them violent and drives them to rob people" (47). "The sequel to all this," said another, "is that they make the lives of other people miserable" (3).

"The anger is towards what happened, the segregation," argued a Khulumani member. "It comes from that, because the children grew up knowing that their parents were oppressed by the boers, the same boers who are now in a better position. That is especially the case here in the Western Cape" (47). Building on the narratives in Chapter 1, a number of older participants located the source of young people's hopelessness and anger in their awareness of ongoing racialised inequality and the government's failure or unwillingness to address it. Describing oppression under apartheid, another member observed that "the youth seem to carry that struggle on their shoulders and seem to have anger and hatred towards white people" (33). Referencing the inequality youth have inherited, a third Khulumani member said, "They do not have proper influence because their mothers themselves didn't have it. They did not have influence. That is why these children are like this. They were brought up from their mother's foundation, under their mother's stressful conditions. 'My parents voted to suffer, we must sleep without food at home'" (36). "Children have anger based on the fact that there are things that we are supposed to get. But they skip us. Only certain people benefit from them," noted an interviewee (G1).

Several members in the Khulumani member focus group used the term 'trauma' in discussing young people, asserting that they have been traumatised by their older family members' stories and experiences of apartheid and, on top of that, by the consequences of lack of social transformation in the country (G1) (see also Adonis 2017). In this, they echoed the literature on historical trauma, which posits that younger generations within families that are part of a historically disadvantaged group may suffer secondary trauma. This occurs, first, through exposure to the ways older generations cope, or do not cope, with their primary trauma and, second, through the discrimination and socioeconomic marginalisation that tend to be legacies of systemic subjugation (Danieli 1998; Sotero 2006). A Khulumani member worked with similar ideas in arguing,

The children we gave birth to were born under hatred—hatred that makes it difficult to focus on where we go from here. There is clearly something that is messing with our brains as black people, because once the child completes grade 12, before you even say that you are tired or you don't have money to pay for further studies, the child tells you that they will take a gap year. While the child is taking a gap year, they encounter certain things. She might fall pregnant. It does not matter whether it is a boy or girl. You notice that the boy who used to wake up and make tea for you is no longer taking a bath and that is when he starts taking drugs. (42)

This observation that young people turn to substance use as a way to cope with their emotional responses to conditions in the township—so that they "do not have any thoughts" (13)—was echoed by other older participants. "They turn to drugs to try and erase what is bothering them," said a Khulumani member, "the child turns to alcohol to erase what is on their mind" (G1). "They don't see anything else that can make them happy," remarked another. "They find happiness by drinking alcohol and doing drugs. Our children don't know happiness nowadays" (42). Participants highlighted that, as detailed in Chapter 3, substance use can quickly turn into substance dependence and eventually heighten the challenges young people already face.

In the end, older participants said, young people, including those who do not turn to substance use, do not seem equipped to take responsibility for improving their own lives, let alone take care of elderly members of their household. Instead, they rely on elders to support them, and often also to raise their children. Indeed, a large number of participants reported that several generations in their household rely on a Khulumani member's older persons grant (1, 4, 6, 13, 22(m), 24, 28, 36, 42, 37(y), 53, 55(y), 56(y), 57(y), 61(y), 64(y), 66(y), G1, G2). "Our children are not like us," said one member, recalling the oppression she struggled against under apartheid. "We hung in there and gave birth to them. Then they gave birth to their children. Those children depend on us even though we are as old as we are" (G1). Outlining how she stretches her grant to cover her household's needs, another member said, "I am unable to buy the things they wear because I must buy food. The money I am receiving is very little, 1,400 rand is very little, because I buy food to eat, I must also use it for my health, I must also buy electricity, pay rent, buy clothing for myself" (53). As one participant summarised it,

They take their responsibilities and shove them onto their parents, as if their parents are the ones who are supposed to take care of them. They say it's this apartheid that led to the situation today. They don't think about what they are supposed to do as young people. I would say they did not get influenced in a positive way [by the democratic transition]. They were influenced in a negative way because they don't want to take responsibility for their own lives. (G1)

Reflecting on the initiative and independence of her generation, a Khulumani member noted, "We used to pick up our bags and go search for a job. These children cannot do that. Girls are dependent on men. Boys are cheeky and all that at work because they do not have a good foundation from the start. It is over for them" (40(m)). Another member flatly stated, "They don't want to work because they are surviving through us—they take our money" (21). Several pointed out that the burden of worrying about young people in their families contributes to Khulumani members' health problems, aggravating the apartheid-era wounds some carry (21, 26, 34, 36, 53).

Describing young people's perceived lack of self-discipline and self-reliance, many of these participants conveyed frustration and contempt. "The children of the '80s are spoilt," said one (40(m)), while another declared, "The youth after 1994, they do not deserve the freedom and the democracy that they have, they are disrespectful and ungrateful" (32(m)). "Comparing the youth of today and the youth of that time, I see that really they had something that they wanted to do about their lives that time, there was a difference," noted a third participant (69(m)). A Khulumani member, meanwhile, remarked, "I do not see anything they are doing with this freedom. What I see is that they continue to be a nuisance. They are not like the children of past years" (8).

Such expressions of frustration extended to older participants' perceptions concerning the limited social engagement of today's youth. While Khulumani members and other older participants discussed their participation in the struggle and in activism and various neighbourhood activities today, in addition to voting, they noted that youth do not participate in community affairs in the same way. "That time, it gave older people something to fight for. It gave them something to wake up for every day. They had a challenge. These days, young people have the challenge of poverty and not being educated. It doesn't give them that drive of wanting to conquer and study. Instead it gives them the attitude of not caring," noted a Khulumani member (G1). One concrete example that came up in the interviews is young people's lack of interest in Khulumani. A member noted that after she returns from Khulumani meetings, her grandchildren say, "'Oh grandmother, you always attend these meetings for nothing'" (53). Another recalled that young people in her household say, "'We went to that thing about oppression in the past. No, man! You won't get anything from that. No, we won't go back'" (1).

Despite their frustration, older participants wondered in the interviews whether they could have done more over the years to help their children and grandchildren find hope and a positive vision of the future towards which to work. Some of the comments in this vein suggest that older participants, particularly Khulumani members, feel a sense of responsibility and guilt for the conditions in which young people are living. One aspect they noted is young people's lack of awareness of South African history and their place in it. "They are not free in their minds," said a Khulumani member. "We didn't make them understand that there was a reason why apartheid happened" (G1). Describing watching how young people behave, another member remarked, "You end up saying—I was also saying this these past weeks—'Lord, why don't you take me?' But you see that leaving them is not right, this is not reasonable because I am going to leave them in that state." She added, "When you hear about the things going on outside, you feel like changing your child or maybe still being pregnant with them so that you can still carry them" (34). A third member said simply, "I feel a lot of pain about our kids that we will leave behind" (36). This sense of responsibility for young people, or a general sense of having failed them, appears to be a source of the narratives around corporal punishment in interviews with older participants.

Here, the democratic government bears blame for preventing elders from teaching youth self-discipline and coping skills, just as it bears blame for the laxity of the justice system, as we discussed in Chapter 3. This is captured in one interviewee's assertion that "it is the government to blame because everything is freedom" (35(m)). Yet, even as older participants made these arguments, some admitted that they have personally used corporal punishment with young people in their households and that it did not 'improve' their behaviour. "They have more rights than necessary, because when you are a human being born to another human being, discipline starts at home," said a Khulumani member, before admitting, "But we do discipline children. In most cases teachings from the streets outplay our discipline, even though such teachings will take them nowhere. Some of us do discipline them, but that slips through" (26). The same participant who laid blame at the feet of government above noted,

Most of the time, the child, you discipline the child and then they go out there. You will never teach a child to smoke [drugs], but you find that your child is smoking whereas you sent the child to school. Violence starts there. If the child is your child, you give them chores in the house. You maybe tell the child to wash the dishes and cook. Then you find that the child is not doing the chores, and that is the beginning of not listening to you. The child goes out there and becomes worse, having started by not listening to you. (35(m))

The high rates of violence against children in South African homes (Jamieson, Mathews and Röhrs 2018), and participants' own observations regarding domestic violence, also outlined in Chapter 3, suggest that corporal punishment is still widely practiced in participants' households and neighbourhoods. The question then emerges why older participants say that government interventions have put a stop to corporal punishment, and why these interventions emerge as a central explanation for intergenerational problems in Khulumani households and the township. We will attempt to answer this question below, after looking at young participants' responses to inequality and violence.

###  Young Participants on Striving and Shame

Despite older participants' assertions that young people dismiss their views and teachings, the interviews indicate that young participants agree with much of their analysis of youth behaviour. A few fully share their views, such as a 24-year-old woman who stated, "Old people are telling the truth, it us the youth who are doing this. It is not like before. They were good people" (51(y)). The majority communicate a less uniform view of the youth in Khayelitsha, however, and suggest a broader range of explanations for their actions. Young participants highlight ways in which individuals' personal circumstances across time shape their attitudes, noting that "we are not the same" (46(y)) and that "we are different and we think differently" (66(y)). While also arguing that government interventions have created an enabling environment for violence, they spend more time discussing structural barriers to life opportunities and how they are underpinned by racism, as well as how these challenges are heightened by difficult intergenerational dynamics in their households that inspire feelings of anger and shame. These narratives express disillusionment with political participation and community mobilisation and, especially, government indifference.

As noted, a number of young participants joined older interviewees in arguing that youth awareness of human rights and the criminalisation of corporal punishment have led to young people being disrespectful and increasingly violent. "There is no respect," said a young participant, "because we tell ourselves that these people will not beat us. If they dare beat us we will get them arrested.... [In the past] there was respect. You respected your elders because you knew that you will be beaten and there is nowhere to go after you get a hiding. Now you know that if the person hits you then you run to the police station" (64(y)). Another emphasised changes that followed the democratic transition: "From what I have heard, it is like rates of crime and violence were not as high during the apartheid era as now. It is worse in the democratic era. I don't know if maybe we use our rights too much in the wrong way or if it's because of too much hunger, but it is not like it was under apartheid" (61(y)). "Nowadays there is too much freedom," said a third young participant, adding,

There aren't any restrictive laws compared to back then. Back then, when our parents tell us, they say that there were many laws compared to now. Nowadays children have rights. Parents cannot discipline their children because they are scared that certain rights will not allow them to discipline their children. That is why children are out of line. It is because they are not disciplined compared to back then. When they tell us, they say that back then there was a time when people did not leave the house. Nowadays a 10-year-old can sleep on the street and mug people. So in their time there were many laws compared to our time. Since they were oppressed, they obeyed the law more than us.... If they had been part of the laws that came into effect after 1994 for democracy, if parents had been involved in the negotiations, then I think a lot of things would not be allowed as they are now. Parents would be able to discipline their children. (77(y))

As in the previous section, this interviewee links the perceived laxity of today's justice system with elders' inability to discipline and thereby care for children, suggesting that claiming their rights enables young people to behave badly. "It is the rights that corrupt us, it is these rights," declared another young participant. Discussing teenage pregnancy, including her own, she added, "The person that came with the rights should see that teenage pregnancy is high. He should decide what he can do to curb teenage pregnancy. It is government that came up with the rights. It is government that will change the rights to decrease teenage pregnancy" (64(y)). "Even if our parents tell us 'no,' we don't listen because we have too many rights as children," suggested a young interviewee, adding that rights "are not good. They are spoiling us." Asked what can be done about this problem, she responded, "Um, talk to the government to be harsh towards us. Even if we smoke or if we are violent we don't stay in jail. We get released and continue doing what we were doing in the community" (37(y)). While this aspect of the narratives is similar to what older participants discussed, the youth interviews generally focused less on the role of government and more on the interplay of structural and interpersonal dynamics.

Young participants suggested that a range of household dynamics play a role in the development of self-control and emotional resilience, aside from corporal punishment. Many focused on the degree of attention, affection and love children receive at home, alongside the domestic modelling of violent behaviour noted in Chapter 3. Referring to youth violence, a young woman argued, "I can say, when I look at it, that their parents did not have time for them," adding, "A person has anger.... If you can ask them, 'Why are you doing this?' 'No! My mother did not care for me,' or, 'My parents did not have time for me. So now I am making time for me so that someone else can give me an opportunity. When I am robbing a person it is revenge for my parents who did not take care of me'" (59(y)). Another noted, "It depends on the treatment at home, how your parent treats you. Some children get it from home and take it out to other children" (7(m)). Explaining why he stopped being involved in crime and violence, a young man said, "I am too much of a coward and I have parents who love me, I kind of ran away from situations like that" (G2). "Parents like putting pressure on children," observed a participant. "Inequality destroys the youth and the parents complain that the youth are using drugs, but they forget that they put pressure on children that leads to drugs and all that" (67(y)).

Young interviewees highlighted a need for more and better communication between generations in the home, noting that elders in their households tend not to have honest, in-depth conversations with them. According to one,

Some families are unable to encourage children, showing them a future. Especially with black people, it is not easy for your parent to sit down with you and ask you what you intend to do in life so that they also know the direction the child intends to take—"let me try even if I do not earn that much"—because there are those parents who do not have jobs at all—"but let me try to encourage my child to tolerate schooling so that they can also see in the future that perseverance brought something." Maybe the crime rate would decrease if we could be encouraged by our parents. (69(m))

Other young participants agreed, noting, "Parents must be able to sit with their children and children must be able to approach their parents when they have problems" (61(y)), and, "There should be a parent–child communication. Parents and children should be able to communicate openly so the parent can be aware of what is bothering the child" (77(y)). They indicated that improved communication would foster greater understanding between the generations, lamenting, for example, that "elders blame youth for no reason" because "if they were our age they would not do any better,... they don't feel the pressure we feel, we live in a modern world" (67(y)), and noting that they "wish a parent could put themselves in the shoes of youth" (59(y)).

Ultimately, however, young participants conveyed a profound sense of defeat and self-blame, which they linked to their lack of economic success despite constant striving, and specifically to not being able to provide for elders in their households. A young woman who is involved in substance use and violence, after admitting her parents are largely raising her children on their social grants, lamented, "I am causing problems for my parents. There are always cases and I get beaten a lot. Every week there is a new case against me and they need to pay from their social grant money. I am causing problems for them.... If I could stop doing this my parents could be free from it and there wouldn't be this poverty at home" (55(y)). She mentioned that the stress she brings into the household has made her parents ill, echoing several young participants (37(y), 38(y), 55(y), 60(y), 64(y)). Another young woman said, "We stress our parents by doing the things we do. They are sick. They have high blood pressure and stress because of us" (37(y)).

Many young interviewees shared narratives of responsibility and remorse, whether they engaged in crime or avoided it. "When I was at school," said one, "I told myself that I need to try to live my own life on my own and work, make life better for my mother, like they were working for us before. While my mother was growing up, she also had dreams, but there were no opportunities at that time. So now I am supposed to make life better for my father and mother, so that they can be proud of me" (44(m)). "I feel a lot of pain because I thought I would be further along by this time," confessed another participant. "But it was not to be. What is done by the youth makes me suffer because me, I am also in it, because I am sitting around, I am not working. I thought by now my mother would be better off because I would be doing everything, everything for her. But I can't because there are no jobs. I feel a lot of pain" (58(y)). A young man reflected on the sacrifices he made to ensure his family escaped poverty, and his feeling that he had failed:

What is happening to me as a youth, once you see poverty and your parent struggling to feed you, the nine children at home, and you are the eldest, you study and make it to grade 12. Once you complete grade 12, you don't think about going to university because if you go to varsity what will the family have for dinner? So what you need to do is draft a CV and look for places you can volunteer until you find a job from that. You then start working. Once you start working, you won't be working for yourself. You work so that you can be the husband to the mother who raised you. So, you find that we, the eldest children, cannot further our education because you need to work and when you come home from work you need to buy groceries. You need to see to it that your mother can at least be able to do other things. You take off some of her load. You help her in educating the kids, feeding the kids, because you are now the eldest. You forget about yourself. You no longer think about studying. You think about these children. They need to be the ones who go to school. They will be somebody one day. You have hope that they will free you. But then you realise that even the children are struggling with school because you need to have money to go to work and buy food. The children don't go to school well. They don't study well because they go to school hungry. They don't get bursaries even when they make it to tertiary. (G1)

Through such narratives, young participants indicated that, despite what older participants said, they have a vision for a better future and seek to accept responsibility for improving their lives and those of members of their household. They also shared, however, a sense of the insurmountability of the challenges this responsibility presents and the depth of the fatigue they feel from trying to overcome them.

Discussing these challenges, young participants agreed with older ones that apartheid and its legacies are the source of the structural barriers they face, and of emotional upheaval among youth. As one put it with regard to our research, "When I heard that we are being called for interviews, I grabbed the opportunity with both hands. I had that feeling that my mom or the government will know about the anger and the bitterness I have towards apartheid" (G1). They highlighted racialised inequality and lack of life opportunities, indicating that the anger and shame of being unable to change the situation contributes to violence. Several young participants observed that "people who live in poverty are short-tempered, people who live in poverty are irritable" (67(y)), largely because they "are disturbed by not having anything to do" (73(y)). One said, "Lack of education on its own causes poverty. I think the anger of not being educated causes crime" (G2). Another noted, "The major thing in the community is unemployment, and it causes anger most of the time as a result of having nothing to do. You look at someone and think they are better than you because they wake up in the morning [for work]" (60(y)). In this, they echoed research on violence as an outcome of the shame and self-doubt associated with not being able to achieve economic success, particularly in contexts where the promise of socioeconomic equality, inclusivity and progress appears to shine a spotlight on individual failings (Young 2003; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009; Agnew 2012).

Young interviewees diverged from older ones in focusing far more on racism, however, and presenting an almost uniformly negative view of white South Africans and their role in perpetuating inequality. As Chapter 1 shows, older participants, and particularly Khulumani members, were clear in their analysis of racialised inequality as a key obstacle to social transformation. Yet, they were more ambivalent in their attitude towards individual white South Africans, making comments such as, "White people had good hearts, they did not watch you when you say you are hungry, especially when you are a woman" (36), and, "Some white people loved us when we lived with them in their houses and our mothers worked for them, they loved us" (47). Young participants, meanwhile, discussed white South Africans' racism and desire to maintain apartheid, even though it is more hidden since the advent of democracy. "White people were racist towards black people back in the day and they still are," said one (39(y)). Others noted, "The white people, they live a luxury life like before, they still criticise us, they still have power over us like they did over our mothers and fathers" (79(y)), and, "If you bump into a white person they tell you that you smell.... They are still the same as before, they are oppressive" (55(y)).

Young interviewees were also explicit in expressing their alienation from and by white South Africans despite the changes wrought by democracy, emphasising the sense of inferiority and self-doubt instilled by racialised inequality. "We fear white people," said one, "we still have fear towards white people. We are scared to approach them or associate ourselves with them" (G2). "Sometimes people look down on themselves," noted another, "and so can't communicate with people from different cultures. People sometimes think they cannot communicate with people from other racial backgrounds. Sometimes people from other races look down on certain places" (77(y)). A third young participant recalled, "There is a document that we saw about a man called Willie Lynch. It says that he can oppress a black person so much that the poverty the black person experiences will last around 200 years—to fear the white person and admire the white person and want to be like him. I think that is such an important point" (G1). A review of statements regarding race-based discrimination in previous chapters shows that it is largely young participants who assert that "there is still racism" (64(y)) and highlight the extent to which it oppresses them materially and mentally and affects them emotionally (39(y), 46(y), 55(y), 58(y), 60(y), 64(y), 66(y), 67(y), 75(y), 77(y), G1, G2).

Discussing the cumulative effects of structural barriers and racism, particularly in relation to their effects on household dynamics, young participants echoed older ones in noting that young people often turn to alcohol and drugs to manage their emotional responses. "Some try to stay in one place and cope with everything," observed a young participant, "other people cannot. They end up doing drugs to forget the stress" (67(y)). The need for escape was confirmed by young participants who themselves engaged in substance use:

The thing that is eating me inside is this issue of not working. I need employment. So when I smoke I stop thinking. (74(y))

My God, when I was smoking I did not think about problems at home, work and other things. I felt all right and thought I was doing the right thing. (37(y))

I feel happy like I am in another world. I don't listen to anyone at home after I smoke. Smoking is the one thing that makes me happy. (55(y))

These interviewees also agreed that young people are far less socially engaged than their elders. As we discussed in Chapter 1, young participants suggested that political participation is pointless, as the government is unresponsive. Many demonstrated a lack of interest in voting and talked about the limited effect of long-standing tactics of calling government to account. A number of young participants also indicated that they are not interested in local affairs and do not attend community meetings. "Here in Khayelitsha, we do not care as youth," said one (76(y)). "The councillors tell us about one thing, which is that we don't even attend meetings to hear what has been said," noted another. "They say we are supposed to be there and hear what is said. You just feel defeated, because really we don't attend those meetings. It depends also on how we treat each other even in those places we meet in. In some places they take issues for granted. They don't take the matter you are raising seriously" (66(y)). A third young participant similarly stated, "If a meeting is called the youth does not attend. You will find that it is the adults who attend meetings." She discussed young people's sense of fatigue and disengagement, including her own:

I don't know, the youth of this place, they are discouraging. I will say they do not want to change because if you were attending meetings regularly you would hear. They will attend today and be absent tomorrow. It is cold today but you will find that old people are present in the meeting although it is cold. So we can also try to attend meetings. If they say there will be a meeting, we should attend the whole week so that we can hear what is being discussed. Maybe they do not want to change or they are tired because they have been promised many things, that we will have these developments, but it doesn't materialise and they are sitting in the township, they are not working. (46(y))

In reference to trying to bring about change, one interviewee noted, "You will get fed up doing something that is not going anywhere" (64(y)).

While young and older participants demonstrated different degrees of political engagement, their narratives are similar in continually circling around the responsibilities of the democratic government. A close reading indicates that the state is simultaneously absent and heavily present in the interviews. We suggest that this paradox in the narratives emerges from unmet expectations of the transition and the question of what kind of agency participants can and do have, individual or collective, in relation to post-apartheid interpretations of democratic freedom.

###  Seeking Agency amid Structural Barriers

As we noted in Chapter 1, participants across the board say they expected their families' lives to change with the political transition. "What we thought is that things would change when black people came to power," said a Khulumani member (16). This section shows, however, that the changes that occurred were not the expected ones. While the democratic government instituted widespread reforms after 1994, participants assert that these did not deal with racialised inequality or interrupt the intergenerational transmission of poverty for the majority of the population. Moreover, the reforms were accompanied by economic liberalisation, which aggravated their existing challenges and gave rise to new ones. The interviews suggest that a growing reliance on wage labour and the perceived rise of a culture of competition and corruption in the country have left participants, especially young ones, with a sense of isolation in the face of continuing socioeconomic oppression.

As detailed in Chapter 2, South Africa's growing focus on capital-intensive industries and production at the expense of labour-intensive ones has contributed to a job market that privileges educated and skilled workers (Bhorat et al. 2014). At the same time, the relatively high cost of quality primary and secondary education and the difficulties of accessing and remaining in tertiary education prevent many black South Africans from gaining the education and skills the market largely requires (Spaull 2015; van Broekhuizen, van der Berg and Hofmeyr 2016). The limited and poor social facilities available in the township do little to fill the gaps in training and other forms of support that might assist residents in accessing education and employment (Khayelitsha Commission 2014). Urbanisation encouraged by the shrinkage of subsistence farming and certain labour-intensive industries, combined with the inflow of migrants from other countries after apartheid, among other factors, has created more pressure on social facilities, urban farmland and other resources in the township (Simkins and Fonkam 2018; Altbeker 2008).

Participants noted that these developments are fortifying structural barriers. In line with Altbeker's (2008) discussion of how apartheid policies increased black South Africans' reliance on wage labour, which has only been exacerbated by economic liberalisation in recent decades, participants focused on their households' shift away from farming as a way of life. This shift serves as a symbol of participants' inability to change their situation, despite continual striving and self-sacrifice. "The difference during the apartheid era was that our people were able to do things for themselves," observed a participant. "Now people are unable to do things for themselves, they are only dependent on jobs, jobs that are not available" (22(m)). In a similar vein, a young interviewee said, "In the past, people worked on their own. They had no time for the government. They were doing their own things.... The problem is that now the community is forced to be dependent, because it is not like before, the solution lies with the government" (58(y)). In these narratives, the democratic government has placed participants in a dilemma, implementing policies that promote wage labour while inhibiting their access to that very form of labour. Even if they desire to be autonomous of the state, participants said, they are now largely forced to wait for government to address the dilemma it has created. "It is mostly government that is to blame because they have everything," argued one interviewee. "For example, you can't have anything, everything comes from the government. The government is the reason all these things are not happening" (35(m)). The government's interventions in this regard, which participants see mainly as taking the form of social assistance, keep their heads just above water even as its other interventions contribute to the flood that threatens to drown them.

Khulumani members frequently brought up the government's calls for ordinary citizens to "arise and act," or vuk'uzenzele in isiXhosa and isiZulu. They suggested that these and other such calls, which urge people to help themselves and each other to improve their lives, are disingenuous. The slogan vuk'uzenzele emerged in the early 2000s as part of the ANC's Letsema campaign, which used traditional South African concepts to encourage volunteerism in all sectors of society with the aim of building a "better life for all." At the time, some critiqued the campaign as an effort to distract the public from the government's poor job creation record and to shift the responsibility for addressing inequality and poverty away from the state (Twala 2004). While the concept is less in the public eye than it used to be, Khulumani members discussed their willingness to act according to the principle of vuk'uzenzele. Using examples from their local experiences, they observed, however, that the government does not support vuk'uzenzele, despite its rhetoric, and in fact places obstacles in its way that aggravate larger economic impediments.

"The government now says vuk'uzenzele, meaning wake up and do things for yourself," said a Khulumani member. "It says vuk'uzenzele. This teaches us that we must plant in our gardens so that we can eat vegetables. In the old days, you would plant mealies and wait for six months for them to grow. Now you can plant spinach, but the water we are using, we pay for.... There are laws, and you need to irrigate using water, and you must pay for the water" (5). "Government says we must do things for ourselves," noted another. "So when you now do something for yourself the very same government sends police. When you sell liquor you get arrested and your stock is confiscated. When you sell vegetables on the street, it is under extremely hot conditions, the sun burns you, and the government doesn't provide a place for these people to sell their products" (12). Others argued, "Government says we must do things for ourselves, but this is lip service because they don't provide items to start the initiative, we cannot do something for ourselves without some basic support" (36), and, "You try to listen out for projects—'here is a group of women doing something'—you listen for that and realise that you cannot join. Even when you have joined you find that there is no solution in that project because you need to start in with money. You don't even have money to start it" (G1).

Discussing their enforced reliance on the state, participants of all ages noted that a culture of competition emerged with economic liberalisation, which has contributed to a growing sense of disunity among ordinary citizens, particularly black South Africans. As we noted in Chapter 2, most interviewees said that since 1994, more and more people look out only for themselves and their family and associates (5, 6, 13, 17, 26, 31, 32(m), 33, 34, 36, 39(y), 42, 47, 53, 54, 64(y), 66(y), 69(m), 76(y), 77(y), 78(y), G1, G2). "Today oppression is within us," asserted a Khulumani member. "Those who have cannot share with others.... Before, when you had something you would share with another who does not have anything—that made them feel like a human being among other human beings" (6). "We are not together," said another. "If we were together, united—there can be changes, when there is unity—but now one is going this way and another that way, we are not together" (13). A third Khulumani member noted,

If I live a better life and I see that another person does not have much, then I don't take her seriously. I don't help the person and become this conceited person since I have things she does not have. The person lives in poverty right before my eyes, but I don't help her with anything. What is the reason for that?... In other cases you may help the person who is hungry and then the person turns around and says, "Yoh! What is up with her? Why is she going on as though I need her to survive? Why is she giving me her old food?" (17)

While acknowledging that neighbours had differences during apartheid, including in terms of income level (see Dlamini 2009), these participants suggested that growing inequality is causing deeper rifts within their communities (see Altbeker 2008).

Young participants also discussed inequality and disunity among black South Africans, but were more vocal in lamenting the absence of a common identity and purpose they believe their parents and grandparents had before the transition. "We do not care for what will happen tomorrow like before," said a young man. "In the past old people were doing things for the future because they were struggling for freedom, for people to live equally" (38(y)). "People do not trust one another," observed a young woman. "I wish people could go back. Aside from the issue that they were oppressed, they must just think about the love they had.... Let us bring back love and cooperating. I wish people could love one another—she is your mother although not your biological mother, an older person is your father.... I wish people could bring love again in good way rather than a bad way of not protecting one another" (59(y)). "Our parents say they used to share," noted another, adding that now "it's hard to even go ask for food from your neighbour because they wouldn't give you food... the anger and hatred starts there" (66(y)). Discussing her parents and grandparents, a young participant said,

They didn't have opportunities like us. At the same time they had a life where they were. I don't want to say they were freer than us. I don't know how to put it, but they were free in a way. For example, these days you cannot walk at night freely without feeling scared. They had unity and looked after each other. If you were black, you would look after another black person. These days people don't have that spirit of building each other or working together. As for them, they were one: helping each other, growing together and having a common goal. Now we are all divided and everyone is trying to do their thing without supporting the next person. (G2)

Beyond disunity, some young participants noted an active desire among residents to tear each other down. They associated it with the democratic period. "It is among us as black people," argued one, "we don't want to see other black people progressing in life. We are oppressing each other. That's what I see. It's hard for them to even tell others about available opportunities. They would only take their family member and not care about others. To them it's cool as long as they eat in their homes and no one within their families is suffering. People don't think about others anymore" (66(y)). "You cannot even open a stand to sell fruit and vegetables," noted another. "When you do this, you are making yourself an enemy in the community, because later they are going to come and demand this fruit and vegetable money, the very same friends.... This is poverty. If you have something that needs to be bought, it must be taken from you because you cannot have money while others don't" (57(y)).

A number of young interviewees suggested that this is due in part to government officials and other economically successful individuals modelling corrupt and thereby violent behaviour (39(y), 44(m), 67(y), 77(y), 78(y), G2). As one put it, problematic behaviour emerges from not having "role models to look up to" (77(y)). "I would say it all starts from elders, what you see as a kid you see from the elder," said a young woman (G2), while another noted, "In order to do something you learn from someone else. You don't do something for the fun of it. You do something knowing that you are looking up to someone. If our role models were good people everything would be all right, but the people we look up to are not good people. Yes, we face a lot of corruption" (78(y)). Observing that "politicians have an influence," one participant argued that when youth see corruption at all levels of government, they ask, "What is the use of us doing the right thing?" (67(y)). "We can start with the presidents," said a young man, "the people who are in power here in South Africa. We learn violence from them.... They steal money and promise us things.... As the youth, we learn that from government, because of the money they spend on themselves. The money does not get to us." He concluded, "That is how we learn to be violent, it is from them" (39(y)).

It is important to note that the interviews, of course, include plenty of references to close relationships and mutual support within Khulumani families and among residents of Khayelitsha. The overarching narrative is, nevertheless, one of loss and increasing isolation. It is strongest among young participants. Unlike older participants, young interviewees discussed the possibility of working by themselves and with no one else to change their lives, making comments such as, "It all depends on you as an individual, you can tell yourself that you are going to do this and that with your life" (G2), and, "You do not have to wait for the opportunity, you can create your own opportunity" (59(y)). More commonly, however, they indicated that the dilemmas of the democratic period have left them adrift and rudderless. "Now we are free, but we are confused about what we want," said one young woman (G2). Another noted, "When we hear that we are free, it's like we are free to do anything, anything we like, with our lives and with our bodies. We are destroying our lives. We say we are free but I don't see it as freedom" (66(y)). "The government never checked what young people thought of freedom after we voted," remarked a third. "Yes, we are free, but what are we supposed to do as 'free people'?" (G1).

This question gives some indication of why participants' narratives repeatedly circle around the role of government. The interviews suggest that participants feel stuck between the desire for government to meet their needs and, in the absence of that, the desire for government to leave them alone to organise themselves as black South Africans did in the past, even though they are aware that the state is fulfilling neither desire and likely never will. Corporal punishment bans in this context appear as a symbol of the oppressive and hindering presence of the democratic government and its simultaneous absence in relation to the types of interventions interviewees demand. Older participants' sense of loss and frustration seems tempered by their willingness to work together, including within Khulumani, to push for change. Young interviewees appear more turned in on themselves, with reflections around older generations' failures leaving them disillusioned and detached. The dynamics and legacies of the political transition continue to manifest at the most personal and intimate level for these participants.

###  Women and Social Mobilisation

It is precisely the relationship between the personal and the political in daily life that Khulumani members point to when they discuss why the survivor movement is dominated by women. Using gender binaries, the members suggest that women are more involved in community affairs than men. Their ideas are in line with research on women's roles in communal life in South Africa, which shows that it is women who are regularly active in neighbourhood-based social networks and initiatives, while men tend to be involved in work-related networks and to participate in community-based activities only when they offer employment opportunities or represent political openings (HSRC 2005). The participant narratives indicate that a central reason for this difference is that women take responsibility for guiding children and young people through the challenges of inequality and violence in Khayelitsha—a role that demonstrates to them the politics in the everyday. They also indicate that this may be a central motivation behind older participants' continuing investment in political participation and community-based mobilisation.

Khulumani members observed that it is women, not men, who are responsible for raising children in the township (2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 23, 26, 36, 42, 49, 54, G1). "Everything rests with the mother, everything is on women, starting from her children, to her husband, and coming to the house, it's the responsibility of the mother. Gone are the days where fathers were responsible for their homes," asserted one member, adding, "Men do not think of going out to search for a piecemeal job. Even if he goes out to look for a job he will take the whole day and come back home hungry. You as a mother must try to look for something to eat" (36). Another noted, "A mother sees poverty, the mother takes action. She sees crime, she would also take action because she would talk to the child, even if the child doesn't listen. She would show the child the consequences of the path they are taking." She went on: "A mother has a way of making the child understand that we are not equal. Fathers push most of the time. I was once a child. They push children to their mothers. If a child is hungry he would send them to their mother. It is rare to go to your father in a home with a father. When children report something that is finished to their father, he will tell them to go to their mother. So fathers always shift the responsibility" (G1). A third member similarly argued, "As a mother, now you do not work, you're trying. There is this man who is working who does not give you enough money as a woman, he gives you limited money, which is not enough for your children.... I am abused because all these things are dependent on me as a woman, because everything must be done by me, being a mother. The father is enjoying himself while I am thinking about my children. I need to support them, they must be clothed. I am the one who is abused, I need to take pills every day" (54). "As the mother of the house you find yourself having to drive the father and the children," noted another. "You need to take care of how the father deals with the family stuff because it seems that he cannot think about what needs to be done at home" (42). Young participants agreed, adding that many young men become absent fathers and that households are increasingly headed by women, usually grandmothers (37(y), 38(y), 46(y), 55(y), 57(y), 64(y), G2). "I cannot depend on my child's father working and supporting my child," said a young woman (46(y)), for example, while another commented, "When the child is born the guy is unable to support it, and we depend on our mothers even though they don't have much" (64(y)).

These participants also pointed out that women are the ones who cope with the consequences when children and youth become involved in crime and violence. "Everything that happens goes back to the mother. For example, when a child does something it will affect the mother," remarked one interviewee, adding, "The father takes a while to get involved and sometimes he does not say anything because he knows the mother is there" (35(m)). "Everything depends on the woman," said a young woman. "A child will rob there and the report will go to the mother" (37(y)). "Most of the time in court the first person you see when you are arrested is the mother," said a young man. "She is the person who supports you in court and pleads that you must get bail. She is the one who gets worried, stressed, because she carried you for nine months. She knows you are her child. The one who gets sick at home is the mother" (38(y)). This, participants noted, is in addition to women having to cope with the consequences of their own vulnerability in the township (24, 31, 35(m), 54, 58(y), 68(y), 71(y), 76(y), G1). As another young man observed, "Poverty and violence affect women more because the people who are always abused are women" (71(y)).

The women Khulumani members we interviewed made a link between women's experiences of coping with inequality, poverty and violence at an everyday level and the gendered character of community-based mobilisation. As one put it,

The father can see there is poverty at home, but he won't get up and make a plan. He will stay at home. The mother will go out and hustle and come back with something to eat. The father sees the inequality maybe in the community or in the house or within the government. Men choose to keep quiet. Women's voices are out there alone. They put the situation on the table and decide what to do with it. In terms of politics, we have issues about how our ward is being governed. One side gets preference and the other doesn't. Fathers see this inequality, but they will never come to these meetings. Mothers are the ones who voice out issues of inequality. (G1)

Another noted that this aspect of Khulumani mirrors many movements and organisations at the community level: "There are few men at Khulumani and that is because men are not interested in organisations. They only go there—men want things that are quick. They don't have patience.... It has been us who have been visible and other members call and I tell them that, yes, Khulumani still exists. Men are not very involved in organisations. If they heard that something is happening at Khulumani, they would show up" (47). The implication is that men attend a community meeting when it offers a specific and significant opportunity, usually economic.

While women members discussed the political in the everyday, some men made an explicit distinction between politics and Khulumani's activities. For example, one repeatedly said, "I don't want to seem like I am getting into politics" (G1), in discussing the implications of socioeconomic marginalisation for apartheid survivors. Another forcefully asserted to a woman interviewer, who is also a long-standing Khulumani member, "I cannot associate [local] councillor things with Khulumani. There is a difference with Khulumani things as far as politics are concerned.... Khulumani works in the community, do you understand? The issue of the councillor is different.... You cannot be Khulumani among the residents, you are Khulumani when we call a meeting doing our thing" (28). A handful of men regularly attend Khulumani meetings, but it is women members who have sustained the group. They recognise and emphasise the benefits of the mutual support, information on opportunities, potential for community-based collaboration, and small but regular income the movement is in a position to offer, as well as, importantly, the social change their work promises to create in their daily lives and for younger generations at the local level.

###  Between Self-Blame and Government Accountability

This chapter has examined the generational and intergenerational implications of violence and inequality and the resulting differences in perceptions of agency and collective mobilisation among interviewees. Older participants' narratives link their inability to curb violence to growing disrespect and independence among young people, which they connect to the democratic government's efforts to ban corporal punishment and promote human rights. They discuss the centrality of corporal punishment to caregiving and teaching young people the self-discipline, first, to counter peer pressure and strive for economic success and, second, to cope with their emotional responses to the challenges in Khayelitsha. They suggest that young people today are more fragile than they were in the past, arguing that in response to the anger and frustration evoked by ongoing racialised inequality, youth turn to substance use instead of taking responsibility for improving their lives and caring for dependents, let alone elders, in their households. Young participants' interviews similarly link violence to disrespect born of bans on corporal punishment, but suggest that other aspects of household dynamics, such as degrees of affection and intergenerational communication, shape responses to challenges in the township. They also highlight the insurmountability of structural barriers and focus on the insidiousness of the effects of racial discrimination in the post-apartheid period, particularly in the relationship between black and white South Africans.

Amid their reflections, young participants voice feelings of shame for not having achieved what was expected of them under the new dispensation, while older participants convey guilt at not having prepared younger generations for the challenges they face, not least by providing them with a sense of their place in history. In different ways, both sets of interviews oscillate between expressions of internalised blame for not improving their situation and calls for the democratic government to take responsibility. The discussions ultimately focus on the role of government, however, suggesting that post-apartheid policies have not only failed to address apartheid legacies, they have also entrenched a reliance on wage labour while simultaneously blocking participants' access to that form of labour. What makes this worse, the narratives indicate, is that the government calls on ordinary people to work together to help themselves, while putting legal and other obstacles in their way at the local level that exacerbate those at the national level. The suggestion is that participants can neither rely on government nor act independently as they once did to help themselves, which leaves many in a bind.

According to participants, the democratic period has given rise to a culture of competition and self-serving corruption at all levels of society that has resulted in growing inequality and disunity among black South Africans, inhibiting collective action. While older participants emphasise the continuing value of political participation and social mobilisation, young participants primarily convey a sense of isolation and lack of direction. They ask what they are meant to do with their freedom. Older participants ask similar questions, but the women indicate that the responsibilities and burdens of raising children amid the inequality and violence in the township motivate their investment in grassroots activities and activism, explaining the prevalence of women in community organisations and demonstrating the way politics inhabit the everyday.

While Khulumani members are aware of the barriers they face to the same extent as young participants, the interviews suggest that everyday needs and responsibilities push them, specifically women members, to continue striving for socioeconomic transformation in collaboration with others in the movement. "We do things for ourselves," said an 81-year-old woman and Khulumani member, "there is nothing else we can do. Talking and shouting is not going to help us because we will see this freedom another day. As long as we are still hungry, we have not seen freedom. We must wake up and do things for ourselves so that we can fight hunger" (34). The movement serves as a supportive frame for these endeavours. As a 65-year-old woman noted, "Khulumani says to members that they must stand up and do things for themselves" (36). The next chapter goes into detail on the strategies Khulumani members use to address inequality, poverty and violence.

##  Chapter 5. Apartheid Survivors and Strategies for Social Transformation

When I talk about government, we are the government. But the difference is that now when we go to government offices to request certain things, it is clear that we cannot do it because no one listens to us, even the person who is closest to us, the councillor we nominated. That is why we turn to Khulumani as the members of Khulumani, and we ask Khulumani to go to certain places, because we need training and empowerment. (42)

The participants' discussions of the challenges they face and the dynamics that give rise to them evoke numerous ideas for how they and other stakeholders, ranging from local residents to civil society to government, could contribute to addressing these challenges. Our aim, however, is to communicate the strategies that Khulumani members have developed themselves to cope with socioeconomic drivers of violence, mitigate their impact and effect transformation in their everyday lives. It is also to communicate the ideas that Khulumani members and young people in Khulumani families have for how the movement could better pursue transformation, along with the supporting roles they see other stakeholders playing in these efforts. In our interviews, we asked them to share their specific strategies, which we present in this chapter along with those outlined at meetings where representatives of area committees from around the Western Cape contributed to planning the project and subsequent interventions.

Some discuss direct violence prevention strategies, arguing that increasing the number and resources of police in Khayelitsha and returning to a harsher criminal justice system will help address the problem of violence (8, 12, 17, 25, 40(m), 54, 61(y), 62(m), 64(y), 76(y), G2). Participants of all ages, however, more commonly and in far greater depth discuss strategies for addressing socioeconomic marginalisation, asserting that racialised inequality, the intergenerational transmission of poverty and the challenges of the democratic period are at the root of violence in the township. They suggest that direct violence prevention alone is unlikely to succeed in a sustainable way if these barriers are left unaddressed. Rather, the narratives focus on ways to generate decent livelihoods, foster education and youth development, and lighten the disproportionate burden on the elderly. In their insistence on interventions that draw on residents' local knowledge and solutions and their continual emphasis on the links between apartheid and post-apartheid exclusion, participants reflect Khulumani's vision for "people-driven transformation" (KSG 2017: 7).

The framing of these strategies also demonstrates participants' affinity for transformative approaches to transitional justice. The strategies work towards a transition which goes beyond that envisioned by mainstream transitional justice, with its narrow concern with individualised civil-political abuses and its focus on short-term state-dominated mechanisms (Mamdani 2000; Kagoro 2012). They confront historical injustices and structural drivers of violence through collective action. They are contextual solutions based on local knowledge implemented through grassroots efforts, which aim to respond to the demands and needs of those most affected by post-apartheid challenges, particularly women (Buckley-Zistel 2016; Gready and Robins 2019). In promoting a just transition, the participants' strategies put forward an idea of transformation as a process—one that requires awareness of the continuities between the past and the present and repeated engagement over time (McAdams 2011; Gready 2011). They are highly localised and small scale (McAuliffe 2017; Gready 2019), yet they convey a willingness among participants to collaborate with diverse stakeholders beyond Khayelitsha and adapt to shifts in the political and social context that, as we will discuss further in the Conclusion, may be instructive in South Africa's ongoing transition.

###  Work and Empowerment

Starting with the most pressing socioeconomic driver of violence participants identified, the narratives in this section demonstrate Khulumani's collaborative approach to building members' capacity and creating livelihoods in Khayelitsha. They encourage Khulumani to expand its income-generation projects to more members as well as to youth and other residents, with older participants focusing on urban farming and others on establishing black-owned enterprises in the township, with the support of civil society and the private sector. Looking at the role of government, the interviews call for start-up costs, technical and financial support, and skill-building programmes and social facilities. Moreover, they call for economic policies geared towards low-skilled workers and interventions co-designed with ordinary citizens that begin to address racialised inequality.

At the time of our interviews, Khulumani members in Khayelitsha were running a number of local income-generation projects. The main ones were urban gardening and poultry farming (2, 4, 8, 11, 28, 40(m), 47, 49, 53, 54, 69(m), G1). Other projects included sowing and knitting (2, 5, 9, 26, 39(y), 43, 49, 69(m), 73(y)), beadwork (1, 2, 8, 34, 67(y)), selling second-hand clothing (47), keeping food and vegetable stalls (G2), and waste picking and recycling (72(m)). Like other South Africans living in marginalised urban communities (Nnaeme, Patel and Plagerson 2019), these members have used their social grants as capital to start and sustain their projects. With long-time members as initiators, Khulumani's role has been to bring survivors together, provide guidance and skill-building, and encourage members to train each other. It has facilitated access to information on new funding opportunities and government or civil society assistance programmes, and how to meet their requirements and follow their regulations. Its strategy is to foster confidence, collaboration and knowledge exchange among members, with an eye towards building the group's self-sufficiency.

"Khulumani comes to us with information," said one participant. "Khulumani shows us what to do from here. Yes, you are not educated, you do not have diplomas, what can you do about that? You do have _that_ skill. Sometimes one can train to do cooking, sewing. You have cooking skills, you are able to train others, and you can change other people's lives without getting something back in return. So Khulumani helps us see things differently from the way we live in the community. We must not think we are underprivileged, let's do something about it" (69(m)). Highlighting the benefits for Khulumani's majority women members, another participant observed,

Khulumani really helped us because they opened opportunities for us. We now have people who are able to do gardening. We do it on our own. You wake up and do it yourself. We are able to form a group of maybe five women and look for a place to plant, even if it's at a school. Khulumani opened those opportunities. If you want a place to plant, you plant. There is a lot Khulumani exposed us to. They also opened up an opportunity to go to the DTI as women from Khulumani. We can create our own projects and move forward. We are old and we were abused. We didn't know if opportunities like these could arise. Khulumani opened our eyes. (G1)

Several participants highlighted the shift in perspective that has come from Khulumani's approach and the sense they have of possibilities opening up where before they only saw constraints. "The things that Khulumani brings, they make changes," noted a participant, adding,

Firstly, they change me so that I can change my living conditions, so that I can also change my children's. It is not like when there was no Khulumani. Khulumani is able to teach us, see how things are in South Africa. You decide to shift on certain issues and you also tell your children not to do some things, even if they are not going to listen. Even if you see a certain situation with your neighbour, you are able to assist with the information received from Khulumani. Khulumani has brought knowledge and information we did not have before. (40(m))

Another remarked, "Khulumani, the way I see it, when it comes to farming you might look down on it, but farming is very important. Khulumani told us about farming. Money comes from the land" (42). "Khulumani seeks to assist people as far as change is concerned," noted a member, "that they have changed conditions and that they do not think of the previous conditions they were in" (6). For these reasons, "Khulumani is a great initiative and we are truly blessed to have an organisation that is devoted to assisting us with our socioeconomic issues" (72(m)).

In terms of ideas for improving these strategies and developing new ones, participants largely discussed the need for Khulumani to expand the type of income-generation projects it already does to include a larger number of members (2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 22(m), 25, 28, 30, 35(m), 36, 42, 53, G1). Many noted that they should also include youth in Khulumani families, both so that young people can bring their energy and skills to members' projects and in order to build youth capacity, financial resources and resistance to peer pressure (6, 9, 37(y), 48(y), 71(y), G1, G2). As one older participant observed, "They will act as our representatives because we are uneducated. We take them and they speak on behalf of us. This is also a source of income for them" (40(m)). Young participants joined older ones in making this point, expressing a desire to be part of Khulumani income-generation projects by stating, for example, "You will find that many youth in the community have skills, but because we don't have the materials to develop these skills we find ourselves not having anything to do" (71(y)), and, "The problem is that most of us are not exposed to things like that. No child wants to be at home doing nothing. I personally don't mind doing something, even volunteering, for experience. No one is helping us and assisting us so we just stay home and do nothing" (78(y)). A few participants argued that Khulumani projects should be extended to local residents outside the movement, including those who were previously incarcerated and whose criminal record makes finding a job even harder (35(m), 61(y), G2).

Many participants, mainly older ones, identified urban farming as the main area on which Khulumani should focus (5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 22(m), 25, 28, 30, 34, 36, 53, 61(y), G1). Arguing for more farming projects and larger ones, they recommended that Khulumani explore accessing bigger parcels of land for members and youth to work (8, 13, 24, 53). They also suggested that the movement concentrate on raising funds from private or corporate donors and accessing support from government to procure tools, seeds, fertiliser and other materials needed to ensure the long-term success of these initiatives (6, 28, 36, 53).

Other participants, especially younger ones, suggested that Khulumani support members and young people in their families to become entrepreneurs, for example in retail, carpentry, leather work or small-scale clothing manufacturing. They focused on the value of establishing black-owned businesses and social enterprises in the township, and accessing start-up funds from private and public sources to do so (26, 7(m), 40(m), 54, 60(y), 61(y), 62(m), 71(y), 78(y), G1). One young participant suggested that Khulumani encourage dialogue with non-nationals who have skills and business acumen they could share with members (56(y)). All of these participants noted that investing more in Khulumani initiatives would ensure that they are sustainable, as some have stopped in the past due to lack of funds or a crucial member moving on to another project. One key recommendation was that Khulumani offer training in writing business plans to contribute to the success and sustainability of members' efforts, particularly those run by women (36, 50(m), G1). In discussing these approaches, participants highlighted the value of partnerships with other stakeholders in the township. They noted that by working more closely with businesses, civil society organisations and local government in the area, Khulumani would have more access to information on development and empowerment programmes, including trainings and funding opportunities.

Regarding the role other stakeholders could play in improving access to livelihoods, participants largely discussed government. A few suggested that retail chains operating in Khayelitsha, such as Pick n Pay and Shoprite, could enter into partnership with Khulumani and commit to hiring and training young people in Khulumani families. Far more participants called on government to commit to providing funding and technical support to Khulumani to improve and expand its income-generation projects (2, 35(m), 42, 49, 51(y), 70(y), 71(y), 76(y), 78(y), G1). Referring to _vuk'uzenzele_ , one member noted, "I say that government could take groups of us and teach us skills, because this _vuk'uzenzele_ is not realistic" (42). Some focused on government's role in providing start-up capital, equipment and materials for Khulumani members to found their own businesses, thereby contributing to job creation while also empowering survivors (30, 46(y), 50(m), 66(y), 71(y), 76(y), 78(y), G1). Participants noted that government should create more incentives to attract investors to the township to support new businesses. These interventions would be specific to Khulumani members and their family members as apartheid survivors. Some participants discussed government interventions that would benefit all local residents, alongside survivors. Several recommendations in this regard involved developing new social facilities and programmes focused on capacity building and increasing access to information that would improve employment prospects. As we discuss in more detail in the next section, these include skills-training centres, resource centres with computers and internet access, and no-fee early childhood development facilities or crèches for work-seeking and employed mothers, with a specific focus on assisting youth (36, 37(y), 47, 50(m), 52(y), 53, 58(y), 64(y), 75(y)).

Looking beyond piecemeal options, many participants expressly called on government to re-evaluate its economic policies and adopt approaches that address racialised inequality by supporting labour-intensive industries and creating new jobs for low-skilled workers, along with raising taxes on the wealthy (26, 36, 39(y), 47, 52(y), 58(y), 60(y), 66(y), 71(y), 75(y)). Until structural barriers to highly skilled work are reduced, participants argued, government is obliged to ensure employment for the large numbers of South Africans with limited education and skills, particularly those who made sacrifices during the liberation struggle. A number of participants advocated for government—national, provincial, local—to invest more time and resources in creating spaces for dialogue and knowledge exchange with people most affected by inequality, poverty and violence, in order to learn from their experiences and collaborate on implementing their contextualised solutions (31, 34, 41(m), 51(y)). The narratives presented in this book give a sense of the wealth of knowledge that this approach would elicit. As an 81-year-old woman, a Khulumani member, put it, "The role government must take is that government must look for us in the areas where we live" (34).

###  Education and Youth Development

Turning to education and initiatives that support youth in the township, the narratives focus on Khulumani bringing more young people into its interventions. Highlighting the value of knowledge exchange between older and younger people, they suggest engaging youth in collaborative activities, intergenerational dialogues and a formal mentorship programme, including in formal and informal facilities that give youth a safe and productive space in which to meet. From government, the interviews call for more and better social facilities, contextually relevant policing strategies, and drug and alcohol recovery and rehabilitation centres. More than this, they call for an education system that meets its obligations to marginalised South Africans.

Khulumani's work with young people in Khayelitsha has been largely informal to date. Children and youth have benefitted from a soup kitchen run by members, which focuses on alleviating hunger so that they can focus on schoolwork. A few young people, some still in school and some who dropped out, have worked with Khulumani members on their urban farming projects (39(y), 51(y), 64(y)). One participant discussed members' efforts to establish youth groups that engage in cultural activities, which in her case is Xhosa traditional dance (50(m)). The Khulumani members who helped us design this study insisted that we include young people so that they could gain access to their understandings of inequality and violence. They noted the need to recruit young people into the movement. The members we interviewed also discussed bringing more young people into Khulumani, to contribute both to its activism for redress and to its socioeconomic transformation work as it expands. They suggested that older and younger members working together would offer mutual support, build each other's skills and ensure the survival of the movement as its founding members pass away. As noted above, Khulumani members largely felt that youth are not interested in Khulumani (1, 5, 9, 28, 49, 53, 54, G1), but our interviews indicate that a number of young participants are in fact keen to get involved (37(y), 48(y), 71(y), 76(y), 78(y), G1). Participants recommended that Khulumani continue its efforts to provide free food to school-age children and youth, and especially to draw more young people in Khulumani families into the organisation's various income-generation projects (9, 11, 39(y), 41(m), 67(y), 69(m)).

Suggesting new strategies for the movement, a number of members discussed setting up one or more Khulumani-run community centres, youth facilities or meeting places in the township where young people could go for assistance with schoolwork, preparation for (retaking) matric exams, needs-based skills training, information, free meals and a safe space to socialise (2, 22(m), 23, 28, 33, 34, G1). Other participants recommended that Khulumani approach public and private sector actors to help establish more social facilities in the area, such an additional library, a no-fee early childhood development centre to support school-going and work-seeking young mothers, a shipping container with materials, computers and internet access for educational purposes, and well-equipped sports, recreation and cultural facilities (35(m), 37(y), 43, 47, 52(y), 53, 56(y), 58(y), 64(y), 66(y), 69(m), 73(y), 76(y), 78(y), G2). Several also suggested that Khulumani members need not wait for new facilities to set up more youth groups centred around sports, culture and the arts, which could meet regularly in homes and other spaces that are already available (6, 7(m), 22(m), 28, 50(m), 53, 54, 64(y), 73(y), 76(y), 77(y)). These participants emphasised that while these interventions would be for youth generally, they should focus on working with girls and addressing their specific vulnerabilities.

The main idea behind these suggestions is that they would provide children and young people in the township with a place to go that is safe, where they can spend time together productively and which might help them avoid, and learn to cope with, the pitfalls of substance use and violence. "If I am sitting down, I just sit and don't do anything," noted a young participant. "The reason these kids smoke tik is because there is nothing happening in the township, like centres to do things. Kids need something to do so they go to the people that sell tik. They buy tik and smoke. When they don't have money to buy tik they rob people on the street so they can get tik" (64(y)). "As young people," said another, "when we are together and talking about how this can be solved, we think it can be solved only if we cannot be around the township, if we can all get something to keep us busy. Anything that can meet us halfway and keep us occupied." He added, "There is a lot we can do, even here in our community. If they can maybe implement sport within our community, all types of sports, we could play sports, sports like cricket which is mostly found in white places, so that we can also get a chance to play it. I think this high crime rate could decrease that way" (66(y)). An aspect of this approach, according to participants, is to create spaces and activities that allow young women and men to interact in new ways, building a sense of community, encouraging them to support each other as they face challenges, and enabling them to share information and pass on skills they have learnt elsewhere (4, 7(m), 28, 41(m), 77(y), G1). Several of these participants pointed out the need for young people to have their own support groups, which Khulumani could help establish based on its own experience as a support group (7(m), 41(m), 77(y))).

A number of participants as well as representatives of area committees from around the province recommended that Khulumani establish projects that facilitate intergenerational dialogue and collaboration. A major insight guiding this recommendation is that Khulumani members need to understand young people's experiences in order to build relationships and trust, design interventions that are tailored to their needs and ideas as they articulate them, and work with them more effectively. As noted above, this insight guided our research. Young participants generally supported this approach, with one reflecting, "I think we as the youth need to unite first and work together. Secondly, we should have the state of mind that asks what can we do to empower ourselves, what projects can we do, which projects are suited to us. Thirdly, we should be able to work with our elders. Our parents should support us in what we do" (77(y)). Another guiding factor is Khulumani members' sense that they need to do more to place contemporary struggles into historical context for young people, so that they can better understand the challenges they face and the different tactics available to them. "We need to sit down with them and tell them how we feel and ask what they see," said one member.

We must give them homework, tell them what is happening. I sit with my grandchildren occasionally and tell them what was going on. I tell them I came a long way fighting for this country. Do you know the woman who was driving a machine in KTC [informal settlement]? I am that woman, fighting with [apartheid police officer] Barnard. But today there is nothing to show for it, I'm hungry. There is nothing positive and there will never be anything positive unless we stand up as women. And Khulumani must go search for information from the people. They must come out and spell it out, say what is going on, they must not hide anything—say everything as it is. (36)

An idea raised by area committee representatives we worked with in developing our project was that Khulumani set up a community-based museum to acknowledge members' contributions to South African society, primarily with a view to educating young people and encouraging dialogue on the links between the past and the present.

Several participants argued that Khulumani members should institute a formal mentorship programme, which would be underpinned by this exchange of experiences and knowledge among generations of black South Africans (6, 41(m), 67(y), G1). "I think they need mentors," observed a Khulumani member. "Khulumani can bring people who are going to mentor them. Khulumani should take people who have been in a struggle, people who rose above poverty and all struggles. So that when the child looks at the mentor she could see a familiar face, but there is something positive about her" (G1). Another member noted that as much as young people can learn from their elders, older people can also learn from youth:

I think we should also find a way to bring the two generations together, where you make the youth understand where you come from and what you have fought for and how long and how was it for you to get where you are, the older generation, as much as the youth can teach you a thing or two because from the youth you can learn quite a number of things, especially with the current technology and stuff. If the young and old can come together in spaces where they share experiences, where they teach each other about their past, you know, they teach each other and they understand, then the youth will be able not to blame the older generation, as much as the older generation will be able to understand where this youth is coming from. (50(m))

During project planning, Khulumani members suggested that ensuring members have access to individual and family counselling as well as training and services related to conflict resolution and mediation would improve their capacity to mentor young people.

In terms of the role of other stakeholders in youth development, participants focused on government. They suggested that government departments work together to budget for and establish new social facilities in Khayelitsha and to ensure that existing facilities work properly. The physical facilities they identified are community, youth, cultural and arts centres, libraries, resource centres, computer labs, sports fields and facilities, and parks and playgrounds. They argued that government should work with Khulumani and other community-based bodies to determine which of these facilities is needed and where (35(m), 37(y), 43, 47, 52(y), 53, 56(y), 58(y), 64(y), 66(y), 67(y), 69(m), 73(y), 76(y), 78(y), G1, G2). They also identified policing as a priority. Participants specified that in order for police to work effectively in the township, government needs to invest time and resources in dialogues and knowledge exchange between police and local residents, including organisations such as Khulumani. Much like the recommendation regarding employment, participants asserted that residents are familiar with local drivers and dynamics of crime and violence, how they change over time, and the strategies that have been used to address them. They argued that police should collaborate with residents to develop targeted intervention strategies that are inclusive and sensitive to negative perceptions of the police, highlighting that young people are central to informing, planning and implementing these interventions (7(m), 26, 38(y), 40(m), 41(m), 43, 56(y), 60(y), 70(y), 77(y)). As one put it, "Government must listen to us on how we would like to be protected, what we see. Because violence takes place in the township, government must mostly listen to us in the townships" (40(m)). Interviewees focused on reducing youth violence and limiting the illegal sale of alcohol and drugs as priority issues for the police to handle with regard to youth development (12, 38(y), 41(m), 56(y), 60(y)).

Another recommendation, a related one, was that government work with local organisations like Khulumani to establish drug and alcohol recovery and rehabilitation programmes and facilities in Khayelitsha. While the area committees we worked with identified this as a priority for the movement, in the interviews it was primarily young participants who made specific suggestions on the issue. As one young woman noted, "Rehabilitation centres are available mostly in areas for white people.... It is rare here for people to come and do awareness raising about things like drugs and abuse, there are no such opportunities" (73(y)). Speaking about her own situation, another young woman made a similar point: "If there were a rehab centre, maybe I would quit. But rehab is for white people and not black people. I have never heard of black people going to rehab" (55(y)). Noting the need for awareness raising around substance use and dependence, participants pointed out a dire need for such facilities in the area, which would also be positioned to provide psychosocial support and mentorship to help address underlying issues (5, 55(y), 56(y), 58(y), 64(y), 73(y)). Participants further noted that young people grappling with substance dependence require long-term support, particularly after a rehabilitation programme, with one arguing that "when they get out of rehab they should get placed maybe in jobs so that they do something. They must not get out of the rehab and do nothing. When they are there at the rehab they must be trained in something that they will do when they move out of the centre" (73(y)).

Participants' main recommendation, not to say demand, however, was that government meet its obligations in terms of basic education and higher education and training. The specific suggestions, many coming from young participants, included: a larger number of early childhood development centres in the township, particularly no-fee facilities (35(m), 37(y), 52(y), 56(y), 64(y)); free basic education that is actually free, with state subsidies for the additional costs associated with primary and secondary schooling (58(y), 75(y)); more bursaries for tertiary education, both state-funded and in cooperation with higher education institutions, private sector actors and other stakeholders (3, 4, 26, 38(y), 48(y), 56(y), 78(y)); support for the establishment of tertiary education institutions in the township (39(y), 75(y), 77(y), 78(y)); and additional skills-training centres, including no-fee ones, that combine capacity-building with mentorship (5, 6, 8, 22(m), 23, 36, 37(y), 39(y), 50(m), 52(y), 53, 58(y), 71(y), 75(y), 78(y), G1). The argument was that meeting these fundamental obligations would do much to address the socioeconomic marginalisation of young people in Khulumani families and in the area.

###  Service Delivery and Old Age

While the interviews discuss strategies to benefit a range of residents, they also focus on the needs of the elderly in the township. This is the case in interviews with older participants, the majority of whom are senior citizens themselves, and with young participants, many of whom point out that the elderly, especially women, are particularly affected by inequality, poverty and violence (24, 31, 35(m), 54, 58(y), 68(y), 71(y), 76(y), G1). Aside from being vulnerable to violence within their households and in their neighbourhoods, interviewees note that the elderly are largely reliant on social assistance in the form of older persons and disability grants, healthcare services and housing, while at the same time often being responsible for supporting children and young people in their households. In addition to encouraging Khulumani to run more programmes and facilities that cater to elderly members and local residents, the narratives urge the state to acknowledge the disproportionate burden older people carry. They call for government to increase social grants for the elderly, provide monthly food parcels and build old age homes in the township, while improving service delivery by facilitating access to information, services and social assistance and reducing corruption in local government.

Khulumani's existing strategies regarding the elderly have revolved around the social and emotional support members offer each other within area committees and at the provincial level. Older members are also active in income-generation projects, often leading the work and providing training to others. Members suggested that Khulumani formalise these activities further by creating spaces and programmes where members as well as other elderly residents of Khayelitsha could go to access information, receive or give trainings, get exercise and socialise with each other, as well as learn more about Khulumani as a movement. Some argued that such facilities and activities should cater to both elderly and young people, to encourage intergenerational dialogue and knowledge exchange, as well as recruit young people into the organisation (5, 22(m), 24, 36, 42, 53).

Turning to recommendations for government, participants advocated for an increase in the older persons grant, arguing that it must take into account the additional household responsibilities many senior citizens carry (24, 26, 36, 53). Some suggested that government work with local stakeholders to provide senior citizens with food parcels in the middle of every month, taking into consideration the shortfall many face between grant payments (36, 64(y)). They also advocated for affordable, if not fee-free, old age homes to be built across the township, in order to provide quality 24-hour care for elderly people who have little other support (5, 21, 22(m), 24, 26, 36, 42, 64(y)).

Participants noted that government service delivery issues disproportionately affect the elderly, who tend to be less mobile than other residents. They called for government to provide more public information and facilitate access to its services and various forms of social assistance within Khayelitsha. This included making it easier for citizens to acquire documents from the state, which currently often requires people to go "from pillar to post" in search of information, forms and other materials, to the extent that many give up (1, 13, 14, 16, 37(y), 42, 45, 64(y)). Noting the challenges older people face in traveling long distances to reach a hospital or clinic, and the lengthy queues, poor service and inferior or unavailable medication they are subjected to when they arrive, participants argued for more healthcare facilities to be established in the township, and for the existing ones to be better resourced and staffed (45, 53, 54, 59(y), 61(y), 62(m)). They also called for government to meet its promises regarding state-subsidised houses, stressing that many older people in the township have been waiting long years for a formal house while coping with the health, safety and security risks of living in informal housing (2, 3, 4, 12, 43, 56(y), 57(y), 64(y), 67(y), 70(y)). While acknowledging that government-subsidised houses are increasingly poorly built and small, represent higher costs in terms of electricity, water and upkeep, and do not mean that hunger will be any less in the household (6, 7(m), 8, 9, 13, 24, 34, 40(m), 42, 54, 60(y), 64(y)), interviewees still stressed the material and symbolic significance of formal housing and the value of limiting the ceaseless growth of informal settlements, with one commenting, "There is no one who does not want to stay in a formal settlement, whether there is hunger or no hunger. There is no one who does not have an interest in a formal house because I think growth starts there" (46(y)).

Corruption is a major issue identified by participants, particularly as one affecting the elderly via the improper provision of social assistance. Focusing on Khayelitsha, interviewees identified a need for oversight and vetting of local councillors, as well as police. They advocated for government to implement a regular and long-term monitoring system to ensure that funds are lawfully allocated and spent on service delivery at the local level, and that nepotism and bribery are not involved in the granting of tenders to external actors (17, 32(m), 36, 42, 43, 47, 55(y), 57(y), 73(y)). Acknowledging the difficulties it might present, participants also recommended that local councillors and representatives of various government departments meet regularly with diverse groups of residents in order to exchange information and collaborate on development and service delivery plans, with a view specifically to reducing corruption (31, 34, 41(m), 42, 43, 51(y)). They noted that Khulumani and other local organisations could contribute to organising this more participatory approach to governance. The participants' recommendations in this regard point both to the unresponsiveness of government and to the value of local knowledge and solutions that participants perceive, especially among older residents.

###  People-Driven Transformation

The strategies we describe above respond directly to the challenges articulated in the previous chapters. As this section shows, they address the consequences of apartheid oppression and transitional arrangements, as well as the everyday manifestations of socioeconomic marginalisation in the democratic period. They address the web of drivers and effects of violence, particularly the pathways between them, and their repercussions as reflected in intergenerational dynamics in Khulumani families. In describing possibilities for asserting agency and fostering collective action, participants articulate a people-driven approach to the process of transformation that in many ways runs parallel to transformative approaches to transitional justice.

To start, participant narratives engage with the legacies of apartheid oppression presented in Chapter 1 and the forms of post-apartheid marginalisation outlined in Chapter 2 in identifying strategies for addressing socioeconomic drivers of violence. Their existing and envisioned methods for Khulumani interventions, including self-funded income-generation projects, mutual training and knowledge exchange, and capacity building and mentoring of youth, are designed to provide access to livelihoods and a stepping stone to further life opportunities. They are aimed at members of Khulumani families whose comparatively low education and skill levels—a result of intergenerational transmission of poverty in the context of entrenched racialised inequality—keep them from South Africa's mainstream economic life, which they see as becoming narrower with economic liberalisation. Their skill-building, support group, recreational, cultural and other activities are designed to fill the gaps in social facilities in the township and make up for the poor quality of existing facilities, already under pressure from the growing population in Khayelitsha. The suggestion, if distilled to its essence, is that employment and education, supplemented by projects and facilities that encourage learning, productivity and meaningful social interactions with people who might be outside one's regular social networks, serve to block or redirect the pathways towards violence. These interconnecting and mutually strengthening pathways, which we discussed in Chapter 3, include enforced inactivity, hunger, household frustrations, peer pressure and substance dependence, along with the hazards of vigilantism and negative responses to the perceived threat of non-nationals.

The strategies shared by participants also engage with the emotional repercussions of socioeconomic drivers of violence, especially the internalised blame and the intergenerational difficulties we explored in Chapter 4. By taking the initiative and cooperating with others on their projects, while providing each other with social and emotional support, Khulumani members share the struggles they face and seek to take control of their situation in a context that provides few other openings to do so. Their desire to communicate and collaborate with, as well as mentor, young people, by discussing their role in history and the relevance of past tactics for ways forward, acknowledges the failure and guilt members feel about the ways obstacles in their lives have been reproduced in those of youth and the extent to which they feel they have prepared young people to face them. A similar dynamic emerges in the interviews with young participants, who aim to generate mutual understanding between generations and appear to seek ways to communicate and assuage their sense of failure and shame in relation to their elders. The will towards intergenerational support, knowledge exchange and collaboration in both sets of interviewees, as well as the recommendations regarding social programmes and facilities, also reflect an aim to reduce the increasing atomisation and disunity participants perceive in the township, and to return to what are seen as older forms of community and cooperation.

In this, Khulumani members' existing strategies suggest avoidance of the oppressive state and a focus on independence and self-sufficiency. While participants use what state resources are available to them, particularly social grants, they design socioeconomic interventions that are self-funded and self-sustaining in the spirit of "do[ing] things for themselves" (36)—in part, as women, because they must. This comes across strongly in older participants' focus on land and urban farming, as well as in Khulumani's general approach of mutual capacity building, support and cooperation. To some extent, it also comes across in young participants' interest in working with older people on income-generation projects, learning from them about past strategies of community organising, governance and livelihoods, and sidestepping the competitiveness and corruption they see as being modelled for them by those with power. As one young woman put it, "All I am saying is that maybe we can create a good foundation for all of us to understand each other, and make the 1976 goal of wanting change come true. But the question is what change do we all want? Do we want money, or do we want success or comfort, or the ability and freedom to trust each other as youth or friends?" (G2). While they convey disillusionment and detachment in relation to the state and political participation, as we discussed in Chapters 1 and 4, young participants are open to engaging in socioeconomic activities whose political implications are more subtle. Participants of all ages have found and continue to imagine ways to assert their collective and individual agency in the context of structural and policy barriers and the broken promises of the political transition.

One of the main themes regarding agency in the interviews is the insistence on initiatives that build on residents' knowledge of local histories, relationships and interventions. In relation to each focus area, participants stress residents' experience in navigating local challenges and the need for community participation and co-design in interventions by various stakeholders. During our project planning, representatives of area committees similarly focused on local knowledge and solutions, envisioning community workshops to access ideas on local needs and priorities as well as further research on the socioeconomic situation within Khulumani families in order to better tailor interventions to members' needs. Interviewees' self-identification as apartheid survivors and members of survivor families, meanwhile, gives them a distinctive perspective in terms of local knowledge. They highlight the continuities and differences between apartheid and post-apartheid constraints and situate contemporary issues not just within the context of transition but also in relation to the possibility of a just transition. The Khulumani members we interviewed hold their agency as both survivors of past abuses and as active members of their communities in the present, bridging the two. Their positionality encompasses that of 'victim-survivors' of the past while also extending beyond it to include post-apartheid experiences and activism. In these ways, participants of all ages, but especially the Khulumani members, echo much of the movement's vision for people-driven transformation in the democratic period, rooted in survivor empowerment programmes, trauma-informed community development, popular education and inclusive citizenship based on people's own narratives (KSG 2017).

The interviews suggest that participants see transformation as a process, as a complex and in no way linear movement towards, as once promised, a better life for all. The emphasis is on recognition of the socioeconomic underpinnings of historical injustices and structural inequality, access to life opportunities broadly defined, and greater social equality, particularly through the building of community and cooperation among black South Africans. At its most fundamental and modest, transformation in these narratives means to be a human being like other human beings—one not defined by violation and exclusion. "I see myself as a victim because I am not free yet," said a Khulumani member, "but I am trying so that I can have something that will make me like other people" (8). In this, she echoes Kenyan survivors of past abuses, who articulate a desire "to live as other Kenyans do" (Robins 2011b).

By situating the challenges of the democratic period in relation to the apartheid past, and shaping their activities around this point, participants continually bring attention to the democratic transition. In so doing, they indicate that South Africa's transitional justice process did not end with the TRC but continues through their envisioning of a just transition and their work towards it via activities framed as people-driven transformation. Khulumani members and the participants we interviewed are thereby embracing a transformative approach to transitional justice (e.g. Mani 2005; Bergsmo et al. 2010; Gready and Robins 2019), even if they do not use this terminology. They strive to address historical and structural injustices using context-responsive solutions that are based on local knowledge and guided by the demands and needs of those most affected by past and continuing harms, who in this case are mainly women. Their efforts highlight the ongoing nature of the South African transition and demonstrate that it calls for interventions that respond to issues of the violent past as they manifest in the present over time. They also point to the socioeconomic roots of violence and show that a just transition is one in which structural barriers are actively addressed.

At the same time, Khulumani members' interventions raise the usual questions that dog transformative approaches, particularly regarding whether such small-scale and highly localised efforts are relevant to so national a project as transitional justice, which in mainstream practice is usually state sponsored.

###  Engaging with the State

To begin with, Khulumani members are clear that the interventions we have presented in this chapter do not supplant the movement's activism for reparations, prosecutions, truth recovery and institutional reforms in dealing with the apartheid past. Indeed, they prioritise reparations advocacy, highlighting the need to continue pressuring government and international corporations to ensure redress for survivors (Kesselring 2016; Colvin 2018). Members discuss their strategies regarding socioeconomic transformation not as a departure from the movement's history of activism, but as additional activities that represent a necessary engagement with the most pressing issues facing apartheid survivors today, an extension of the struggle for acknowledgement and redress, and a component of the support that Khulumani members offer each other. This section also indicates that while members have a shared transformative vision, they have embraced flexibility and diversity in their tactics, engaging with the state and other stakeholders in response to political and other shifts in the country.

The interviews and particularly the project planning work with representatives from area committees around the province suggest a shift in approach over the past decade. Khulumani at the national level and in the branches has always engaged with the state—it being the engine of transitional justice in South Africa to date. Much of Khulumani's lobbying work and consultations have centred on the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the mainstream transitional justice issues it is in a position to address. Despite this engagement, the years following the closing of the TRC were marked by an increasingly adversarial relationship between Khulumani and government (Gready 2011), with Khulumani using protest tactics, public shaming and litigation to pressure the state. It called for government to implement the commission's recommendations, hold international corporations accountable for their role in apartheid repression, make provisions for the many members who did not choose or have the opportunity to register with the TRC, and begin prosecutions while preventing pardons of apartheid perpetrators, among other demands.

Our project elicited ideas that suggest members seek a far more collaborative approach to government. Representatives of area committees advocated for Khulumani not only to continue engaging with local, city and provincial government to access information and secure entry to development and empowerment programmes, but also to collaborate on the design and implementation of violence prevention initiatives with the South African Police Service, improve access and services in healthcare with the Department of Health, and address drop-out rates with the Department of Basic Education. Members noted that joining civil society networks that have contacts in these government departments would facilitate lobbying and cooperation, while increasing Khulumani's knowledge base regarding these diverse issues. Some interviewees similarly recommended that Khulumani work closely with the state, noting that it might be more effective than trying to go through the local councillor, giving feedback to government officials in community meetings, or employing adversarial tactics such as demonstrations and litigation, which they suggested have evoked little response from the state and little change in their everyday lives in recent years (12, 13, 47, 54, 78(y)). As one member said, "Government needs to meet with Khulumani regarding supporting us with tools we use for farming, a place for children to play must available, there must be places for showcasing skills—in the negotiation between government and Khulumani, government must make a plan together with Khulumani" (54). Focusing on the local context, participants urged government to work with Khulumani and other residents to develop contextually relevant responses to employment, policing, substance dependence and corruption challenges.

This collaborative approach to government appears to contradict the focus on autonomy in the members' income-generation projects and other transformation work. Another contradiction is that interviewees reject economic liberalisation as an external imposition at the same time that they advocate for entrepreneurship and partnerships with corporate partners. Such contradictions suggest that participants are flexible in their approach to the state and other stakeholders. They have a shared vision of a redistributive state that promotes participatory democracy and develops its policies in collaboration with affected communities. Yet, they work with what they have, depending on what openings are presented by government and other stakeholders in response to political, social and economic shifts in the country. Much as their strategies regarding redress for the apartheid past have evolved with time—increasingly taking on socioeconomic issues until people-driven transformation became a strategic focus, while maintaining advocacy around mainstream transitional justice concerns—so their attitudes towards government appear to range from legitimising to adversarial to collaborative, and from engaged to dismissive to compromising, depending on which strategy lends them public and local visibility while yielding benefits at the everyday level.

Returning to transformative approaches to transitional justice, our research indicates that there are no categorical answers to the doubts they raise. A radical agenda that challenges the premises of liberal democratisation is needed, and supported by participants, but so are strategies that respond to political and socioeconomic realities and power dynamics on the ground. Mainstream transitional justice approaches are needed, in that they are widely accepted and normalise both redress and non-recurrence as interlinked goals, but so are strategies that respond to the specificities of each context and the demands and needs of those most affected by past harms. The state is needed, as it has the resources and influence to implement these context-based and survivor-driven agendas at scale, but so are small-scale, localised strategies as they help ordinary people articulate their shared aims, mobilise around them and embrace consistent collaboration in the face of constant challenges. Social change and even transformation occur in various ways at different levels and categories of society across time. One of our tasks, as we understand them for this book, has been to bring attention to how groups of apartheid survivors are developing their agendas and strategies in order to highlight new possibilities for transitional societies and share information on tactics—even those that are more examples of tenacity than innovation—which may inspire and inform transformative approaches elsewhere.

###  The Struggle for a Just Transition

This chapter has outlined the strategies Khulumani members have developed to address socioeconomic drivers of violence in their neighbourhoods and foster transformation in their everyday lives, as well as the research participants' ideas for furthering this work. Starting with access to livelihoods, the chapter highlights participants' perceptions of the strengths of Khulumani's strategies in the Western Cape and Khayelitsha specifically, which lie in bringing members together, providing them with information and training, and encouraging knowledge exchange and collaboration on community-based income-generation projects. In suggesting new strategies, participants urge Khulumani to expand its projects, with older participants stressing the need for more resources for urban farming and others emphasising the need for new types of social enterprises in the township. Regarding government, the participant narratives urge support for local projects through, for example, start-up costs, equipment and materials and through capacity-building programmes and social facilities in the township. More than this, they call on government to re-evaluate its economic policies so as to prompt more jobs for low-skilled workers and to design contextually responsive solutions to high unemployment in collaboration with ordinary citizens.

Identifying youth development as a key future direction for the movement, the interviews focus on Khulumani establishing projects and facilities tailored to young people's needs, engaging youth in productive activities, and creating opportunities for intergenerational dialogue, knowledge exchange, collaboration and mentorship. For government, the narratives suggest that it establish more social facilities for youth, invest in policing strategies co-designed with young people and other residents, and open drug and alcohol recovery and rehabilitation facilities in the township. Above all, they demand that government meet its obligations regarding education, ranging from early childhood development to higher learning.

Noting the responsibilities often shouldered by the elderly, the interviews suggest that Khulumani should expand its activities and establish programmes and facilities that cater to elderly members and local residents, while government should increase older persons and disability grants, provide monthly food parcels and build old age homes in the township. Emphasising the disproportionate effect of poor service delivery on the elderly, the interviews focus on government's role in facilitating access to information, services and social assistance while instituting oversight and monitoring systems to reduce corruption in local government.

As we showed above, participants' strategies engage directly with the problems and issues raised throughout the preceding chapters. They also emphasise the value of Khayelitsha residents' knowledge of local histories, relationships and interventions, while contributing apartheid survivors' distinctive perspective by situating the township's contemporary challenges in the context of the ongoing transition. As both community activists and members of an apartheid survivors' social movement, Khulumani members articulate strategies that are part of a process of people-driven transformation towards a life not bounded by victimhood or exclusion. In this, they suggest an affinity for transformative approaches to transitional justice. While informed by a potentially radical vision for a just transition, participants demonstrate a willingness to work in various practical ways with the state and other stakeholders, responding to whatever political and other opportunities present themselves as the South African context changes over time.

As a movement, Khulumani faces many constraints in the Western Cape and in Khayelitsha. During one project planning meeting, for example, members compiled a list of obstacles to their work. The list started with the fact of little or no dedicated funding for interventions or even transport to meetings. It continued with the physical distances between individual members, especially elderly members with limited mobility, and lack of means to update members aside from face-to-face meetings and mobile phone text messages. Members also listed limited capacity in terms of fundraising, management, conflict resolution and other necessary skills; interference from members' other community, family and work obligations; support from civil society partners being more lip service than practical; and the weight of trauma and other mental health issues many members carry.

The diverse pressures suggested by this list, and compounded by the challenges of inequality, poverty and violence presented in this book, have had negative effects on the branch over the years. In project planning meetings and in our interviews, Khulumani members discussed power struggles and silencing within the movement, conflicts that have led some members to splinter off into separate groups, and divisions among members of different backgrounds and liberation struggle affiliations or experiences, which have deepened over time. They discussed the suspicion and at times reality of certain senior members using movement funds for their personal benefit. They observed a disproportionate focus on the compensation aspect of redress and questions regarding how reparations should be distributed among the branch's many members, especially given that some have given far more time and effort to the movement than others. Most of all, they noted a sense of fatigue among members who continue to face dire challenges more than two decades after the democratic transition and founding of their movement. These very real problems need to be acknowledged and placed counter to the desire to idealise and romanticise this or any social movement.

Members' efforts to continue meeting and develop new approaches to address the challenges they face in the township and within the movement itself are a reflection of necessity as much as will and solidarity. A Khulumani member's comment we shared in Chapter 1 is relevant in a different way here. "We became complacent, believing that we are free," she said. "We forgot the struggle continues. We thought that we had democracy once Mandela was free, but there was no democracy. And it is far from existing because the poor are still poor today" (42). Herein lies the rationale for returning, again and again, to the unfinished business not only of the TRC but also of the South African transition more broadly.
Conclusion

What still needs to be fixed is inequality. We all need to be on the same level, white, black or whatever colour need to be on the same level, and things will be better. (17)

In this book, we have presented the views of Khulumani members and young people in Khulumani families on the links between inequality and violence more than 20 years after South Africa's political transition. Sticking close to participants' articulations of their everyday experiences in Khayelitsha township, we have relied on extensive interview quotes to communicate the challenges they face and the strategies they use and envision for addressing them. In line with the participatory action research approach that guided our study, the book foregrounds the knowledge of the interviewees as they shared it and, in places, of the Khulumani members from around the Western Cape who helped us plan and implement the project. The participants confirm Khulumani members' long-standing assertions, which first inspired our research, that inequality and transgenerational poverty drive violence. They identify socioeconomic transformation as the key to a just transition to democracy.

The narratives indicate that the racialised inequality of the past continues to shape the present. Instead of addressing the socioeconomic oppression that buttressed the civil and political abuses of colonialism and apartheid, the democratic government's economic policies have entrenched the exclusion of most of the country's majority population from mainstream economic life. The interviews assert that government officials' perpetuation of apartheid-style corruption and dismissal of the demands and needs of ordinary South Africans who supported the liberation struggle have only served to deepen participants' sense of betrayal at the economic liberalisation that accompanied democratisation, especially for Khulumani survivors. The spatial apartheid that marks Khayelitsha—an under-resourced 'dormitory suburb' established by the previous regime to house black workers far from Cape Town's economic centre—aggravates residents' socioeconomic marginalisation. Echoing older participants' experiences under apartheid, this marginalisation manifests as restricted access to employment opportunities and limits on education and skills training, which are exacerbated by the inadequate social facilities and the growing population in the township.

According to the interviews, the structural barriers that promote socioeconomic exclusion, and awareness of the continuities between the apartheid and democratic dispensations despite the promises of transition, create an enabling environment for crime and violence. The narratives depict a web of violence, with the multiple manifestations of exclusion giving rise to interweaving pathways towards violence. Along with enforced inactivity and hunger in the township, these pathways include household frustrations and peer pressure, as well as substance dependence, community-based crime control and xenophobia. The complexity of the web of violence demonstrates the need for engagement with the broader context of violence, particularly the socioeconomic factors that drive it, in order to go beyond the 'what,' 'where,' 'when' and 'how' to access the 'why' of violence. The interviews suggest that violence prevention interventions are unlikely to prove effective or sustainable without taking this big-picture approach.

The narratives in this book show that the promises of equality, inclusion and progress represented by the post-apartheid period have heightened the strain participants experience at not being able to achieve economic success. Even as they name the numerous structural barriers that prevent access to life opportunities, participants shoulder blame for what they perceive as a personal failure to provide for themselves and, more so, their loved ones. Discussing residents of Khayelitsha, participants note that many struggle with feelings of frustration, anger and shame and a sense of insecurity regarding their abilities, particularly when confronted with the economic success not only of privileged white South Africans but also of other black South Africans and migrants from the continent. The interviews emphasise the pressure these dynamics build in households and neighbourhood streets as well as the negative effects they have on intergenerational relations, while stating that they encourage transgressive behaviour and acts of violence.

Co-existing in tension with self-blame in the narratives are assertions regarding the democratic government's responsibilities to marginalised citizens, especially those who are apartheid survivors. The interviews suggest that the government has placed these citizens in a dilemma, implementing laws and policies that undermine self-sufficiency and promote wage labour at the same time that they inhibit access to wage labour by favouring highly educated and skilled workers. They also suggest that the democratic period and the example set by government officials have given rise to a culture of competition and self-serving corruption that has eroded unity and collective action among black South Africans. While the narratives of young participants convey a sense of disillusionment, isolation and nostalgia for older forms of community organising and cooperation, those of Khulumani members stress the value of political participation and the need for continual social mobilisation in the present. Explaining the dominance of women in Khulumani and the place of politics in the everyday, the older participants' narratives indicate that the responsibility and burden of raising children amid the challenges of the township motivate much of their investment in grassroots activism and community-based activities. The use of violence as a lens in the research provided a manageable frame for participants to discuss the roots of socioeconomic marginalisation and their lived experiences of striving to access life opportunities in the context of extensive structural barriers.

Outlining strategies for addressing inequality and violence, the interviews focus on reducing structural barriers by creating livelihoods, ensuring education and youth development, and lightening the disproportionate burdens on the elderly for Khulumani families and other residents of Khayelitsha. Their approach emphasises bringing people together, providing information and guidance on new opportunities, and building confidence by encouraging them to exchange knowledge, train each other and work collaboratively. Similar to our approach with this book, participants highlight the value of community-based interventions that build on local knowledge, tactics and relationships, which are often formidable given that they have been tested by local challenges. While many of Khulumani's strategies aim to build members' self-sufficiency and autonomy in the face of an unresponsive state, the narratives demonstrate an attentiveness to shifts in the country's political and social context and a willingness to share their knowledge and partner with government and other stakeholders to reduce structural barriers should the opportunity arise. Underpinning participants' strategies as they described them is a shared vision of a redistributive state that espouses the principles of participatory democracy and centres citizens once relegated to the margins.

The interviews show that Khulumani members' activism is not limited to engagements emerging from being 'victim-survivors' of apartheid violations. Members' agenda has expanded and evolved over the past two decades, most pointedly to engage directly with socioeconomic marginalisation. Bridging their positionalities as members of an apartheid survivors' social movement and as active members of their communities today, the Khulumani members we interviewed and worked with identify ongoing inequality and violence as issues of transition linked to the failures of democratisation. In working towards a just transition, members advocate for people-driven transformation processes based on community-based interventions informed by local knowledge, including apartheid survivors' perspectives on the links between the past and the present. Their approach suggests new avenues for transitional justice in South Africa.

###  A Transformative Approach to South Africa's Ongoing Transition

The narratives in this book indicate that while South Africa underwent a political transition, it will not be a full representative democracy until it addresses the racialised inequality that continues to stifle the vast majority of its citizens. They also indicate that, in line with a number of TRC commissioners and staff members (Fullard and Rousseau 2008), many apartheid survivors do not view the TRC as the only or even the main mechanism that could have made a full and just transition possible. The narratives call for active and ongoing engagement with the issues of transition that mark South Africa, both in the form of accountability, reparations, truth recovery and institutional reform via mainstream transitional justice measures and in the form of socioeconomic transformation via participatory democracy, redistributive measures and inclusive economic development. Khulumani members in the interviews do not appear to make much of a distinction between these two forms of engagement, framing both as necessary to a just transition. In addition, most do not discuss the TRC, but rather talk about broad approaches to dealing with the past and focus on state and corporate reparations when referring to specific transitional justice mechanisms. Finally, they convey an ambivalent attitude towards the state, asserting that it has the power and obligation to address the shortcomings of its transitional arrangements in collaboration with those most affected by them, while taking a practical approach in looking to community-based interventions and partnerships with civil society and other stakeholders for opportunities for collective action.

Civil society efforts around transitional justice in South Africa do not reflect the approach Khulumani members articulated in our interviews. These efforts are led primarily by the South African Coalition for Transitional Justice (SACTJ), a group of organisations, including Khulumani at the national level and CSVR, which collaborated for years before forming the coalition in 2010 to "ensure that processes of truth, justice, reparations and reconciliation are respected and fully implemented in the South African context" (SACTJ n.d.).xi Through a combination of advocacy and litigation, the coalition and its partners have worked to prevent the presidency from granting pardons to individuals imprisoned for politically motivated crimes committed under or soon after apartheid, particularly those refused amnesty by the TRC (KSG 2015). They have pushed for transparency in governmental processes for allocating moneys earmarked for reparations in the President's Fund, in addition to calling for the list of survivors eligible for state reparations to be expanded (KSG 2013). They have also followed up on the TRC's submission of 300 cases to the National Prosecuting Authority by pressuring the national director of public prosecutions to re-open investigations into 22 key cases in which amnesty was either not granted or not sought (Rodrigues v. NDPP et al. 2018).

As the research participants acknowledge, such efforts are essential to highlighting the impact of apartheid abuses on generations of survivors and broader society, promoting redress and consolidating democracy. Where participants and the SACTJ diverge is that the coalition frames its activities entirely in relation to the TRC. With its focus on "truth, justice, reparations and reconciliation," the coalition associates itself with mainstream transitional justice concerns as articulated by the TRC. In defining the scope of its activities, it limits them to issues "pertaining to the unfinished and incomplete work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the failure of government to implement the recommendations of the TRC insofar as victims of apartheid are concerned" (SACTJ n.d.). This is a strategic choice in response to the government's resistance to mainstream transitional justice post-TRC and recognition that the commission's recommendations provide a concrete starting point for further activism. It also means, however, that the coalition portrays the TRC not as one of many measures for addressing past abuses but as the transitional justice mechanism in the country, into which other efforts feed. Furthermore, it means that transitional justice is publicly associated with the commission's much-critiqued narrow mandate and its perceived failure to promote transformation, which the student movements referenced in 2015 in demanding that Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall in order to confront racialised inequality (Langa 2016; Grunebaum 2018).

The coalition goes beyond the TRC's mandate and a narrow framing of the 'unfinished business' of the transition only in including "measures to secure the socioeconomic rights of victims and survivors" among its focus areas (SACTJ n.d.). The SACTJ adopted this focus, which amplifies the commission's broader findings on the socioeconomic underpinnings of apartheid (Moeti 2013; Brankovic 2013), in response to Khulumani's advocacy within the coalition. While it goes some way towards integrating transitional justice and socioeconomic transformation as suggested by Khulumani members in our study, the phrasing reduces addressing socioeconomic injustices to the narrow human rights terms used by the TRC. Moreover, the coalition has not actually initiated any activities in this focus area to date. Another divergence from the approach put forward by Khulumani members is that the SACTJ's initiatives focus on the state. The coalition frames its common purpose in terms of furthering constitutional commitments that earlier provided the basis for the establishment of the TRC (SACTJ n.d.). Its advocacy and litigation efforts put pressure on government, primarily via the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, to fulfil the state's obligations regarding accountability and reparations for apartheid abuses.

The question is whether transitional justice can mean more in today's South Africa—and whether civil society efforts around transitional justice can better reflect Khulumani members' strategies on the ground. Taking a cue from the affinities between the research participants' statements and the literature on transformative approaches to transitional justice, we offer a few ideas here. We argue, first, that a slew of state- and civil society-driven initiatives have taken place since the closing of the TRC that deal with the past while working towards a just transition. An example of a state-driven initiative is the land reform process, which has aimed to redress those dispossessed of their land rights by the 1913 Natives' Land Act and subsequent legislation.xii The democratic government established the Land Claims Commission and the Land Claims Court to oversee land restitution and reparations, accepting land claims between 1995 and 1998 and then again between 2014 and 2019. The process has shortcomings, mainly in being too slow and reaching too few, but the Land Claims Commission has nevertheless settled claims for 177,623 hectares, at a cost of more than 881 million rand for the land, and transferred 1.7 billion rand in financial compensation to 37,902 beneficiaries to date (Mkhwanazi 2019). An example of an initiative driven by both state and civil society actors is the 1998 National Poverty Hearings,xiii which were repeated at a smaller scale in 2008. Over 14,000 people across the country's nine provinces participated in these events by making submissions, giving public testimony, informing and mobilising communities, and attending the hearings. The testimonies in both 1998 and 2008 echo the statements in our interviews with apartheid survivors in 2015, including by highlighting lack of access to employment, education and social facilities and services, along with effects such as frustration, dropping out of school, and crime and violence. The hearings resulted in concrete recommendations for government, civil society and other actors (10th Anniversary National Poverty Hearings 2008).

Examples abound of civil society-driven initiatives, particularly community-based ones, that deal with the past in service of a just transition (Zuern 2011; Ballard, Habib and Valodia 2006). Khulumani's activities in different provinces, mentioned briefly in the Introduction, are a case in point. In addition to the initiatives in our research interviews, members have worked with communities in the Eastern Cape to advocate for access to clean water and sanitation, and supported the widows of striking miners killed by police at Marikana through memory projects and advocacy aimed at improving living conditions. Building on a history of cultural production and public education, members have founded local arts groups with a capacity-building focus, organised youth dialogues on the legacies of apartheid and trained community-based 'citizen journalists.' All of these efforts emphasise the continuities between apartheid oppression and post-apartheid marginalisation, bringing participants from different backgrounds and generations together to develop interventions that contribute to people-driven transformation (Brankovic 2018).xiv

These examples lead us to our second point. We suggest that all these initiatives are in fact transitional justice measures. The reason they are not commonly considered that is precisely because of the localisation of the term 'transitional justice' to the TRC by state and society, and as a result by civil society actors who work in transitional justice, such as the SACTJ. It is particularly telling that the semi- and quasi-judicial mechanisms of the land reform process and the Poverty Hearings, which fit the conventional form of transitional justice mechanisms, are not labelled transitional justice. This is presumably because they venture beyond the mainstream transitional justice concerns adopted by the TRC and seek to integrate socioeconomic issues with civil and political ones in dealing with the past as it manifests in the present.

Yet, these measures meet the classic United Nations definition of transitional justice as "the full range of processes and mechanisms associated with a society's attempt to come to terms with a legacy of large-scale past abuses, in order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation" (UN 2004: 8). They are even more in line with the African Union's recent definition of transitional justice as "the various (formal and traditional or non-formal) policy measures and institutional mechanisms that societies, through an inclusive consultative process, adopt in order to overcome past violations, divisions and inequalities and to create conditions for both security and democratic and socio-economic transformation" (AU 2019: 4). The African Union's newly adopted transitional justice policy responds to critiques of earlier, now mainstream, conceptions of transitional justice as a set of overly standardised mechanisms that promote Western European, retributive approaches to justice (Okello 2010), individualise responsibility and suffering (Mamdani 2000), side-line socioeconomic abuses and structural inequalities (Arbour 2007), and privilege short-term, technical and expert-driven measures over contextually responsive and inclusive processes (McEvoy and McGregor 2008; Gready and Robins 2019). As its definition suggests, the African Union's conception of transitional justice contains decidedly transformative elements. In articulating an African approach to the field, it offers a supportive framework for the design of contextually relevant measures, including at but not limited to the state level, that promote socioeconomic transformation and inclusivity in responding to the needs and demands of affected communities and survivors of past abuses. While the African Union's policy is normative, it suggests a shift in what is considered legitimate in the field.xv It also represents a regional approach that opens up new possibilities for expanding the idea of what transitional justice in South Africa could look like in theory, policy and practice.

In line with this opportunity for expansion, we suggest, third, that transitional justice in the country encompasses not only a series of post-TRC state-sponsored mechanisms but also broad-based civil society-driven interventions such as those developed by Khulumani members in different communities. This view is in accordance with transformative approaches to transitional justice. It recognises the value of the knowledge and strategies developed by those affected by harms in the past and their manifestations in the present (Lai and Bonora 2019; Sitrin 2019). It promotes inclusivity and advocates for the participation of a far wider range of ordinary people, civil society representatives and other stakeholders in transitional justice processes (McGill 2019; Gready 2019; Evans 2019). As research in Africa suggests, while peacebuilding processes tend to include a broad set of actors, such as labour unions, professional associations, faith-based groups, kinship- and ethnicity-based collectives, and women's and youth groups, these actors are widely considered overly sectarian, marginal or 'uncivil' to participate in the formulation of subsequent transitional justice processes that are part of state-driven democratisation efforts (Brankovic 2018). The design and implementation of transitional justice measures are dominated by state actors and a small set of professional, urban human rights NGOs that tend to adopt mainstream approaches, even if they are critical of them (Brankovic 2018; 2013). In South Africa in the 1990s, "the transitional justice debates were led by a very small group of NGOs" (Pigou 2011: 508). These organisations took up mainstream transitional justice approaches in terms of both content and process, and many of them continue to shape transitional justice discourse in the same vein, as indicated by the SACTJ.

Acknowledgement of broader-based civil society initiatives as transitional justice presents the possibility of thinking and collaborating in new ways towards a just transition. If, as we have argued, transitional justice is ongoing in South Africa, this approach brings socioeconomic issues to the forefront alongside civil-political issues and highlights different and potentially novel ways to deal with the continuum of oppression between the past and the present. Quoting Robins again, "ongoing practice [at the local level] is likely to be a richer source of strategies and approaches for achieving transformation than any effort to find a single overarching theoretical framework that can advance justice" (2019: 313). Recognising a wider range of civil society initiatives would bring the approaches of a different set of civil society actors—for example, student groups, women's groups, social movements, faith-based organisations and other collectives, including successors of those that contributed to the liberation struggle—into agenda setting and strategy development regarding transitional justice. The involvement of new civil society actors might also open up fresh opportunities to lobby government and even collaborate with state actors on joint transitional justice initiatives. Instead of supporting the notion that they are opposing binaries, it could encourage more interaction and transference of ideas and activities between the state and civil society (Gready 2019), as already suggested by the example of the Poverty Hearings. While transitional justice can appear ossified, as a relatively young field it is still developing and its norms are continually, if slowly, shifting. In South Africa, it should be encouraged to evolve by the NGOs that have shaped it to date, and by government actors who are increasingly under pressure to address racialised inequality and the political marginalisation that accompanies socioeconomic exclusion. In addition to being in accordance with the regional norms promoted by the African Union, this more inclusive approach presents another opportunity for innovation in the country—much like the TRC did in the 1990s—and for South Africa to contribute to the re-imagining of transitional justice in response to lessons learnt in the field and to new global realities and concerns.

As a final point, we argue that our suggestions here represent transitional justice efforts and do not need to be framed as transformative justice (or distributive or reparative justice) or in other terms. Despite the many critiques of the TRC and its aftermaths, transitional justice is a familiar concept that continues to inform debates around what a just transition could and should look like in South Africa. Because it is a known and accepted term and approach, but also a field that continues to evolve, transitional justice is still a useful framing device and tool for promoting social change. It is malleable and shifting enough to uphold transformative agendas, and, given that transitions are long-term processes, it can support repeated engagements with the issues they raise over time. Terms such as 'transformative justice' are simply less familiar and evocative. The trick is to influence the discourse around transitional justice to be more accommodating of transformative agendas in contexts where they are relevant. In addition, the term transitional justice brings attention to the field's rootedness in societies that have experienced large-scale systematic abuses and that seek to provide redress and create an environment where such abuses are no longer as easy to commit. It also brings attention to the experiences and demands of those most affected by past abuses, and the notion that transitional justice seeks, albeit often ineffectively (Robins 2011a), to be victim- and survivor-centred in its design. The field's origins in post-authoritarian and post-conflict contexts and its direct engagement with survivors are what distinguish it from broader processes for social change (McGill 2019). Some argue that concepts such as transformative justice are separate from transitional justice (Evans 2019) or that their approaches are applicable in any context instead of linked to systematic abuses (Gready 2019). We focus on the distinctive aspects of transitional justice, which are its strengths, and seek to align its practice in South Africa more closely with apartheid survivors' approach as reflected in our research and in Khulumani members' grassroots efforts.

###  Inequality and Survivor-Centred Transitional Justice

The participant narratives in this book indicate the ways that Khulumani members' activities and activism have shifted over the years since the movement's founding in 1995. They have responded to the lived experiences of Khulumani families in marginalised communities by acknowledging the structural barriers they face. They have expanded to include the conceptualisation and enactment of "a people-driven transformation of the society with its existing deep structural forces that have shaped and sustained injustices, inequalities and exclusions over generations" (KSG 2017: 7). They have echoed the demands of survivors in other contexts in prioritising socioeconomic inclusion (Robins 2011b; Vinck and Pham 2014; Firchow and Mac Ginty 2019). Khulumani members' efforts have not left the past behind. Instead, they highlight the backward-facing and forward-facing character of transitional justice, along with how long term transitions tend to be. While privileging the experience and knowledge of Khulumani members, they also emphasise the need for engagement and solidarity with broader communities of marginalised South Africans from different backgrounds and generations in dealing with colonial and apartheid legacies. At the same time that the movement works with mainstream, state-centric transitional justice concerns, especially at the national level, it is modelling inclusive and participatory interventions within communities where its members live. Its strategies are instructive for transformative approaches to transitional justice in South Africa, and beyond.

The literature on transformative approaches to transitional justice expanded rapidly following the 2008 economic crisis (McAuliffe 2017). As we noted in the Introduction, the crisis raised concerns about increasing inequality across the globe and questions regarding the existing political order and its reliance on economic liberalism, including the role transitional justice plays in supporting it (Gready 2019). Given South Africa's history and lauded democratisation process, the growing inequality in the country after the political transition spurred debate and unrest that only increased following the economic crisis. It is important, as Khulumani members do, to link the fact that South Africa is consistently among the most unequal societies in the world to the fact that it is also among the most violent. Crime and violence are a central concern for South Africans, if not an obsession, and it is an issue that cuts across racial, class and other barriers (Fry 2017). While inequality is not the sole driver of violence and while we only looked at one township, the narratives of those most affected by violence—like the ones we have shared here—demonstrate how the post-apartheid political and economic order has contributed to deepening inequality and how inequality shapes everyday life in a way that facilitates crime and violence. These concrete experiences help take the abstraction out of economic arrangements. They may also help spur new forms of mobilisation around reducing inequality. The expanded form of transitional justice we advocate, which is informed by people-driven transformation efforts based on local knowledge and solutions, could be a new platform for addressing inequality and its consequences in South Africa.
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About the Authors

Agnes Ngxukuma is a member of the executive committee of Khulumani Support Group in the Western Cape. She is also an organiser in the African National Congress Women's League. A mother and grandmother, she runs Eggie's Soup Kitchen in Khayelitsha and volunteers as a caregiver to those in need in her community.

Brian Mkhululi Mphahlele has been a member of Khulumani Support Group in the Western Cape since its founding and currently serves as the secretary of the provincial executive committee. A former political prisoner and torture survivor, he provided testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and continues to fight for redress for apartheid survivors.

Jasmina Brankovic is a senior researcher with the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and associate editor of the International Journal of Transitional Justice. She conducts research on transitional justice, inequality and civil society strategies, with a focus on participatory methods. She is co-author of The Global Climate Regime and Transitional Justice (Routledge 2018).

Nompumelelo Njana is an apartheid survivor and long-time member of Khulumani Support Group in the Western Cape. She is the founder of a waste picking and recycling initiative in Khayelitsha and an activist in the Waste Pickers Movement of the Western Cape and the South African Waste Pickers Association.

Sindiswa Mirriam Nunu is the field worker for Khulumani Support Group in the Western Cape, organising and mobilising members in cooperation with area committees across the province. She served as a councillor for the City of Cape Town from 1998 to 2000. She is an active member of her community on women's issues and in the struggle for land rights.

**Yanelisa Sishuba** is the daughter of a Khulumani Support Group member. She is a youth activist, currently working as a Democratic Alliance youth leader in Cape Town Metro.

## Notes

i This book takes a cue from our interviewees in using terms like 'black,' 'white' and 'coloured' to refer to different racial groups. These terms are a legacy of apartheid, under which the population was categorised according to race: coloured, black/native/Bantu, Indian/Asian and white/European. While other terms are in usage in the country, many South Africans, like the participants we interviewed, still use these as shorthand.

ii See International Center for Transitional Justice, "What is Transitional Justice?" https://www.ictj.org/about/transitional-justice (accessed 1 February 2019).

iii See, Khulumani Support Group, http://khulumani.net (accessed 1 January 2019); Khulumani Support Group, https://www.facebook.com/pg/khulumaniafrica (accessed 1 February 2019).

iv Khulumani Support Group, http://khulumani.net (accessed 1 January 2019).

v The TRC investigated human rights violations involving "(a) the killing, abduction, torture or severe ill-treatment of any person; or (b) any attempt, conspiracy, incitement, instigation, command or procurement to commit an act referred to in paragraph (a), which emanated from conflicts of the past... and the commission of which was advised, planned, directed, commanded or ordered, by any person acting with a political motive" (TRC 1998–2002: vol. 1(4), 42).

vi See, Khulumani Support Group, http://khulumani.net (accessed 1 January 2019).

vii The interviewees requested that they be anonymous in this text. Numbers are used in place of names. The letter 'y' refers to participants 16–26 years old and the letter 'm' to participants 26–50 years old, while no letter is an indication of participants aged 51 and older.

viii The research sample here is representative of the larger population, meaning that it features a large majority of black South Africans.

ix South African social grants include the older persons grant, disability grant, child support grant, foster care grant, care dependency grant, grant in aid, social relief in distress grant and war veteran's grant. See Brockerhoff (2013) for a review of social security policy in the country.

x This claim is often met by the equally controversial one that black South Africans have benefited from affirmative action laws in the democratic period, to the exclusion of coloured South Africans. Both claims emerge from broader identity-based tensions between these groups (Adhikari 2013; Hammett 2008).

xi The core organisations are Khulumani Support Group, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and the Human Rights Media Centre. The International Center for Transitional Justice and the South African History Archives were also part of the coalition in 2010. In 2019, the Trauma Centre for Survivors of Violence and Torture took their place. A number of other organisations and individuals are 'friends' of the coalition (SACTJ n.d.).

xii Thanks go to Hugo van der Merwe for bringing up this point.

xiii The organisers were the South African NGO Coalition, the South African Council of Churches, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Human Rights Commission and the Commission on Gender Equality.

xiv Khulumani Support Group, http://khulumani.net (accessed 1 January 2019).

xv The African Union is far from alone in policy circles. Another example is the German federal government's recently adopted strategy for supporting transitional justice efforts (2019), which expands on the United Nations definition and mentions inclusive and distributive processes in pursuit of social transformation.
