Youth, Crime and Urban Renewal in the Western Cape

Urban renewal in South Africa involves contending with a combination of high crime rates, increasing inequality and growing public frustration. In Cape Town, urban planners are attempting to stimulate economic growth, in part, by turning the city into a ‘world class’ destination for investment and tourists. In taking this approach, the authorities cite crime as the primary obstacle to urban renewal. This study examines the politics of urban renewal in Cape Town's Central Business District, paying particular attention to efforts to control the presence of street children in the central city. I argue that the attention given to street children and the negative impact they are said to have on urban renewal constitutes a moral panic driven by and contributing to a vision of development that leaves relatively untouched the inequalities of apartheid. In defining street children primarily as a threat to social order, local elites, including the media, police and renewal authorities, are reproducing deeply embedded and recurring notions of a ‘black menace’ that emerge during times of real or perceived social upheaval and threats to social ‘order’. My contention is that this panic is indicative of an ongoing struggle over urban public space that expresses a deeper conflict regarding changes in the city, which has to do with unresolved contradictions of race and class. This criminalisation of street children raises serious doubts as to how well new progressive approaches to both crime reduction and development will survive urban renewal efforts that many feel reproduce the city's division into developed and underdeveloped areas.