The document discusses how fear continues to perpetuate social divisions in South Africa that originated during apartheid. During apartheid, non-white South Africans had their rights restricted and were forced into segregated townships. After apartheid ended, crime became a justification for continued racist fears and divisions. Wealthy and middle-class South Africans have responded to crime fears by fortifying their homes and neighborhoods, which has replicated the spatial divisions and exclusions of apartheid. This fortification has negative social consequences by rejecting efforts to integrate communities and perpetuating inequality and segregation. The government needs to encourage diversity and address the root causes that fuel crime fears.

1. The New Apartheid – Housing and
the Implications of Fear in South
Africa
Ayana Rockett
December 2011

2. Fear perpetuates social divisions
that were inherent in Apartheid. The
fear of crime being used as a
justification for a predominantly
racist fear of difference

3. Apartheid
“Apartness”
• Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National
Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994.
• Non white south Africans were curtailed and Afrikaner minority rule was
maintained.
• Non white political representation was abolished in 1970 and black people
were robbed of their citizenship and legally became citizens of tribally
based, self governing “bantustans”
• Pillars of Grand Apartheid:
- Population Registration Act (1950)
- Reservation of Separate Amenities Act (1953)
- Black Homeland Citizenship Act (1970)
**

5. Bantustans

6. “Architecture of Fear”
• The fall of Apartheid began in 1990 after a series
of negotiations by government and nationalist
groups.
• The end of Apartheid, democratization and
majority rule were optimistically anticipated to
bring and end to violence.
• Urban panic focusing on criminal activity
**

7. “Architecture of Fear”
Fear has always influenced Urban Planning
• Baron Haussman – boulevards fragmenting
revolutionary threat of underclass
• Le Corbusier – eliminated streets, replacing them
with artificially “pure” environments
• Oscar Newman/Jane Jacobs – defensible
space, natural surveillance

8. “Architecture of Fear”
State led efforts to mitigate fear have been usurped by
private, individual citizen responses

9. Cape Town
Ruthless spacial polarization
Third largest city
Most common are violent personal crimes, property crimes
Khayelitsha – fastest growing shantytown in South Africa
**

10. Crime
Threat of victimization affects behavior
• Crime is not uniform. Socio-spacial legacy of
apartheid concentrates crime in black areas.
• 80% of white victimizations occurs outside of
neighborhood boundaries
• Aggravated by skewed distribution of personal
and institutional resources
Fear
Media increases anxiety

11. Citizen Responses to Crime
Fortification is common among the poor and the
rich
• Black: dogs, window grills, high fences.
• Coloureds: burgular alarms
• Wealthy: Excessive
- blocked themselves - high walls
- closed streets - security guards
- electric fences - CCTV

15. Consequences of Fortification
- Rejects efforts to address socio-spacial issues
activity corridors
- Increases crime
- Decreases public responsibility for public space
- Promotes inequality, fear and segregation
- Limits social mixing, increasing distrust between
groups
- Prevents “freedom of movement”
- Promotes “fear of crime” rhetoric
- Encourages poverty by exclusion and
concentrating the poor small spaces with limited
resources and political leverage

16. Discussion
Whites have long used the “fear of crime” as a
euphemism for a fear of blacks.
• Whites blame crime on the new black governments inability
to rule. Black see it as unfinished democracy.
• More “acceptable” discourses revolve around decreased
property value, environmental degradation and increased
taxes all conceal a racist fear of the “other”.
• The concept of “fear” creates conditions that mirror the
Apartheid city in that it justifies exclusion, uses spacial
mechanisms to displace social problems, and dominance of
social and symbolic exclusionism.

17. Solution
• Government planning needs to encourage
diversity
• It needs to address citizen needs
• It needs to enforce the negative public
consequences of unchecked public action.
• Combat the symbols of exclusionism