Beyond Confinement: Cape Gangsters and the Sub-Saharan Trade of Stolen Electronics

ABSTRACT

Instead of being perceived as confined to oppressive spaces in South Africa, detached from mainstream society, in this article I show that gangsters in Cape Town have harnessed liberalisation since the 1990s to become players in the market economy. This is illustrated by means of two criminal practices that support the illicit trade in electronics: residential burgling and transnational smuggling. By tracing the circulation of stolen electronics, gangsters and their migrant collaborators are shown to use flexible procedures to prevent detection and custody. These procedures capitalise on the changes brought by liberalisation, allowing for the efficient flow of electronics consignments to distant African cities and villages. It is argued that thinking through these procedures allows for a nuanced understanding of contemporary gang dynamics beyond confinement.

KEYWORDS:

• Segregation
• electronics
• illicit economy
• gangsterism
• prison

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Coloured people are the majority population group of the Western Cape Province and are of mixed ancestry.

2 Smokkel means ‘to smuggle’ in Afrikaans. Smokkel is traditionally associated with drug and illegal liquor dealing, often at a known house in the community (smokkelhuis or smokkie), but it also refers to illicit circulation on a trans-local scale.

3 Member states of SADC include South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Madagascar, Mauritius, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Comoros and Seychelles. When discussing the SADC region, I do not refer to the island member states.

4 It is not clear to me if this is also the case for higher-end drugs, or so-called ‘white man’s drugs’ in South Africa, such as cocaine, rock and LSD. Considering the scope of this article, I will not expand much on the import of drug consignments (rather see for example Dolly 2019).

5 Greater Cape Town includes the outlying large towns in the vicinity of metropolitan Cape Town, namely Atlantis (originally a township), Paarl, Wellington, Stellenbosch, Worcester, Hermanus, Malmesbury and Vredenburg. As in Cape Town, Number Gangs operate from camps in the coloured townships of these large towns, while migrants have also moved to these towns.

6 The majority of burglars in Kraaifontein belonged to the 28s and 27s, with fewer 26s.

7 The shopping list is not a real list, written down on paper. It is memorised information of what objects are required for an order.

8 For example, apart from other tricks, when the undercover officers find a stolen device, the suspects usually claim ignorance: the device was a gift, of which the origins were unknown. This excuse is apparently enough to convince the Magistrate for release, along with the rest of the consignment.

9 Some gangs also have cohorts of other theft offenders specialising in street robbery and thievery, alongside burglars. Each theft offender type ‘moves together’ (beweeg saam) within specialisations that fit certain personalities. Introverts, who are too sensitive to rob people, though observant, are said to become burglars. With age, theft offenders can aspire to claim high-ranking managerial roles in the organisation.

10 The Border Police are not aware of consignments being exported from Cape Town’s harbour, likely considering the slowness of sea freight from this location. This is not the case for the Durban harbour, which is closer to east and south-east Africa (see Moodley 2014). Furthermore, apart from Nigerians, the Border Police have confiscated consignments in possession of suspects using air travel mainly from Ghana, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Tanzania, Somalia, Togo, Cameroon and Ethiopia. Local organisations focussed on supplying stolen goods collaborate with various African diaspora groups, and, to a lesser extent, South Asians from Bangladesh and Pakistan. My focus on Nigerian and Congolese collaborators occurred because this was the predominant, though not exclusive, situation in Kraaifontein.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst: [Grant Number 57299294].