Review

A Diplomatic Approach to Crime Control in Cape Town: NGO Diplomacy and Organized Crime

Tal Septon

JD Student – Griffith University

E-mail: septont@gmail.com
Tel.: +61 450 020 0845

Received: 18 January 2022  I  Accepted: 21 February 2022  I  Published: 26 February 2022  I  Article ID: MRJASSH22011
Copyright © 2022 Author(s) retain the copyright of this article.
This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0.

Abstract

South Africa's Cape Flats exist with parallel structures of criminal and state authority. Unemployment and poverty are two major socioeconomic determinants leading Black and coloured community members to gangsterism. Ceasefire, a local NGO, adopts innovative social crime prevention and public health approaches to crime in Cape Town's Hanover Park diplomatically. Social crime prevention focuses on the social, economic, and environmental drivers of gangsterism. These evidence-based practices prove successful in Hanover Park but conflict with special interests in South Africa's competitive party system. State actors actively undermine Ceasefire's initiatives with dire consequences on peace and development for Cape Town's severely marginalized and neglected communities. The state zealously favours militarized and punitive approaches in crime control, and the politics of crime in South Africa renders Ceasefire a politically unattractive model. However, holistic approaches, such as Ceasefire's methodology, are necessary to meaningfully transform the lives and opportunities for those submerged in gangsterism.

Keywords: Diplomacy, Gangsterism, Guerrilla diplomacy, NGO diplomacy, Organized crime, Social crime prevention