Four distinct thematic areas emerged from an analysis of our findings. Following a brief overview of sample characteristics, we tackle each of these themes below. Firstly, we report on the multiple forms of violence experienced by young people in Hillbrow’s public spaces, followed by a look at what domestic life holds for them: is home necessarily a safe haven in this setting? Then, we consider how Hillbrow’s adolescents identify ‘safe’ and ‘unsafe’ areas in the neighbourhood, and navigate these spaces to minimise risk. This section reflects on how these young people make sense of their environment and deal with negative stereotypes about Hillbrow in surprisingly positive ways. Finally, we present data on the availability and quality of support services in Hillbrow, from the perspectives of service providers and of the young people they are intended to serve.
Sample overview
In total, 59 adolescents took part in the study (community mapping = 39; IDIs = 20). Equal numbers of girls and boys took part in the IDIs, while the community mapping involved 19 girls and 20 boys. On average, the 17 key informants interviewed (10 female, 7 male) had worked with youth for 10 years, with experience ranging from 1 to 36 years.
Among the adolescent IDI participants, four boys and three girls reported having at least one deceased parent. Some participants lived with relatives as their parents either could not afford to take care of them or lived too far away, and two of the girls lived in a shelter because they had been expelled from home by relatives. Virtually all participants made some reference to financial hardship in their households, but for at least half of the girls interviewed, these hardships were acute: where money for food, school fees and rent was often inadequate. Two girls had recently experienced interrupted schooling owing to a lack of finances. Earning a small income through independent, part-time work appeared to be more common among boys (fixing cars, selling flowers or recording music for local DJs) than girls (braiding hair). Two girls mentioned receipt of state child support grants, but claimed these funds were being collected by relatives and used for other purposes.
“Outside these walls it’s dangerous”: violence in Hillbrow’s public spaces
In the narratives of adolescent participants, the social environment of Hillbrow was dominated by violent crime, substance abuse, and sex workers, a place where drugs were routinely sold in the open. Police intervention in Hillbrow was described by most as virtually non-existent, with the only effective protection against violent crime being that offered by armed guards hired by private security companies and reserved for the neighbourhood’s entertainment venues. Drug- and alcohol-fuelled fighting in public spaces was reportedly a common occurrence, along with mugging and petty theft. One boy recounted his experience of the latter just a few days prior to the interview.
“…they took my cell phone from me and they had a knife and that happened when I was coming back from rugby practice. I was coming there by Shoprite and it was dark and I think it was probably around eight thirty in the evening…I was traumatised…I was alone and I was shocked.” (Tshepo,
3 15 year-old boy)
Participation in petty crime and substance abuse was allegedly required for membership to some male gangs that populated the Hillbrow landscape, intimidating people, stealing cell-phones and instigating violent clashes. A gang known as the ‘Vandals’ apparently used plastic rulers to search for phones hidden on the bodies of their victims. Their modus operandi was simple and effective: “They take people’s phones, they hit people, they ask you for money, you say no, the next thing they hit you” (Karabo, 16 year-old girl). Another gang known as the ‘CMFs’ (“Crazy Mother Fuckers”) were known for stealing and stabbing. They were “…always drinking alcohol and if you quarrel with one of them they all come to you because their slogan is ‘touch one, touch all’” (Busi, 16 year-old girl). Participants described how the determination of certain gangs to protect their turf meant that spatially, Hillbrow was divided into a number of tightly controlled ‘no-go’ areas. Those who strayed into their territory – whether members of other gangs or not – were likely to be punished with threatened or actual physical violence.
Not all gangs were regarded as violent, however. Local groups such as the ‘Pantsulas’, ‘Bourgeois’ and ‘Hip-hoppers’ were apparently better known for their music and clothing preferences, and for characteristic styles of dancing. But intense competition among local gangs, even those defined more by dancing than by a penchant for violence, meant that physical conflict routinely erupted between them, particularly when sexual liaisons developed across gang boundaries. Boys explained that young people who were simply bystanders could inadvertently be drawn into these competitive and intrinsically violent interactions. One popular gang in the neighbourhood, they claimed, was the ‘
Izikhothane’, modelled on a notorious youth sub-culture that originated in Soweto in the early 2000s [
35].
Izikhothane members would wear luxury branded clothes and nihilistically flaunt wealth they did not have. They were said to tear up banknotes and clothes “
and throw [them] at you”. Boys said they felt “
ashamed” when confronted with
Izikhothane, and hinted at how the gang ethos fused local constructions of masculinity with the glorification of ostentatious displays of consumerism:
“…some of us want to live a peaceful life and it’s not a nice thing if you go out there and someone says ‘look at this one, the poor one, he’s got nothing and we’ve got this and that’. And that won’t make you feel good about yourself…you will end up beating them up because that person will be embarrassing you. And it would be worse if there were girls around because you don’t want to be embarrassed in front of women.” (Boys CM 2402)
While none of the boys reported membership to a gang or direct experience of violence inflicted by gang members, some had witnessed others being attacked and mugged. They expressed anxiety about the need to avoid encountering these gangs in their day-to-day interactions. Overall, boys’ detailed descriptions of adult male gang behaviour revealed an acute awareness of how their presence in Hillbrow was impacting on the ability of all residents to feel safe.
By contrast, girls’ narratives focused much more on their personal experiences of sexual harassment in the public spaces of Hillbrow – mentioned by almost all girls in the IDIs. This was commonly referred to as being “pulled on the street”, and reflected how the simple act of moving around in public was a deeply gendered one. Girls in a community mapping group explained,
“When you walk around they [men] call you…Yes and say things such as ‘my size, hey my size come here’, I will give you money.” (Girls CM 0304)
Others spoke of their reluctance to visit bars in the area, because they could expect to encounter men who were “
too touchy-touchy [laughter]” (Girls CM 0404). Rose (17 year-old girl) described being targeted sexually by the leader of a local gang:
“Every time I come to Hillbrow, I am scared that I might meet him. […] When I see him I have to kiss him, like really…I’m scared he will hit me, like really bad. […] Yes! ‘I will slap you, if you don’t kiss me now like really I will point you, I will take out my knife, I will stab you…’.”
Many adolescents drew connections between sexual violence, transactional sex, and the drug trade – which they believed had been boosted in the area by the presence of foreign men. Indeed, allegations that foreigners were the primary source of crime in Hillbrow were common. Portia (19 year-old girl) spoke about harassment by “
foreign guys selling drugs” in public:
“…like if you are walking by them they will be pulling you, [saying] ‘come here my friend I will give you this, anything you want in this world.’ What is that? ‘Cos the guy knows he sells drugs, all he wants to do is spoil my life. You know, he wants to sleep with me…”
This perception contrasted starkly with key informants’ main concern in relation to foreigners in Hillbrow, namely, that xenophobic attitudes were preventing these migrants from accessing local health services.
Finally, in addition to direct, personal experiences of violence, both boys and girls reported commonly witnessing acts of violence in public.
“…we see a lot of things. We see people fighting, drinking, we see pornography live. We just see it there, people raping each other …” (Cécile, 16 year-old girl)
While boys residing at the Twilight Shelter returned by 18 h00 every evening – for their own safety – they still frequently witnessed violence from the confines of the shelter; they
“would see people fighting outside, if looking out the window” (Boys CM 0302). Unsurprisingly, the witnessing of such violence was said to have clear mental health consequences:
“Kids experience a lot of fighting in the community, when someone is fighting someone, and taking the bottle to strike someone with this bottle, that is not something good for a child to see. It goes deep into them and it depresses them.” (KI09; male orphanage director)
“They know that if they speak something, uncle will kill me”: Violence in the home
Compared to descriptions of violence in the public spaces of Hillbrow, violence in the home was characterised by an even more profound gender asymmetry, in that it was raised almost exclusively by girls. Their stories took three broad forms: direct experiences of sexual violence; witnessing domestic violence; and experiencing emotional abuse and neglect.
Accounts of sexual violence in the home mostly involved perpetrators who were known to the girls. Fifteen year old Thembi, who was perinatally infected with HIV and currently not attending school, stayed with her aunt and uncle following her mother’s death from AIDS. While her aunt was away from home for some time, Thembi was subjected to repeated rape by her uncle –
“…one evening [he] came home and started touching my private parts and told me that he is going to teach me how to please a man and he raped me. And this happened several times until I told my aunt about it and she didn’t believe me, but took me to the clinic …she asked that I be given family planning injection.” (Thembi, 15 year-old girl)
Efforts to tell other adults in her surroundings, including a neighbour, led to further victimisation:
“ I told her what my uncle is doing to me and she asked my aunt about it and she [the aunt] said that I am lying, that I want to take her man from her, so she beat me after the lady left… she told me that I am lying and called me a ‘whore’.” (Thembi)
Thembi’s was the only direct experience of rape reported by participants, but it nonetheless highlights a more general absence of positive adult role models for young people in this area, including recourse for young people experiencing sexual violence in their homes. It is perhaps not surprising that key informants remarked on the under-reporting of abuse in the home as a significant challenge in their work. The director of a local orphanage alluded to even greater violence that awaited victims who spoke out about their abuse, although did not provide specific examples of such extreme retribution:
“You see the problem here is that so many girls have these problems [sexual abuse] and they don’t talk. They keep it a secret…these children are small, but they are scared of people. They know that if they speak something, uncle will kill me…The children are living in fear.” (KI09, male orphanage director)
A second form of violence in the home involved the witnessing of domestic violence. Rose described watching her sister being beaten up by her partner, to the point where she was unable to walk. Although the police were called, “
they didn’t come”, forcing Rose to go to the police station the following morning to open a case of assault. Similarly, Busi described her failed attempts to intervene when her father was abusive:
“My dad abuses my mom when he is drunk… He swears at my mom and it happens every time he is drunk...It makes me feel terrible, bad and sad. I try to stop him and he always tells me not to defend my mother because he will hit me.” (Busi, 16 year-old girl)
Nineteen year old Sello recalled witnessing his father’s violent attacks on his mother over the course of several years, eventually culminating in his parents’ separation. Sello was the only boy who reported domestic violence in his home.
Thirdly, and perhaps less easy to categorise, was a form of emotional abuse and neglect experienced at home by girls such as Lerato, Cécile and Zama, who had been separated from their parents, either by death, poverty or conflict in the family. As a consequence, they stayed with relatives in somewhat precarious home circumstances, were often made to carry out the majority of the housework, including caring for younger siblings, and at times made to feel unwanted. Living in a shelter at the time of the interview, Cécile had been thrown out of her home by her step-father who suspected her of using witchcraft against his own children. She then went to stay with an aunt,
“I had to clean the house, wash her clothes, her son’s clothes, her daughter’s clothes and her husband’s clothes and I had to cook and everything, and sometimes she would not give me food.” (Cécile, 16 year-old girl)
Cécile then left her aunt’s house and moved into the shelter. In the interview, she reflected that it
“hurts a lot” to not live with her mother and siblings anymore, and that growing up without parental guidance was a real challenge.
“…living life away from them, it’s painful because life in this place is hard. You get into the adolescent stage and you don’t know who to trust, who to go to give you advice then the things people do here, you don’t know if this is good or this is bad.” (Cécile)
This absence of a positive adult role model was also keenly felt by 17 year-old Zama, who lived with her sister and her sister’s partner, whose emotional abuse led her to frequent thoughts about running away. Her mother died in 2000, and she has never met her father.
“At times I get angry when I am at home because we live with my sister’s boyfriend and I don’t like him much, we don’t get along...When he gets home drunk he will start telling my sister about how useless I am and that he doesn’t like me.” (Zama, 17 year-old girl)
None of the boys reported having being rejected or chased away by their families, nor did they report experiencing physical abuse in the home. In the final sections below, we explore how adolescents in our study have responded to these experiences of violence – whether remaining silent, tapping into support services in their environment, or forging their own strategies for coping and staying safe. Such responses are crafted against the backdrop of how residents of Hillbrow imagine and interact with its physical spaces.
Geographies of danger: finding safe spaces and reframing violent realities
At first glance, the community maps produced by adolescent participants in our study simply lay out the spatial arrangement of Hillbrow: the streets, apartment buildings, shops, the police station, churches, parks, and schools, and so on. Closer examination reveals that they also depict a ‘geography of personal danger and safety’. As the social realities of living in Hillbrow were plotted onto representations of its physical spaces, isolated pockets of safety emerged amidst this complex terrain. As with the exposure to violence in public and at home, there were clear gendered differences in how this precarious geography was lived and imagined.
Overall, boys’ and girls’ maps differed mainly in relation to the number and dispersal of ‘safe’ spaces identified across Hillbrow. Figures
1 and
2 illustrate this pattern well: the girls’ map (Fig.
1) identifies only a few places concentrated in a small area of the neighbourhood as ‘safe’, suggesting that girls’ movement beyond this cluster is probably quite limited. Areas identified as ‘unsafe’ by the girls are specific sections of streets that are main thoroughfares or access/exit points to Hillbrow, which in turn corresponds to their complaints of being “pulled on the street” by men, and of needing to find alternative routes when “being sent” to run errands, or when walking to and from school (see below). The boys’ map in Fig.
2, by contrast, identifies more locations as ‘safe’, and these are scattered across a wider area. Retail and entertainment venues, which pose the risk of muggings and alcohol-fuelled violence, were cited most as ‘unsafe’. Age did not appear to be a strong factor shaping these maps – except in one respect, namely, that older girls (17–19) seemed more aware than their younger counterparts of which entertainment venues served alcohol – described as dangerous but also enticing – and hinted at their own patronage of these venues.
Since virtually all public spaces were regarded as dangerous after dark, few participants had direct experience of the city at night, particularly those who lived in shelters, which had strict curfews. For girls, freedom of movement was also limited after school and on weekends to their own homes, the homes of friends, churches, or well-populated shopping areas. The observation of sixteen-year old Busi was a common one:
“I am only with my friends on weekends and we never go anywhere. We just play around our flat”. Even one of the boys commented on the apparent ‘informal curfew’ that applied to girls in Hillbrow and limited their mobility:
“Girls have to be home around six because of their safety, while we as boys can be home around ten in the evening.” (Joe, 16 year-old boy)
The Hillbrow Theatre was a space identified by all girls’ mapping groups as ‘safe’. This complex, which hosts after-school drama, dance and music programmes for young people in the inner-city, is a popular spot, particularly in the afternoons and on weekends. For boys, libraries and internet cafes were popular retreats, along with parks, which enabled them to
“relax” and
“refresh your mind”.
“…because during the day there are people there [in Berea Park] doing different activities such as exercising and all that…the atmosphere is great…it makes you be at ease. And there are security guards there.” (Boys CM 2402b)
Boys tended to avoid places where they were likely to encounter peer pressure to engage in physical conflict or substance use. One boy even framed this strategy as a need to be safe not only from “the outside world” but also “from my own danger” (Boys CM 2402). Churches were identified as potential ‘sanctuaries’ regardless of gender, while schools were only mentioned by boys as offering protection from outside dangers. Girls cited instances of sexual harassment by schoolmates, suggesting that in this respect at least, schools were no different to other public spaces, where such harassment was the norm.
While one might expect young people to regard their homes as ‘safe spaces’, importantly, this association was heavily contested within the girls’ mapping groups. Those who asserted that they felt safe
“at home” or
“in flats” were almost always challenged by fellow group members who had experienced otherwise. One girl specified,
“I feel safe only on my floor, because we lock” (Girls CM 1805), while others contended,
“no, I don’t feel safe at our flats” (Girls CM 0404) and even claimed,
“your flat is full of thugs…they mug you around there” (Girls CM 0404). By contrast, boys from a shelter were unanimous in identifying this home as a safe haven from street violence, “
from people who might mug you and also from gunshots”. Another said,
“[In Twilight Shelter] there is always protection… We are safe from drugs, crossfires, crime, human trafficking and a lot of bad things out there.” (Boys CM 2402)
Encounters with potentially violent petty criminals on the streets of Hillbrow were seen as almost inevitable, but steering clear of well-known dangerous routes during the day was a common tactic, particularly for girls: 15 year-old Lerato’s mother could not allay her fears of “kids who stay at Umshangani Park”, whom she passed when running errands for adults in her household, “because she [her mother] knows that if they come for me then they’ll come.” Lerato’s only strategy – and one that demonstrated agency – was to “take a different direction” on her route in the hope of avoiding them.
For others, coping with life in a violent environment was easier when one had become desensitised to its effects. Vusi (15 year-old boy) had witnessed so much violence in his neighbourhood it had become ‘normal’:
“I guess for me it’s normal because I have lived here most of my life. Like some of my friends when they come here they tell me that Hillbrow is dangerous and stuff like that, but for me I guess I know that it can be dangerous. I have seen people die here and whatever but you know, it’s something I am used to.”
Vusi’s apparent nonchalance was not shared by all. Some participants – girls in particular – alluded to high levels of anxiety and stress and indicated that coping with constant fear was a challenge. Sixteen year old Busi reflected that:
“There is nothing easy about staying in Hillbrow, everything is difficult”, while Thembi’s struggles to cope with trauma following sexual violence were heightened by the intense isolation and lack of support she experienced living at a shelter. She occasionally visited an aunt and some cousins on weekends, but this was about to change:
“…they said they don’t want me there anymore and they told the social worker that. […] No one visits me. I don’t have friends.” (Thembi)
Despite this somewhat grim picture, however, other narratives embodied a strong sense of survival against the odds, and even an expression of community pride in Hillbrow. Tshepo (15 year-old boy) reckoned,
“it’s not safe living in Hillbrow but we survive”, while Sandile (18 year-old boy) claimed,
“I enjoy it a lot. It’s a good place even though there is crime”. In contrast to those who blamed foreign migrants for the unsafe streets of Hillbrow, other participants embraced the diversity of this neighbourhood, crediting its cosmopolitan make-up with broadening their exposure to a variety of people, languages and diverse points of view:
“…there are lots of opportunities and it’s all about what you make out those opportunities… So Hillbrow is a fantastic place to us…But it’s all about what you make out of it.” (Boys CM 2402b)
Mbali (18 year-old girl), who had moved from Kwa-Zulu Natal to live with an aunt in Hillbrow, stated that “staying in places like these, where there are lots of people opens your mind; it’s not the same as living in the rural areas”. In a girls’ mapping group, one participant even exclaimed, “it’s a cool place to be….I am proudly Hillbrowian! (laughter)” (Girls CM 0304).
Regardless of adolescents’ own thoughts on Hillbrow, however, they were often confronted with the negative perceptions held by others. As one girl put it, “
there is a perception that when you say you stay in Hillbrow, you prostitute yourself or you drink alcohol or you take drugs” (Mbali). Most participants recounted being teased by peers who lived in townships, and having to either ignore the teasing, defend their reputations, or even pretend that they lived elsewhere – acts that in themselves became forms of agency and resilience. Vusi was one of the few who seemed able to brush off these remarks:
“…at school people call me a drug dealer and say things like I am a criminal and stuff like that, you know, just the typical stereotype. […]Well I don’t take it as like insulting or something like that. It’s just I take it as a joke.”
Evidence of self-motivation and agency in the face of adversity appeared also in the narrative of Cécile (16 years), a young Congolese woman living in a Hillbrow shelter for girls. A sense of hope was palpable in her vision for the future, which involved a commitment to improve both the shelter and the neighbourhood that had taken her in.
“I want to be an attorney because of the things I see here. I see that there is lot of injustice and unfair trials in this place, so I want to make a difference and my first pay check should be given to this [shelter] to help it become better.” (Cécile)
In the long run, these perspectives point to promising signs of resilience among some adolescents – both male and female – for it is the ability to reframe their surroundings in more positive ways that may ultimately serve to lessen the risk, fear and trauma associated with living in the inner-city.
An imperfect stop-gap: support services for vulnerable youth
Beyond the construction of certain physical spaces as ‘safe’, however, adolescent participants also commented on the scarcity of external support services and interventions available to help them should they ever become victims of violence. A dominant theme here was that while psychosocial support – particularly counselling services – was known to exist in theory, many adolescents were either not aware of how and where these services could be accessed, or (based on prior experience) they doubted their ability to meet their needs. Some were unaware that services targeting youth existed in Hillbrow at all.
From the perspective of service providers, however, the nature of this gap between demand for and supply of psychosocial services was more complex than ‘mere’ lack of awareness. One key informant who had grown up in the neighbourhood was running a peer education organisation in Hillbrow which was struggling to secure the necessary funding and support. In his estimation, adult residents in Hillbrow did not “
have time to come and donate and see what their children are getting up to when they are out”. For him, there was no shortage of potential resources – organisations, services and safe spaces – on which young people in Hillbrow could draw. But these resources were under-funded and under-used, owing to chronic apathy and a series of “disconnects” between the services and their target populations.
“…there is just something that’s lacking between the service provider and the people needing this service. You know people still need to be convinced as to why do we need this service.” (KI10; male community organisation leader)
Other key informants spoke of numerous challenges facing services that attempt to target local youth with recreational activities. These included chronic under-funding and inadequate coordination with the police and other social service agencies. Key informants working in psychosocial services noted the continuing stigma around sexual abuse, particularly for male victims, which accounted for the profound under-reporting to police services, and the low uptake of sexual abuse counselling. A female manager at a national counselling organisation commented on her observation of serious mental health problems among youth. Among the greatest problems was a pattern of suicidal ideation and self-harming behaviour, which she attributed to being “exposed to things that they don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with”. Often undiagnosed, even when these cases do come to light, “there are no resources” to support referrals into proper care. This was also true of referrals for young people with substance abuse problems. Without prompting, Sandile (18 year-old boy) expressed awareness that his own drinking had become harmful – “I drink too much, but can’t seem to stop” – and which he was attempting to address alone.
Echoing the key informant who was concerned about self-harming behaviour, another noted that young boys
“…don’t know what to do with their feelings…it leads to quite a lot of underlying anger simmering from hopelessness” (KI016; female counsellor). While we did not explicitly pose the question of young people themselves perpetrating violence, examples of this did emerge in the data, particularly in relation to children living on the streets:
“…when they first arrive, you will see that a child [is] not violent, but once they start staying on the streets they learn all those tricks to survive on the streets, maybe they are fighting to wash somebody’s car…they are also fighting to carry somebody’ bag. It's a serious issue. You will hardly find a child who has stayed on the streets who has never fought with any other child.” (KI12; male shelter worker)
Other key informants considered existing counselling and support services in Hillbrow to be “geared for adults” and therefore not youth-friendly, leading to further limitations around access and impact. On a similar theme, Rose (aged 17) believed that what young people in Hillbrow needed most to help them cope with the challenges of their environment and build resilience, were opportunities for collective problem-solving under the guidance of adult mentors. She offered specific recommendations for these mentors to lead “groups that would motivate youth as to how they should handle life”. Her suggestion highlights one way in which existing services and organisations could become more responsive to the needs of adolescents: by addressing the longer term problem of absent positive adult role models, rather than only providing a temporary ‘stop-gap’ service for youth who are victims of violence.