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Gangs, Rituals & Rites of Passage
Don Pinnock
Preface
This book began as unfinished business. In 1983 I published The Brotherhoods: Street Gangs and State
Control in Cape Town. It sought the cause of the city‟s many youth gangs in socio-political factors:
poverty, poor education, broken families and the massive urban relocations of people of colour under the
apartheid regime. It ended by warning that unless communities took these wild youngsters under control
instead of blaming them on apartheid there would be a massive increase in crime and violence whatever the
political system. There was.
After the democratic elections in 1994 crime became the single most damaging factor in economic
reconstruction and urban development. And at the heart of this problem were gangs, syndicates, drugs and
murder.
The elections coincided with my return both to criminology (after 10 years of teaching journalism) and
to Cape Town. I found the gang problem far worse than when I left; nothing had been solved and young and
generally underprivileged people were as much the victims as the perpetrators of extremely high levels of
violence. I could hardly do otherwise than to take up where I had left off. Professor Wilfried Schärf of the
UCT‟s Institute of Criminology offered all support and discussion time I needed (as well as essential
funding) and Rosemary Shapiro of Nicro National pulled me onto a committee working on draft legislation
for juvenile justice. Here I teamed up with Rosemary and Advocate Ann Skelton of Lawyers for Human
Rights in what was to become a powerful working synergy and a wonderful friendship.
The proposed legislation, hammered out in the offices of the Community Law Centre at UWC and at the
Institute of Criminology, was a revolutionary break from existing models of punitive justice. It proposed
victim and community involvement with young offenders and a „track‟ which was restorative and demanded
that young offenders take responsibility for their actions.
Rosemary, Ann and I were closely involved in moves that led to whipping being banned as a form of
punishment and we all wound up on the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Young People at Risk chaired by
the extraordinarily-dynamic Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, now Minister of Welfare. The committee‟s aim was
to propose to the new government legislation dealing with young people at risk and in trouble with the law.
All these developments - and President Nelson Mandela‟s personal interest in the welfare of young people -
led to a crisis in punishment. Until whipping was outlawed, more than 30 000 young (and generally black)
men were being whipped annually by the state.
The outlawing of this form of punishment, linked to a growing objection to prison as a form of
punishment for youngsters, raised a deafening question, not the least from magistrates: what to do with
young people who offend? This study began as an attempt to answer this question with regard to gangsters.
But this time, instead of looking at the external factors which led youths into gangs, I asked a question I
should have asked 10 years earlier: what is it about adolescence that makes gangs so attractive? Because
only in answering this can we find what might motivate young people to escape them.
This research took me from the dangerous streets of Mannenberg to rituals as ancient as humankind
itself. And, surprisingly, it demanded that I ask questions about myself and my relationship to my father:
important questions we should all ask.
Needless to say, this work is in its infancy and is now being taken forward by a number of individuals
and organisations (the most important of these being Nicro and the Wilderness Leadership School). When
this study was completed I began work on the development of a programme for young people based on
ancient Khoi-San trail science. The road through adolescence has many pathways. . . .
In addition to those whom I have mentioned, many other people made this book possible. They include
some wonderful and dedicated people on the Youth Justice Consultancy and the Inter-Ministerial
Committee, Ministers Dullah Omar (Justice) and Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi (Welfare) who offered time
and insight when these were needed, Karl Niehaus for his startling political wisdom at all times, Lauren
Nott and Nigel Branken of Nicro for being prepared to try out difficult and unusual pilot studies, Elaine
Dyer for introducing me to the magic within us all, John D‟Almeida and his Outward Bound team for
dealing with the toughest youngsters imaginable with such gentleness, Karen van Eden for taking forward
this work with insight and sensitivity and Venetia Lorenzo for her delightful lack of tact when it was most
needed. Most especially I would like to thank my co-researcher Dudu Douglas Hamilton whose work with
the two most dangerous gangs in the city was nothing less than an act of extreme bravery. She has a
maturity way beyond her years, but I confess I often feared for her safety. Perhaps her upbringing among
the elephant herds of Kenya stood her in good stead.
And finally I would like to thank my wife Patricia and children Gaelen and Romaney-Rose. Researchers
with their heads clogged up with facts and meetings are not the best people to have to live with. But Patricia
offered only concern, support and discussion. And my children, both adolescents, forced me to practice
what I preached.
Introduction
Boys everywhere have a need for rituals marking their passage to manhood. If society does not
provide them they will inevitably invent their own.
Joseph Campbell
The woman drove the car forward and felt a bump as the tyre ran over the foot of one of the attackers. But
another one clung to her car‟s bonnet, obscuring her vision and causing her to narrowly miss a mini-bus
taxi. The taxi driver, quickly assessing the situation, pulled out a pistol and began firing at the youths, who
ran away.
Their action was undoubtedly criminal. If the youngsters were brought to court it would be the job of a
prosecutor to prove that this was an unprovoked attack. And it would be the task of a magistrate to impose a
sentence that would cause the young men to feel society‟s wrath and to deter them from ever undertaking
such action in the future.
But would these steps, seemingly so central to the necessary course of justice, be of any use to the
victim, the youths or society? If one is to judge by the escalation of teenage lawbreaking and recidivism
despite decades - even centuries - of whipping and imprisonment, the answer is probably no.
On the contrary - and particularly if the young men were gang members - each step of the legal process
would serve to reinforce those traits the law officers would most like to eliminate, embedding the
youngsters deeper in gang culture and increasing their taste for wild, anti-social performances.
There are at least two reasons for this. Firstly, the South African justice system was not designed with
young people in mind and does not act in ways likely to win their allegiance or change their attitudes. The
reason for this, at least in part, is our inheritance of a legal system designed for control and not for social
restoration or personal transformation. Jim Consedine has noted that:
The law imposed by the English, wherever they colonised, was the law of a conquering empire. The English did to
others what the Roman Empire had attempted with them - impose its own form of imperial law. In essence it was
hierarchical and centralised. In criminal matters it was retributive in nature, vengeful and punishing in effect.
A second reason is that collective adolescent behaviour - particularly where it relates to gangs - seems to
be little understood by law officials trained in Western legal procedures. Indeed, few adults can accurately
remember the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the pressures to conform, perform and win respect.
Why did the youngsters attack the woman? In their absence it is impossible to answer for them. But in
their action can be sensed a certain naive wildness, an unplanned theatricality, which seems to have placed
more value on ritualistic performance than on the apparent goals of the action (why lie on the bonnet
hacking at the windscreen rubber when a brick through the window would have done the job?). This does
not condone their behaviour. But to understand such action - and I will argue that we need to do this in
order to develop policy concerning young people at risk - we will have to remember something important
about our own adolescence: teenagers, above all things, are myth-makers, creating and recreating situations
and whole webs of significance little understood by the pragmatic adult world.
The failure of this understanding is presently crystallized in the institutions we have created to correct
adolescent rule-breaking. Their aim seems to be to inflict emotional and physical pain and social isolation -
despite the absence of proof that this ensures compliance, improves behaviour or produces well-adjusted
adults. Indeed, gang formation is an attempted defence against personal pain and isolation which state-
inflicted punishment simply compounds. This pain is considerable and it was made worse by the massive
social engineering under apartheid which placed terrible strain on families. Earlier work on gangs in South
Africa has suggested that the effect of poverty and apartheid‟s massive social engineering created social
stress to which gangs were a teenage response. This view is captured by American Sarah van Gelder:
The result of this uprooting and neglect is that the solid core of contributing adult members crumbles, and the
institutions that provide the foundations of community fall apart. The community safety net is left in tatters.
Parents, exhausted by long hours required to make ends meet or demoralised by their inability to cope with the
hardships of poverty, may turn to drugs and alcohol. Kids are left on their own in . . . adultless communities.
But the attempt by young people to solve these problems is more instructive than their causes and is best
understood, not at the level of socio-political explanations, but at the level of meaning. To quote David
Matza: „The process of becoming deviant makes little human sense without understanding the philosophical
inner life of the subject as he bestows meaning upon the events and materials that beset him. What does
ganging, lawlessness and excess mean to adolescents? And what can we learn from it in order to lead them
to the calmer waters of adulthood? This is a key question in the design of any new youth justice system.
Ritual and adolescence
In order to understand what is meaningful for young people - and without this understanding we cannot
hope to be involved in what is meaningful to them - we need to understand what adolescence is. In his book
Circle of life: Rituals from the family album, David Cohen has described adolescence as a rope bridge of
knotted symbols and magic between childhood and maturity, strung across an abyss of danger. It is clearly
the most confusing time in our lives and a time deeply misunderstood by Western culture. It is also a period
of intense feeling. And of feeling misunderstood. In a recent South African survey of beliefs and attitudes,
young people were asked to respond to a question: „Hardly anyone I know is interested in how I really feel
inside‟. Nearly six in ten African youths strongly agreed with the statement.
But adolescence is also hugely creative. It is a time of anticipation for something indescribably other - a
longing for magical transformation and a rejection of the mundane. It demands ritual space, a time and a
place where young men and women can become introduced to the unknown man and woman inside
themselves. They need to discover when childhood ends, when and how adulthood begins and what their
culture expects of them. Robert Bly, in his book Iron John, has noted that „adolescence is a time of risk for
boys, and that risk-taking is also a yearning for initiation... Something in the adolescent male wants risk,
courts danger, goes out to the edge - even to the edge of death‟. This echoes the words of William Blake:
„The road of excess leads to the place of wisdom‟.
But Western cultures have largely lost what most pre-industrial cultures knew: These needs and
excesses have to be dealt with by ritual guidance and initiation, not by punishment and imprisonment. Bly
sees a crucial link between excess and initiation:
We need wilderness and extravagance. Whatever shuts a human being away from the waterfall and the
tiger will kill him...The boy‟s body inherits physical abilities developed by long-dead ancestors, and his
mind inherits spiritual and soul powers developed centuries ago...The job of the initiator, whether the
initiator is a man or a woman, is to prove to the boy or girl that he or she is more than mere flesh and blood.
Mircea Eliade, in his reports of initiation experiences in dozens of cultures all over the world, mentions
that initiation of boys begins with two events: the first is a clean break with the parents, after which the
novice goes to the forest, desert, or wilderness.
In older, more socially cohesive cultures, these requirements are recognised for what they are. Here,
when girls reach menses, they are secluded and taught the art of womanhood by older females in their
community. Boys typically face an ordeal or trial where they earn and affirm their passage to manhood.
This can range from first hunts and ritual warfare to psychic ordeals, initiation into clubs and organisations,
scarifications and apprenticeship to a spiritual master. In each case there is a conscious recognition that
adolescence involves a process, a becoming, a transformation. It is a time filled both with danger and
enormous potential for growth. But, wherever adolescents are, their need to test their mettle, to become
heroes and to be accepted is paramount.
For this reason elaborate rituals have developed around the heroic deed. While hunting is no longer a
vital skill in most of the world, many people in traditional societies still consider the first hunt to be a
necessary milestone on the road to adulthood. Among the !Kung, for example, a boy traditionally cannot
marry until he has made a kill. Risking one‟s life is ever present in these hunts, but the necessary challenge
can also be found elsewhere. In Vanuatu, adolescents dive from high towers to prove they are courageous
enough to become men. Elastic vines attached to their ankles are just short enough to prevent them from
crashing to their deaths. Other rites of passage are more spiritual. After Jewish bar mitzvah at 13 a boy
becomes a Son of the Commandment and becomes accountable for his actions. He can now be counted in
the quorum for public prayer and publicly bless and read the Torah and the prophetic Haftorah.
Behind all of these actions is the mentor, the father or mother figure, the wise one, the shaman, guiding,
approving, channeling the wildness to calmer shores. And for boys this seems particularly important. In new
Guinea there is a saying: „A boy cannot change into a man without the active intervention of older men‟.
But in cultures which have lost their ancient roots - through migration, poverty or dilution - young
people continue to have (and act on) the same needs. And where ritual is absent it will be created - and
often in bizarre forms. In Rio de Janeiro, for example, teenage surfistas ride atop speeding trains swerving
through the hills above the city. If they touch the electric lines or fail to duck at the right moment, they risk
serious injury or death. In the suburbs of Cape Town young gang members have to „break a bottle-neck‟ -
be the person to light a broken bottle-neck filled with a mixture of dagga and mandrax. Among older
members, the inner circle of the gang may be gained by hunting and killing an „enemy‟ gangster. Here
teenage rituals continue to be enacted daily which are far older than the justice system which judges them.
Elaborately, often unconsciously, and with tools, substances and attitudes dating back to the dawn of our
species, young people engage in rituals of transformation which have a single goal: adult respect. In this
painful and dangerous journey can be found echoes of African initiation ceremonies, Jewish barmitzvahs,
ancient hunting rituals, Boer kommando lore, images of Hollywood, holy communions, Khoi trance dances,
Arthurian legends and many other rituals through which, for millennia, young people have attempted to
prove themselves worthy of adulthood.
The short answer to why we do these things is that we do them in order to grow up. But we do not grow
up gradually and comfortably, we do it in spurts followed by periods of stability. In the span of a life, the
changes which take place over the few teenage years are staggering. And at these times the greatest point of
growth for adolescents is not their legs or their genitals but their spirit. It is for this reason that they become
obsessed by heroes, performance and ritual. These are spirit food.
Human longing for ritual is deep, and in our culture often frustrated. Tom Driver has suggested that
ritualising is our first language, not our „mother‟ but out „grandmother‟ tongue, and as such it is something
we do not outgrow. It is not true, he says, that we human beings invented rituals. It is rather that rituals have
invented us. Sally Falk Moor sees rituals acting to „provide daily regenerated frames, social constructions of
reality, within which the attempt is made to fix social life, to keep it from slipping into the sea of
indeterminacy. Our need for ritual is elegantly captured by Thurmon Arnold:
Every individual, for reasons lying deep in the mystery of personality, constructs for himself a succession of little
dramas in which he is the principal character. No one escapes the constant necessity of dressing himself in a series
of different uniforms or silk hats, and watching himself go by.
Emile Durkheim goes even further, observing that „society is not an empirical fact, definite and
observable; it is something in which men have never really lived. It is merely an idea. And ritual is so basic
to our creation of society that to lose ritual is to lose the way. It is for this reason that when we feel a
prolonged or acute absence of moral guidance, when we do not know in our conscious minds what we ought
to do, the ritualising impulse, laid down for us in structures older than consciousness, is brought into play.
At times like this - and adolescence is one of these times - we are often without formal life-paths and have
to rehearse in the dark, so to speak, without a script. It is at these times, to quote DH Lawrence, that we
„evolve rituals to suit our needs‟ and engage in them in order to transmit collective messages to ourselves.
These crucial actions which we engage in as we pass from one state of being to the next are best
understood as a rite of passage, a term developed by French anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep. He found
that the many cultures he studied created ritual ceremonies around moments of individual life crises such as
birth, social puberty, marriage, fatherhood/motherhood and death. These ceremonies differed only in detail
from culture to culture. But, essentially they were those crucial moments when we shift the gears of life.
And we did this by taking collected wisdom of an entire culture or a single village or street and presenting
this knowledge in the form of a comprehensible drama.
According to Van Gennep, transitions from group to group, from situation to situation and from age to
age are implicit in the very fact of existence. Life, he says, is made up of a succession of phases. Rites of
Separation (to detach the subject from their old status or condition), Rites of the Threshold (transitional
rites or liminality) and Rites of Incorporation (coming together, sharing ritual object use.
Separation involves symbolic behaviour signifying the detachment of the individual from his or her
fixed point in the social structure. It is a process whereby the individual differentiates himself or herself
from the rest of the community. This stage is often symbolised by death. The individual must die of his or
her old ways in order to be born into the new.
In the condition of liminality the state of the „traveler‟ is ambiguous, passing through a realm that is
undefined. The initiate is neither where he was nor where he is headed. At this stage there is a suspension
of the rules, and the individual is often impelled to do what is forbidden.
Ritualised liminality employs structures of its own; but these are different from the structures of society,
and they are often used to „emphasize homogeneity, equality, anonymity and even foolishness when
compared with the heterogeneous, status-marked, name-conscious intelligence of the mainstream social
order‟. Liminality is a time when adolescents engage in rites of transgression, defined by their spontaneous
unconventional nature, not embedded in the norms of society and sometimes distinctly opposed to them.
During incorporation, rituals are used to symbolise the individual re-entry into the community and into
the new group. They generally involve by sharing and coming together.
These ceremonies and rituals are defined as an individual and inner process of growth as well as a social
process of continuity. Rites of passage in traditional societies demand that continuity in relationships
between generations, hierarchical social structures and gender differences be respected and allowed
expression.
Rituals of transformation are useful in understanding adolescence. But they have also been among the
guiding principles of all homogenous societies which place social cohesion and restitution above control
and punishment. And they are part of the tradition of Africa. For this reason - and because adolescents can
only be influenced by what is meaningful to them - an understanding of the use of ritual is essential to the
construction of the goals and sanctions of a new youth justice system in South Africa. To build the new we
must learn from the old - be it from a human being, a ritual or an entire culture.
Traditional rites of passage
Traditional cultures everywhere greet the onset of puberty, especially in males, with elaborate and
excruciating initiations - practices that plainly would not have been necessary unless their young were as
extreme as ours.In an essay called The Age of Endarkenment, Michael Ventura noted that adults in these
cultures don‟t run from this moment in their children as people in Western cultures do; they celebrate it:
They would assault their adolescents with, quite literally, holy terror, rituals that had been kept secret from their
young until that moment...rituals that focused upon the young in all the light and darkness of their tribe‟s
collective psyche, all its sense of mystery, all its questions and all the stories told to both harbour and answer those
questions.
These adults consider they have something to teach: certain skills, dances, stories, magic, visions and
rituals. And if these things are not well learned it places the future of the culture in jeopardy.
At a certain moment young men and women are, therefore, transferred from conventional to ritual space,
stepping over a threshold through some sort of ceremony into a symbolically „heated‟ situation beyond the
mundane. In this place, before they can become an adult, some infantile being in them must die. For young
boys initiation is generally done by older men who help them move from their mother‟s world to their
father‟s world. Robert Bly insists that „women can change the embryo to a boy, but only men can change
the boy to a man . . . boys need a second birth, this time a birth from men.‟
The process of separation is often dramatic and involves procedures noticeably different from everyday
life. In Hopi culture the old men take the boy away at the age of 12 and bring him down into the all-male
area of the kiva. He stays down there for six weeks, and does not see his mother again for a year and a half .
In New Guinea the initiated men live together in houses at the edge of the village. Mothers carefully refrain
from telling their sons anything about the impending events, retaining the element of surprise. As the men
lead them away, the boys may be crying out, „Save me. Mamma, save me!‟
In many African cultures young women are secluded behind a reed screen in a hut where they are taught
by their grandmothers, while young men are „sent to the mountains‟ for teaching and circumcision.
These are practices which have developed over centuries because they are necessary for the stability of
community life. Instead of condemning youthful wildness in their period of liminality, they capture its
intensity in rituals which teach and empower while protecting social life from adolescent excesses. Such
practices continue because these cultures have learned what the West has forgotten: If a culture does not
deal with the warrior energy of its young men and the spirit energy of its young women - take it in
consciously, discipline it, honour it - it will turn up outside in the form of gangs, wife beating, depression,
drug violence, brutality to children and even aimless murder.
To most traditional people the absence of such rituals is almost unthinkable. Asked what would happen
without them, an old Tembu chief was unambiguous:
It would be chaos. The authority structure would break down. The young men would have bad dreams and the
young girls would get sick. They could even die! Also they would have no voice.
Research among Xhosa people in the Transkei showed the tenacity of these ancient rituals. Despite more
than a hundred years of disruptive migrant labour and nearly three centuries of Christian and Western
influence, rituals of adolescent passage and the handing down of ancestral teaching are still firmly in place.
And these traditions have much to teach modern justice systems about social control and stability.
Working among the Qaba people in the Transkei, Joan Broster found that young teenagers were
initially incorporated into the umtshotsho, a club where young men and women danced and courted under
the supervision of a „magistrate‟. Strict rules of behaviour were enforced, and any transgressions were paid
for in fines of brass or copper bangles:
In my area the meetings were held every Thursday and they came in their best clothes - clothes and beads were
very important. The girls would dance in a circle and the boys in their own circle. Occasionally a girl would circle
a boy - but they would not be allowed outside the hut to „pet‟ without the permission of the magistrate. The
magistrate was backed by a committee and a lot of ritual teaching went on. The youngsters couldn‟t wait to be
admitted to umtshotsho.
Later, adolescents in these cultures undergo more formal rituals of transition. Girls will be secluded
„behind the curtain‟ during intonjane and boys will undergo abakhwetha - circumcision rites. An old
inkangata, or female spiritual teacher, described intonjane as follows:
At about 15 the girl must train for womanhood. She goes behind the curtain in a hut for 28 days. In the old times
it was longer. There she is taught by her grandmother who is the inkangata - the mother is not allowed in the hut.
Intonjane is an attempt to shape the child and discipline her in some way and teach her about her ancestors and
about magic and being a woman. Without these ceremonies they would go completely wild.
During the ceremony the young woman remains naked but painted white - a colour signifying a holy
state - having only a blanket for protection. All her old clothes and her old ways are expected to be left
behind. After eight days a community celebration takes place, signifying the importance of the ritual. And
when the young girl emerges from seclusion she is welcomed at a big community celebration of singing and
dancing at which a bull is slaughtered.
Young men undergo a different type of passage to manhood. A small domed grass hut is built for them
in a secluded place far away from the community and often in the mountains. Before the makwetha enters
this ritual space the young man, like his female counterpart, is painted with white clay, leaves his clothes
behind and wears only a blanket. Tension is built up around the ritual. A young Mpondo, Nzimela Ncoyini,
who underwent circumcision, first asked his mother if he could undergo the ritual but she refused, saying he
was too young. But two years later he asked his father, who said it was the right time. However the
procedures were kept secret:
You are never told what‟s going to happen. Everything is hidden until you go yourself. It‟s good that way or
people will take it for granted. You have mixed feelings - you‟re afraid of the operation but you know that across
the bridge there‟s milk and honey.
For the boys the ritual from this point is strictly men‟s business, and in the hut the initiate is
accompanied at all times by a male teacher. Women are actively excluded:
You have to denounce your feelings for a woman. They call a woman isigwati- it doesn‟t make sense. If someone
talks about a woman in your presence there is something you have to shout out to exclude the thought. It is to
destroy the memory.
These are not sexist practices. Robert Bly sees such initiation as a process which asks the son to „move
his love energy away from the attractive mother to the relatively unattractive serpent father‟:
When a man enters this stage he regards Descent as a holy thing, he increases his stomach for terrifying insights,
deepens his ability to digest the evil facts of history, accepts the job of working seven years under the ground,
leaves the granary at will through the rat‟s hole, bites on cinders, learns to shudder, and follows the voice of the
old mole below the ground.
The young men are instructed on what is expected of a man, a process which today lasts about a month
but used to last up to nine months. Teaching is given about spirit ancestors and about sacred and ritual foods
and objects. In both the Tembu and Mpondo rituals which were studied for this paper a secret language is
also learned, marking the men as initiates. According to Ncoyini this language made him feel like a new
person:
The language changes your mentality - it is very important. It makes you feel a bit uncomfortable at times but you
really feel that your presence is appreciated. People listen to you when you use these terms. Adults pay attention
and respect you and are prepared to help you when you use these terms.
Within the ritual there are traces of military initiation and battle discipline and strong bonds are created
between fellow initiates. According to Ncoyini, the people who shared his „bush‟ experiences were
comrades and „if we still had wars I could be a soldier‟. Training for warriorhood is central to many rites of
passage for young men. The quality of a true warrior is that he is in service to a purpose greater than
himself, a transcendent cause. It is probable that a large part of our brains relate to warrior behaviour and
warrior thoughts, and where this not acknowledged it can be socially destructive. In our cities many
adolescent boys are experiencing battle intensities - overheated young men with jail sentences or with
averted eyes. Here, to quote Bly, „the poisoned warriors called drug lords prey primarily for recruits on
kingless, warriorless boys‟.
The makwetha ceremony is often treated with amused tolerance or even embarrassment by many city
dwellers in South Africa. But it is a time into which most of the culture‟s values are packed and learned.
And it contains important intuitions about adolescent character-shaping and the excitement of the transition
to adulthood. For young people the rewards are considerable. At the celebration after the ritual the young
men and women are welcomed back into the community as adults and equals. The men can attend meetings
at the Great Place of men and no longer have to speak through others at beer drinks and other social
occasions. But, more important, is the feeling of acceptance. Ncoyini remembers:
My father received me, the older people who had been through the ceremony welcomed me and the community of
adults gave me advice on how to be a new person. I felt very positive, very warm and welcome. I felt purified. It
made me feel I wanted to act responsibly.
These are feelings deeply yearned by young people but seldom attained in Western and westernised
adolescence. Having abandoned initiation, Western education and values have difficulty in leading boys
towards manhood. In the cities these boys invent rituals to fill the gap. But there is a poignant sadness about
this: young men cannot initiate each other. And when they attempt to do this things can go awfully wrong.
Youngsters have no magic rituals, no safe paths to warriorhood, no old men to welcome them into the
ancient, mythologised, instinctive male world and, very often, no effective fathers who understand what it is
they are being asked.
Ganging as a rite of passage
Fathers are important, but the love unit most damaged by the Industrial Revolution has been the father-son
bond. Not receiving any blessing from your father is an injury and, as Robert Moor has said: „If you‟re a
young man and you‟re not being admired by an older man, you‟re being hurt‟.
A gang is a group of young men with no older men around them. This absence has many causes. One is
the destruction of the older inner-city suburbs and their „stoep culture‟ of older people (in the hard new
suburbs without verandas one was either inside or out on the street). But there are deeper reasons: When a
father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament and not his
teaching. And when mothers spend long hours away from home similar absences may appear in a daughter‟s
psyche. When a son does not see his father as a hero, a fighter or a knight it is possible that he is replaced
with demons. In Bly‟s words:
When a boy grows up in a „dysfunctional‟ family...his interior warriors will be killed off early. ..I think it‟s likely
that the early death of a man‟s warriors keeps the boy in him from growing up. It is possible that it also prevents
the female in the boy from developing...The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded,
disappointed and paralysed for years and years.
Gangs are a contradictory and „imagined‟ communities whose members are young men (and less often
young women) who have newly reached the age of sexual maturity but do not live in a culture which
provides them with any ritual pathways for becoming sexually active. So they become simply active. When
their situation is complicated by poverty, racism, broken homes or drugs, it can seem a trackless waste. In
hard stony ground, rituals take on a life-or-death quality. In this environment ritual occasions are fraught
with perils because the aggressive impulses of human beings are accompanied by very few restraints -
perhaps none at all except those few maintained by a culture deeply divided by apartheid and poverty. On
the volatile streets of the ghettos there is an ever-present danger that aggressions usually held in check by
social pressure may come free. The search for „respect‟ in the crossing to adulthood takes on larger-than-life
proportions.
In this atmosphere police attention, arrest, lashes or prison become the dangers of the hunt, the dizzying
dive to the end of the rope, a rite of passage through the hallways and rooms of the enemy into the bosom of
the admiring gang. In the desperation of the streets, peer admiration is the only form around. And in this
atmosphere violence is high. In the absence of learned moral codes and social restraints and we are a
creature which kills. Robert Ardrey, in a book called African Genesis, has argued:
Man is a predator whose natural instinct is to kill with a weapon. The sudden addition of the enlarged brain to the
equipment of an armed already-successful predatory animal created not only the human being but also the human
predicament...We are bad-weather animals
Gangs are all about this warrior energy in search of respect and rites of transgression. The rituals of
ganging are usefully understood through van Gennep‟s stages of separation, liminality and reintegration.
Separation Separation for youths on the street corner begins by constructing „us‟ and „them‟. Through a dual
process of differentiation and alignment, the youths break their ties of childhood which bonds them to their
adult (and very often female) community by trying to gain acceptance into the adolescent group. They do
this by acquiring a gang disposition
.
Disposition
Due to the „delinquent‟ nature of an adolescent group such as a gang, the child‟s mere association with the
group is enough to spark off the process of separation. It can begin from the moment a youth flashes his first
gang sign. According to one gang member, „the community labeled me a gangster because I always stood at
the entrance of the shop with my friends‟.
Being labeled a gang member has severely negative connotations. Another boy commented: „I felt the
community turned against me and I could not understand because I grew up in front of them - some will do
anything to get me out of the community. The response of the family to the child‟s association with a gang
is, in a sense, both desired by the youth and startling. Although it is partly informed by the youths desire for
independence, the extreme rejection, due the group‟s criminal associations, seems unexpected:
They told me they would leave me and if I am in trouble then I would have to sort it out by myself - when I got
into trouble I went to them and they told me I have to bear the consequences.
Unlike traditional societies where the breaking of childhood bonds may be exalted in a formal ceremony,
in the ghetto streets it is a more gradual process of assimilation of gang disposition: conforming to certain
gang criteria, posturing on the street corner, adopting a style of talking, mobilising around certain territories
and around certain real and imaginary symbols. This disposition involved a performance of both macho and
belonging that manifested in both language and action.
Language
Language is one of the most distinctive features of a gang disposition. It is a particular argot specifically
used by gang youths to differentiate between those who are a part of the normal or gang community. The
gang youths favourite topic of conversation is about gang fights. The stories are about battles, guns or
styles of fighting, demonstrating their toughness and daring. Central to this language is the gun:
The nicest thing about the gang is the sound of the gun. It makes the enemy scared and it makes you feel brave
when you see the enemy running from you.<$F Subject C.> It was nice to hear the sound of the gun in the gang
fight. Every time I hear a gun shot I imagine that it is me standing with a gun in my hand. That was my only
wish before I was a gangster, to stand with a gun in my hand...I just thought it would be fun to join a gang, to go
out in the night and walk with a gun to shoot someone.
They describe all their close shaves, shouting „bang! bang! bang!‟ with great elation. Or they talk about
different guns: 22‟s, 58‟s and how one makes the sound „buff‟ and another „boof‟, or the amount of damage
they cause. One boy explained:
You see there are different styles of how you can handle a gun - for instance if I have two 16-shooters (on the front
hips), I don‟t want to have to cock the gun, I just want to take out the guns and shoot like the cowboys.
They also engage in extensive explanations of their different styles of fighting and how one gang can be
identified by their particular technique. In a sense, the patterns of fighting is a way of differentiating
themselves from competing gangs, a way of exalting „their‟ side and glorifying the hunt. According to one
youth from the Americans gang:
Each gang has got his own way of fighting. The Americans don‟t fight in the daylight. We fight at night and split
our team into groups of three or four. We surround our enemy and send two without guns to go and look for the
enemy. When they find the enemy they start running and the rest of us come out with the guns, in for the kill.
That is why the Americans are so powerful.
Along with this the gang youths had a particular style of expression, not only in spoken language, but in
their use of certain signs and hand signals to describe events. They had a way of visually expressing
events. For example there are hand signs that express „someone running away in a gang fight‟, or „some
one shooting a gun‟, or „two gang members pairing up together to go and make trouble - called „coupling‟.
There are also hand signs for stabbing someone, having sex, checking out the scene, talking to someone,
telling a story, and for a woman.
The gangs also have sayings and mottoes that mark off symbolic difference such as „When two killers
meet one must die‟. Many of the sayings have a fatalistic acknowledgement of their position in life and a
cynical view of themselves:
I want them [his gang] to be losers, But still the winners of my pride.
I was born free, But not to stay free.
I broke my mother heart to please my friends.
Born to Kill.
Born to lose
When days are dark, friends are few.
Language expresses the relationship to both the community and the gang. Their talk about how they love
the sound of guns, how they like to make people run and how all they want to do is go out and shoot
someone are rituals of entrance.
Posturing on the Street Corner
Gang disposition also develops on the street corner where ghetto youths spend most of their time „hanging
out‟ on their turf, prowling around, and displaying themselves to the community. These displays of
belonging are affected performances to appear tough, hard, and dangerous. The street corner is a site of
public display. The following note was jotted down during observation:
At home base, as usual, on the corner with the gang. A group of school kids came out for their lunch break and
walked passed us. Within seconds the whole gang seemed to mobilise into a performance process. Their behaviour
became very affected, displaying their identity with the group, acquiring a macho disposition, jeering at the pretty
girls, and strutting around. The atmosphere changed, the group was on edge and there was an element of
unpredictability. They slightly cold-shouldered me in front of the youths walking by.
This gang, the Americans in Manenberg, Cape Town, seemed quite different inside their leader‟s house.
There the leader‟s mother was boss, outside they were boss; inside was private, outside was public. Within
the house little defined them as a gang. They simply appeared to be a group of friends laughing, joking and
spending time together. Outside the performance began the moment they became aware of being in the
public eye.
Ritual symbols and identity
Mobilising around visual or even imaginary symbols parallels gang identification through territory and
serves to differentiate one gang from another. Many of these devices remain a secret, known only to those
who „belong‟. The youths under study were not visually distinctive. Even though most gangs have adopted
an „American‟ style with the latest Nikes or Reeboks, baseball caps, sweatshirts, baggy pants and leather
jackets, there was no particular style or colour theme that separated one gang from another.
The only overt visual signals appeared to be facial recognition, hidden tattoos on their necks and arms,
or simply by the territories from which they came. Each gang had it‟s special rules, its own salute and its
own mottoes. There were a few visual signs and symbols which were definitive of certain gangs, but mostly
the indicators were imaginary or constructed stories of belonging.
The Americans were the gang which had most obviously clothed itself with various symbols, borrowing
and transforming existing devices and icons. The American flag, as a symbol of the American nation,
defined the „American‟ gang‟s territory: The gang actually call their territory „America‟. According to its
members, the six white stripes of the flag are for the clean work (money) and the seven red stripes for the
dirty work (blood). The 13 stripes together stand for the 13 presidents of the United States. The 14 stars are
the states in America, and one of the stars represents the gang. Both the flag and the Statue of Liberty are
used to define a territory around which the gang can mobilise and their territory is marked by elaborate
graffiti of the statue and the American eagle. Around these symbols they have also constructed stories and
mythical histories that function as a secret entrance ritual.
The gang name - the Americans - stands for „Almighty Equal Rights Is Coming And Not Standing‟.
Their motto is: „In God we Trust. In money we believe‟. They have an imaginary constitution, a president,
a cabinet, a White House and they count their money in „dollars‟. Into the symbols of America, such as the
Statue of Liberty, they construct secret myths known only to those who belong to the gang. These function
as entrance rituals. Part of the litany is as follows:
When I joined the Americans I found myself in a snow white road where I walked on a thin red line. The Statue of
Liberty was a lady with a seven-point crown on her head. Each point of the crown has a meaning. The first one
means respect, the second discipline, the third you won‟t lie on your stomach when you go to prison, the fourth
you won‟t betray your friends, the fifth you dress well day and night [he could not remember the last two]. The
Statue of Liberty is a lady with a snow-white cloak, in her right hand is a torch and in her left a Bible which says
In God we Trust. That is your passport to enter the White House. You meet with a eagle, in his claws is a dollar
and on the dollar you also find In God we Trust. Then you kill the eagle and take the dollar and go to the White
House. Two people come to ask who you are and what you want. I showed them the dollar sign and In God we
Trust and they left me and that was my passport into the White House. I walked on the seven red-lined carpet and
met another two guys and showed them my passport. Then I went in a room with a seven-point table, there were
13 presidents sitting around the table, six were busy counting money [six white lines on the flag], and seven wiped
the blood from the money [seven red lines].
These stories add another layer to the territory over which the gang has taken possession and knowing
them deepens the separation from the adult world. To quote David Cohen, „Nothing binds a group so tightly
as a closely held secret‟. The Americans also implant various gold symbols, such as dollar signs, stars, and
strips, in their front teeth. Some members wear an excessive number of gold rings, some with precious
stones, three to four on each finger, many supposedly stolen and some specially made with the stars, stripes
and dollar signs.
According to the South African Police Service Gang Unit, the American gang‟s use of the symbols of
America mobilised caused other gangs to appropriate flags of national territories. These flags have also
taken on special meaning and defining myths. A member of Junky Funky Kids (JFKs) explained that his
gang fell under the symbols of America, except they believed they came under the eagle of America as
opposed to the Statue of Liberty. Through this they believed they were different to the American gang.
JFKs could either stand for, Junky Funky Kid, Juwele Frank Crone, Join the Force of Killers, Justice,
Freedom, Kindness, or John Frank Kennedy. They believed they were enemies with the American gang
because it was an American who killed John Frank Kennedy. This was given as the primary reason for their
antagonism with the Americans. Another opposition gang called the Hard Livings live by the motto of
„rather wisdom than gold‟ and come under the British flag. They call themselves The Chosen Ones.
Some gangs also have their own imaginary „book of knowledge‟ similar to prison gangs. Knowledge of
this „book‟ is a part of the gangs entrance ritual and defines the way youths are supposed to conduct their
lives once a part of the gang:
In the book of knowledge we don‟t run away from each other if we are in trouble, we have to stay together. We
have to die together. If not others will kill you for not helping your brother. No one tells you to become an
American, you do it yourself and if so you must die with them.
The issue of respect constantly arises:
we must respect one another - if we fight amongst ourselves what kind of impression will that give of the gang -
like if I fight with another guy in the gang and members of another gang come past and say: „Look a Dixi boy is
fighting against his brother‟. They will get a bad impression - tomorrow they could come and see us still fighting
and they will bring guns and shoot us - then all we can say is we fought against each other but we didn‟t see the
enemy come from behind.
Territoriality
Acceptance of gang boundaries is central to gaining acceptance into a gang. This often necessitates gang
fights to defend or appropriate territory. „Turf‟ is a powerful way of bonding the group. These territories
often cover no more than a hundred-metre strip of residence blocks or four to five streets. Territory defines
clearly to the community who belongs to the group and who owns a particular neighbourhood or street
corner. So the performance on the street corner also seems to be a performance of ownership as well as one
of belonging.
Territoriality leads to certain expectations, particularly that the boys who grow up in the gang‟s territory
will become a part of their gang. Conversely, a child living in an enemy‟s territory is marked out as enemy.
So while one group assumes ownership over a boy, another may try to put a bullet through his head.
According to one youngster, „other gangsters who were waiting there where I live, whenever they saw me
they would chase me and shoot at me‟. A similar ownership is assumed over women.
Separation, therefore, is defined by acquiring a gang disposition, gang language, posturing with other
members of the gang, adopting gang beliefs and customs and mobilising around specific territory. The key
motivation for the individuals seems to be „acceptance‟. This forces a young boy to go to extremes which
adolescents in more „normal‟ peer groups would not. Once the youth has gained acceptance he moves into a
state of liminality.
Liminality
In gangs, liminality marks the beginning of „free fall‟, demanding excesses which place the youth -
temporarily or permanently - beyond social recall. These excesses range from full-scale gang fights and
organised criminal activity to the first serious assault or kill. The youth‟s main concern now shifts from
gaining acceptance to gaining status in the gang. Now freed from adult restriction, he exists in a world of
betwixt and between and is required to test his young manhood and build his reputation through
performances of bravery and daring.
Performance in Battle
The battle-field is a pivotal space in gang life. Battle generally happens when rivalry occurs between gangs
over the issue of ownership regarding turf, community, women or markets. It can range from short brief
confrontations between a few members to full-scale gang wars. Personal performance is finely measured.
Gang youths attempt to display both a fearless demeanour and warlike capacity, acquire visual scars of their
bravery and boast of their deadly accuracy. In a sense, the battle-ground is an extension of the street-corner,
a time and place when gang members are more conscious than ever of who is watching them:
You build your reputation by showing people you‟re not afraid - like when there is a gang war and they attack me
when I am standing alone with a gun, I must shoot them so that people see that I‟m not afraid.
Being seen and identified in gang fights is of particular importance in two respects: Firstly it shows
warrior capacity and builds reputation, and secondly it is important to be marked by the opposing gang as a
ruthless and dangerous enemy. The aim is to be „talked about‟ by their own and rival gangs, to be
recognised and noticed by the community, their buddies or their enemies:
The big gangsters stand in the front line because they are the ones that are the most hated and the most feared by
the enemy - you get into to the front line if you are brave and if you are scared you go to the back <$F Subject D.
Most acts of bravery that attempt to prove manhood, also play a crucial role in attracting the opposite sex.
According to this boy „when you are not afraid the girls like you‟ .
Gang youth who were interviewed relished the belief that they invoked fear in rival gangs. The more
wanted and feared they were by rival gangs, the greater status they acquired in their own gang. But this had
a sinister edge, subverting inhibitions against murder. According to one youth, „I only kill my enemy, not
people who want to live in peace. Enemies „deserve‟ to die. At this point, in the absence of any guidance
from older members of society, what is conventionally unacceptable becomes acceptable and the thread
joining them to conventional morality becomes increasingly severed. Excess is praised.
Body mutilations
Another indication of liminal behaviour is body mutilation, whether it comes in the form of bullet wounds,
stab wounds or teeth damage. These are a visible sign of a youth‟s allegiance to his new „deviant‟ group and
a warning to others. These scars accumulate on the young man‟s body, signifying his bravery and ability to
perform in the face of danger.
One can compare gang wounding to a traditional circumcision, or to Dinka face scarring. The purpose
is the same: a „sign of union‟ and a mark of manhood. An insert from our field notes is illustrative here:
Chaka strutted in, obviously considered by the rest of the group to be quite a warrior. He was introduced as „this
one who has five bullet wounds‟, particular detail and attention given to the one that hit him between the eyes and
ricocheted off his Rayban glasses. He was greatly praised by all for his warlike and fearsome spirit.
These scars and markings can make individuals permanent members of a group and often plague the
youths for the rest of their lives - ineradicable symbols of their membership to a deviant group. And they
can serve to ensure their exclusion from the community.
First Kill
The moment that marks the youth‟s final and absolute break from the norms of convention is his first kill. It
is a moment when a boy shows other members of his gang how deeply he is prepared to become committed
to gang life; it is the single act which differentiates between those gang members on the periphery and those
of the inner circle and it marks the first real test of endurance.
All the gang youths encountered were required directly or indirectly to make their first kill. Although
this was not overtly defined it was an unspoken and assumed requirement. It often seemed to be undertaken
casually, but it was a traumatic ordeal which came back to haunt them in their dreams. One youth,
describing his first kill, recounted:
We were sitting in a group and someone mentioned that there was a problem that needed to be sorted out but no
one tells you to go and kill someone, you must decide on your own. So I decided to take the gun because I wanted
to show the other members that I can also do it...I went to kill this American. I was sitting in some other peoples
yard waiting for him to come home. When he came home I shot him twice in his legs but both bullets went right
through his legs into a cabin and they killed someone else. The one thing is when I sleep at night this event always
comes to my mind - I can‟t sleep at night - even when I try not to think about it just comes back and I feel scared.
Killing is the moment when being labelled an enemy takes on its full and permanent form. The youth,
now head-hunted by rival gangs, gets drawn into the cycle of revenge killings. „Enemy‟, according to the
unforgiving ethics of gang life, is a label which will follow the youths to their graves. Many gang youths
who leave gangs have been found later dead in a gutter - either at the hand of their former comrades or
because they have forfeited gang protection and are now fair game for other gangs. According to one youth:
I thought about leaving the gang but then I asked myself what is the use because even if the enemies know I am
not a part of this gang they will still want to kill me because I have killed their brothers.
Confusion between reality and fantasy
In the absence of formal initiation, community support or hope of a normal life, confusion emerges between
reality and fantasy. Youths seem to get swept up in the fantasy world of dreams, movies (which they try to
act out in real life) and wishful thinking:
When we go fight with the Americans I just imagine I am in a film. The last gang fight I was in, some Americans
came down the same road as us and we just started shooting at them. I didn‟t want to run away because I know on
TV the main guys don‟t run away so I just took out my gun and shouted „mutha fucker‟ and „don‟t fuck with the
OJs‟. I started shooting at them and they ran away. I ran after them and shouted: „Why are you running away,
aren‟t you gangsters?‟ If they run they don‟t realise they become an easy target for us. We just shot them. If people
are watching us through the windows we point the gun at them and ask them what they are looking at - that is the
same as it is on the films.
The pictures they paint of themselves are eventually what they become. The confusion and lack of
clarity that defines this stage of their lives leads the young man to engage in excessive behaviour without
seeming to realise it. Caught between fantasy and reality it becomes questionable where their limits lie - if
they have any at all. And, paradoxically, their attempt to gain status and respect through criminal acts of
violence denies what they seek: as their reputation goes up in the gang it goes down in the community. And
their confusion is evident:
There are a lot of rules that define the important things you must always remember not to do. We decided it is
wrong: to rob people in our community, attacking their houses, and cars; to swear at one another; to get drunk and
fight each other you can get drunk and have a nice time but we must respect one another. You must respect the
community.
Instead of incorporation back into the community, the action of gang members leads them implacably
towards what might be termed „eternal liminality‟.
Eternal Liminality
By now the young man is almost inevitably destined for a permanent career of crime. What may have
started as a need for ritual orientation in a period of adolescent crisis has developed into a greased pole of
deviance. Life is defined by violence which knows no limits or regrets. The words of an adolescent in this
deep are chilling in their callousness:
One day quite a few of us Mongrels decided to go and look for trouble in American territory. We had our weapons
on us and covered ourselves in the stars and stripes flag. We covered our faces with red and white scarf‟s like the
ones they use. We walked passed the Americans‟ flats and shouted „we were Americans‟. This one called Music
Maker came out and made the American sign, greeting us with HO$H! [FA greeting used by the Americans to
each other] That was the biggest mistake he ever made. We all went for him and he ran into the toilet in his
house. Someone in the group put a shotgun in the window to shoot him but saw a pregnant lady in the toilet and
said „don‟t shoot!‟. Instead we broke the door of the house down and the pregnant lady ran out. Everyone went in
and started to stab him with the knives. Me and another Mongrel friend were the last to kill him - then another guy
came and finished him off with a „pum pum‟ [uzi submachine-gun]. I didn‟t feel anything - I just forgot about it.
The similarities and differences between traditional rites of passage are best illustrated graphically (see
overleaf).
At this stage his peers have become his father and his wise men. The prospects of ever leading a normal
citizen‟s existence are difficult to imagine. Once the knowledge of a gang member becomes too extensive,
whether it be knowledge of the dynamics of organised criminal activity or the murder of various members,
they are bound to the gang by terrible necessity. According to one member:
You can‟t just leave a gang because there are a lot of secrets that you share - if the police get information about a
murder two or three years back the gang will think I gave the information to the police and they will come to get
me.
At this stage gang youths have either a very short life expectancy or can bank on spending much of their
lives in penal institutions.
The reasons for adolescents entering traditional and gang rights of passage stem from similar needs and
dreams. They are all young warriors. But they emerge at opposite ends of the compass and with very
different life expectancies. Of these differences Robert Bly was to say: „One man is a self-sacrificing
warrior fighting for a cause beyond himself; another man is a madman soldier, raping, pillaging, killing
mindlessly, dropping napalm over entire villages. But both life-paths are deeply instructive in the
construction of a youth justice system which works for young people and for society. However, because
conventional discourse about youth at risk is couched in the binary of welfare and punishment, any
discussion about new approaches to state-based youth programmes needs to first ask: what is punishment?
The purpose of punishment
It is essential to step back from entrenched judicial processes and punishments and to question the value of
the way we deal with young people in conflict with the law. We urgently need to ask where we derive our
understandings of these processes and whether they are still appropriate.
Punishment as retribution
The predominant view in our criminal justice system is that punishment is retributive: lex talionis- the
punishment should fit the crime. This is what Kay Harris calls the rights/justice orientation which links
punishment with moral wrongdoing and social revenge. Sentencing, in this case, is an enforcement activity
whose specific function is to seek punishment for wrongs done. It involves the deliberate infliction of harm
and hard treatment of an offender. There are a number of fundamental problems with this approach:
Even if we grant that punishment should be in accordance with desert, it does not follow that punishment
is justified. The principle of retribution does not explain why punishment should be inflicted on those who
break rules, and there is little proof that punitive actions change either people or society for the better. The
deliberate infliction of harm also does not accord with our moral intuitions which purport to form the basis
of our legal system.
There are no absolute or universal moral values or principles, as these vary widely for different cultures
or individuals. In a multi-cultural society like South Africa, a legal system which assigns punishment in
accordance with moral blame must unavoidably favour one view of morality over other competing views. If
this is so, aiming at retribution in punishment would seem to require a kind of favouritism.
Its distance from other social control mechanisms leaves the formal control system totally reliant, in the
last resort, upon the use of force. Legitimate, or authorised force, maybe, but ultimately with as much
potential for violence as those it must restrain.
While much criminal law involves the protection of individuals from acts of violence (violence being
seen as immoral) it appears to justify acts of official violence in defense of moral principles and values.
Violence has a moral edge to it. When we set out to punish someone, our goal is to inflict suffering or pain.
Yet pain and suffering seem to be as close to things that are intrinsically evil as anything in our experience.
Retributive punishment, however, seems to assume that good can come of evil.
A real objection to officially sanctioned violence is its capacity to undermine the moral status of those
against whom it is directed. It also reduces respect for the law.
Present sentences handed down to young people do little to reinforce morality; in fact they are probably
counter-productive, relaying the message that the main reason for avoiding crime is its consequences for
oneself rather than any a priori judgment of right or wrong or consideration of the consequences for others.
As Tony Marshal has pointed out, „the morality of personal consequences has little impact on those who do
not stop to consider consequence, nor upon those who believe (often correctly) that the chance of avoiding
such consequences is high‟.
Punishment to advance human welfare
A reaction to retributive sentencing has been the argument that for punishment to be justified, it must be
shown to advance human welfare. This is what Harris has called a care/response to sentencing. It is a
forward-looking, welfare-oriented approach which holds that the purpose of punishment is not to bring
about moral reform but to reduce the likelihood that harmful behaviour will occur. Sentencing, in this case,
is an enforcement activity whose specific function is to promote individual reform and social protection.
Where nothing is gained by punishment, this view suggests, it should not be imposed - even when it is
deserved. This position is nearly as old as the lex talionis and is well stated by Plato:
In punishing wrongdoers, no one concentrates on the fact that the man has done wrong in the past, or punishes
him on that account, unless taking blind vengeance like a beast. No, punishment is not inflicted by a rational man
for the sake of the crime that has been committed (after all one cannot undo what is past), but for the sake of the
future, to prevent either the same man or, by some spectacle of his punishment, someone else from doing wrong.
The attractiveness of forward-looking theories is that they accept that we cannot change the past and that
the best we can do is to seek to prevent similar wrongs in the future. Their goal is not moral improvement
but the rehabilitation of offenders. In this view, criminal activity is a symptom of personal inadequacies.
This thesis has encouraged many reforms in prisons and a search for alternatives to incarceration. But it
is not without problems in the formulation of a sentencing policy. By assuming no necessary connection
between law and morality, it is difficult to judge what counts as normal or acceptable behaviour. And if a
penalty is not allocated in relation to the offense but in the interests of deterrence, does this not imply that
there might sometimes be justification for punishing someone who had committed no offense at all? The
random arrests of low-level political activists in South Africa in the 1980s as a warning to those more
politically involved is an example of this. They suffered that others might desist.
This implies that forward-looking accounts, where the offense and the punishment are not necessarily
contingent, open the door to, at best, coercive rehabilitation and at worst to unjust punishment. If this
argument is good, then it would seem that there is no way in principle or practice in which respect for
individual freedom as well as respect for fundamental principles of justice can be accommodated within
purely forward-looking theories of punishment. As CS Lewis has suggested, benevolence undisciplined by
justice becomes a tyrant. When you replace justice with welfare, he says, „you start being „kind‟ to people
before you have considered their rights and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which they in fact
(once) had a right to refuse, and finally kindnesses which no one but you will recognise as kindnesses and
which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties.
The conclusion here is that neither revenge nor public protection are adequate foundations for a theory
of sentencing or punishment. There is certainly no evidence that sentencing oriented towards putting
offenders down or teaching harsh lessons or deterring through harsh sentences is effective. These
approaches imply forms of coercion which simply lower the self-respect of the offender, hinder
reintegration and increase disrespect for the law.
Restoring harmony
The starting point of a new approach is to look at the relationship between the individual accused and the
legal ceremony surrounding a social misdemeanour. A particular problem in South African courts is that the
procedure implies a judgment of the young accused and not of their actions. The denunciations of
prosecutors, judges and police who enjoy no intimate bond of care and mutual respect with the offender are
liable to degrade and stigmatise. There are no fathers or respected elders here. For this reason, the young
person is likely to reject his rejecters and, in the worst scenario, find comfort and symbolic distance from
his rejecters in the world of delinquent subculture. Indeed, it has been argued that when the institutions of
the courtroom and the detention centre take this form, they not only fail to prevent crime; they cause it
through the symbolic effects of stigmatisation.
What is required, therefore, is a new paradigm for dealing with young people who transgress the
criminal law which recognises that in the present system:
The formal sanctions imposed upon them by the courts, whether it is cautioning, fines, whipping or imprisonment,
are irrelevant and unconnected to the crime - and hence unlikely to lead to a change in offending behaviour -
because offenders are rarely obliged to confront the consequences of their actions.
Victims are deeply dissatisfied with the treatment they usually receive and are often left with feelings of
helplessness and anger as a consequence of the crime perpetrated against them and the official response to it.
Police are caught between unrepentant offenders, dissatisfied victims and an unresponsive court system, and are
themselves cynical of the process and often despondent about their capacity to deliver the service they have been
trained to provide.
As the crime rate grows, the cost of the system to society at large is becoming massively greater, and calls for
more punitive responses and longer sentences result in ever greater expense with no discernible effect upon the
incidence of crime.
Attempts to solve these problems have older resonances in the Scottish hearings system, but have
recently been taken up within former colonial countries where powerful cultural lobby groups have
demanded appropriate justice and a return of legislative and personal control over their children. A pioneer
in this field is New Zealand, where Maori pressure led to the drafting of the Children, Young Persons and
their Families Act in 1989. In terms of this Act, community and family groups were enabled which would
relocate youth justice to the group of people most meaningful to the young offender. Similar ideas have
been developed in Australia, Fiji and Canada.
In South Africa, far-reaching proposals for new juvenile justice legislation which attempted to address
these problems were made public in November 1994. These proposals, drafted by non-governmental
organisations involved in juvenile justice, were based on the ideas of restorative justice, diversion and the
centrality of the family and community in the lives of young people. They incorporated understandings
derived from traditional and popular forms of community justice, as well as from processes which had
emerged in other parts of the world. Central to the document‟s reconceptualisation of juvenile justice were
the notions of stigma and shame.
What should such a system be reasonably expected to deliver? It should, at minimum, ensure voluntary
compliance, restraint in the use of force and a range of sentencing options which have the potential to
engender respect for the law. The proper task of a sentencing authority, in this case, would be to formulate
remedies appropriate to the harm caused by offenders with a view to assuring the public that continued
confidence in the capacity of the law to fulfill its function is justified.
Such an approach would subscribe to a minimum use of force. Legal systems, by their nature, remove
from individuals the right to choose not to obey the law and the right to use force in the resolution of
disputes. But this carries with it an obligation to reduce the morally justifiable recourse of state officials to
the free use of force in the resolution of disputes. The first task of law enforcement, from this perspective,
would be to demonstrate that the law was widely respected and to persuade people that the law should be
obeyed. The use of force, in this case, would carry an ambiguous message in that it would demonstrate that
the law is not respected.
In this approach, the function of criminal law would not be to solve conflicts but to seek to avoid them
by prohibiting harmful behaviour and stepping in to provide protection from those unwilling to obey the
law. Sentencing and correction, in this case, would not be oriented to punishment but to persuasion.
Penalties for juveniles, especially, would be a strategy for opening the lines of communication.
But communication is a two-way process, and such an approach would have to take into account the
context of the young offender. To win compliance, the law would have to respond to the reasons people had
for committing offenses. It could not assume that all people had the basic life skills such as reading or
writing, or the ability to find and hold a job or to afford accommodation. Rehabilitation, if it is to be
effective, would involve acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to live in a modern world. It would, for
example, be much harder for someone who is unemployable to see the benefit of laws prohibiting the sale of
the drug mandrax than someone for whom health, wealth and security is a real option. All are not equal
before the law, and legislative process would have to attempt to ensure that sentences took these social
contours into account.
This approach, defined as restorative justice, would provide a tough challenge to the criminal justice
system and would be unlikely to be a soft option for offenders. Coercion would not be ruled unacceptable.
It would simply not be the first resort, but a means towards ensuring the peaceful resolution of conflict. The
focus would be on the act itself and the problems it has caused for the victim, steering the ceremony away
from a stigmatising preoccupation with the badness of the young person. In other words, being victim-
centred fosters shaming which is focused on specific deeds rather than on offenders themselves. We need to
accept the child and reject his behaviour.
This also implies a context which is meaningful to the young person and within which he or she wishes
to be well regarded. For this reason it is sensible to locate control of young offenders in the community.
Such informal control would not be based on force but on the implications for the young person of
committing an act unacceptable to those whom he respects. It assumes that individuals are dependent to a
degree on social relations for economic support, esteem, association, security and affection (the existence of
society itself is predicated on such an assumption).
The argument here is that crime is best controlled when members of the community are the primary
controllers through active participation in dealing with offenders and reintegrating them back into the
community of law abiding citizens. Essentially, low crime societies are places where - as in rural areas -
people do not mind their own business, where tolerance of deviance has definite limits and where
communities prefer to handle their own crime problems rather than hand them over to professionals. The
role of government in this case would be to:
Audit the effectiveness of these community controls,
Step in when they fail,
Select the more serious cases of crime for formal public punishment in order to fulfill the moral education
functions of the criminal law, and Underwrite the legitimacy of community controls by showing that the state
backed them up with severe deterrence when they were snubbed.
The goal would be to tie potential and actual young offenders back into a web of social relations where
an unexpected move would result in a magnitude of subtle countermoves. Deviant behaviour would not
necessarily be seen as deviance or called deviance, but would be kept under control by being embedded
within the daily network of a number of other people who were of importance to the young person,
particularly - in the case of young boys - older male mentors.
Essentially, we need to reconceptualize punishment itself, making reconciliation and social harmony
within the family and community the cornerstones of the system. To do this it is necessary to recognise that
reconciliation is not just admitting guilt. It is a matter of repudiating the values or attitudes that led to an
offence and showing a willingness to compensate for harm done. To quote Michael Foucault: „To find the
suitable punishment for a crime is to find the disadvantage whose idea is such that it robs forever the idea of
a crime of any attraction.‟
Programmes as ritual
The preceding discussion suggests a certain degree of prescription in designing appropriate programmes for
teenagers at risk. Rites of passage programmes need not, of course, be a response to wrongdoing. But if
they are, they should be central to initiatives to divert young people out of the formal justice system. And in
this context they should be restorative, inexpensive, tough, magical, emotionally powerful experiences
involving meaningful rituals of transformation. They should be closely tied to the community, especially
older people of influence and they should ensure some level of commitment from the young people
concerned. Importantly, they should be supported by the judiciary and all other state role-players. It is also
self-evident that they should not be superficial, bureaucratic, punitive, expensive and seen as a soft option.
This section of the paper will focus on three areas we consider to be important in programme design within
this framework: Building the young people themselves, building a support system and the actual programme
process.
Building young people
In their book Reclaiming youth at risk, Brendto et al caution us that „nothing we know about the human
animal suggests that we have been programmed to be obedient‟. There are better ways to change adolescent
behaviour than demanding compliance and we need to move beyond labeling deviants negatively to an
understanding of what it is that captures and holds adolescent attention. This understanding involves an
awareness of unmet needs, discouragement, the misery of unimportance and loss of self-esteem and self-
control. But it also involves finding ways to mobilise adventurous spirit, satisfy the deep need young people
have for ritual, increase their personal social resilience and create meaningful bonds with significant adults.
We also have to realise that within the tough delinquent exterior is a need to play - with fire perhaps - but
also with the world to see what it will answer.
Fostering self esteem is critical to working with young people at risk. Its loss can begin with something
as small as a sarcastic cut-down from a parent or as large as the collapse of the social support unit. In
adolescence this can lead to feelings of insignificance, incompetence, powerlessness and unworthiness. (A
search for the inverse of these feelings - significance, competence, power and virtue - can easily be
discerned in gang behaviour). Bendtro et al, using Native American principles as a framework, suggest that
any programme to re-establish self esteem should involve the notions of belonging, mastery, independence
and generosity.
Humans are social creatures and belonging is the baseline from which personality develops. Two
Xhosa expressions capture this. One is the notion of ubuntu - „a person is a person through other people‟,
and the other is the saying „all children are my children‟. In traditional societies this sense of belonging
extends beyond the human circle to animals, plants and the environment. In peasant society, maintaining
balanced ecological relationships is a way of ensuring that one‟s own life is itself balanced. Mastery
involves social and physical competence and opportunities for success. It is the basis of individual worth in
most societies (and education systems) and if young people are deprived of the chance or ability to master
their lives they retreat into helplessness and inferiority. The steps to mastery are as old as they are modern.
In Egyptian teachings for priesthood young students were required to seek:
Control of thought,
Control of action,
Faith in the Master‟s ability to teach the truth,
Faith in one‟s ability to assimilate the truth,
Faith in oneself to wield the truth,
Freedom from resentment under persecution,
Freedom from resentment under wrong,
Ability to distinguish right from wrong,
Ability to distinguish real from unreal
The spirit of independence is the product of both mastery and belonging, in that the purpose of any
external discipline and support is to build inner discipline and social worth. Young people who lack a sense
of power over their own behaviour and environment often lack motivation and seek alternative sources of
power through dependence on chemicals or membership in a youth subculture. Brendtro et al suggest that
self worth is also derived from how one is viewed by others. For this reason, being committed to the
positive value of generosity and caring for others improves ones view of oneself through the eyes of others.
Young people cannot develop a sense of responsibility unless they have been responsible to others.
Generosity allows them to „de-centre‟ and contribute to those around them in a self-affirming way.
If programmes for young people do not have as their goal the development of positive characteristics
such as a sense of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity - unless they avoid emotional
superficiality and build significance, personal power, self esteem and self control they will not change the
attitudes of young people and will probably fail.
Building a support system
Rites of passage are traditionally a source of social learning and an inoculation against wrongdoing. They
are conceptualised in many ways, but are generally seen as being linear and orderly. From within Western
tradition, Bly finds these steps to be:
First, bonding with the mother and separation from the mother...Second, bonding with the father and separation
from the father...Third, the arrival of the male mother, or the mentor, who helps a man rebuild the bridge to his
own...Fourth, apprenticeship to a hurricane energy such as...the warrior...and fifth the marriage with the Holy
Woman.
Within an African American tradition, Nsenga Warfield-Coppock sees these steps as being birth,
puberty, marriage, eldership and death. Adolescent rituals he sees as comprising:
Preparation of sacred ground,
Separation from the mother,
Symbolic initiatory death,
Initiatory ordeals,
Initiatory rebirth
Whatever form they take, these rituals involve an educational experience which takes place within
family or community space and with the participation of adults known and trusted by the young people. To
quote Tanzanian leader Juilius Nyerere, the purpose of this form of education is to
transmit from one generation to the next the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the society, and to prepare
the young people for their future membership of the society and their active participation in its maintenance and
development.
These views highlight the importance of older people and kin in the initiatory process. Many studies
have shown how migration from rural areas and inner-city relocations under the Group Areas Act first
eroded extended family - then nuclear family - networks and traditions.
Together with the industrial work-cycle these factors have placed severe strains on parents and
significant elders in communities and reduced the amount of support available for adolescents.
Simultaneously, city life has increased the need young people have for support, discipline, assistance,
protection, teaching and basic physical requirements as well as for experiences of trust, love, values,
customs and spiritual traditions. We have seen that in the absence of this support young people create their
own support structures and rituals, often with disastrous social consequences. The biggest challenge of any
rites of passage programme is to recreate adult and mentor support structures. There is awesome power in
relationships which work. In the development of programmes for youth at risk there is a need for adults to
serve in many roles, as leader, liaison, resource people, curriculum writer, teacher, facilitator, speaker,
mentor, sponsor and elder. These tasks and the need for adult training in adolescent work point to the need
for a national Mentorship Programme incorporating parents, teachers, religious leaders, community and
programme leaders, elders and those who have specialised skills in a range of areas such as martial arts,
history, culture, sport and outdoor education.
Warfield-Coppock defines a mentor as „a person who is designated by a group or the community and
assumes the responsibility of guiding and teaching another‟. This person is one who has „successfully
navigated and attained adulthood and is deemed someone who has specific knowledge, specialised skills
and a positive character to share‟. There is a continuum of roles for mentors, from a ritual guide and teacher
in a rites of passage programme through the more formal roles of probation officer to a community buddy in
a parole programme. Mentors should be of good character and the same gender as the young person, often
acting as a surrogate father or mother. They would have the task of transmitting something of value to the
new generation, undergirding family and school support and building trust and discipline. They would have
to be people known to the community and any recruiting programme should include rigorous psychological
and social selection filters.
There is also a good argument for the formation of community Councils of Elders attached to the
Mentorship Programme. These need not be „tribal‟ or retrogressive groupings, and such a call for help
would not only restore the self-respect of a presently marginalised sector of society but would probably
provoke an enthusiastic response. All communities have within them older people whose life experiences
qualify them to act as cultural, spiritual and historical mediators and teachers. They are the trunk of the
spreading tree. One of the greatest causes of cultural anomie among young people has not been the absence
of good parenting but the absence of good grandparenting. And older people have what parents generally
don‟t: time for youngsters. A re-valuation of old people in communities would be a powerful and
progressive step towards re-balancing the lives of young people at risk.
These suggestions imply ways of dealing with adolescents in the community which are both ancient and
innovative. It may be that, in the development of programmes for young people at risk, to go back to
tradition is the first step forward. An old African proverb says it takes a whole village to raise a child. In
modern times it will take a whole community to heal one.
Building what we do
We have established that adolescents respond powerfully to ritual and performance and abhor superficiality.
In his book The magic of ritual, Tom Driver provides a useful starting point for ritual programme
development:
A ritual is a performance that invokes the presence and action of powers which, without ritual, would not be
present or active at that time and place, or would be so in a different way. The most obvious examples of such
powers, no doubt, are divinities, demons, ancestors and other spirits that may be called „supernatural‟; but they
may also be certain powers of nature, of society, of the state, or of the psyche. The agencies with which ritual is
concerned, then, are such that they may be represented symbolically if they are to be depicted at all.
Ritual or symbolic performance in a rite of passage programme might better be described as
transformance. This implies a vehicle for transformation from one status, identity or situation to another.
Such a programme would differ in form, depending on the young people and community involved, but our
attempt here is to form a gantry of essential procedures necessary for its success. We have discussed Xhosa
and gang rites of passage rituals, the latter re-creating only part of more formal ceremonies. A comparison
of this procedure for young men looks like this:
Traditional Gang
Acknowledging ancestors/community history Absent
Elder permission Absent
Induction through awe/fear Induction through awe/fear
Sacred ground Territory
Peer ceremonies Peer ceremonies
Public ceremonies Absent
Initiatory death Dicing with death
Surviving battles with self Surviving battles with gangs
Solo time and introspection Discouraged
Warriorhood Warriorhood
Scarring Scarring
Community acceptance Community rejection
Acceptance of older teachers Father/adult anger
Rites or re-incorporating Eternal liminality
Not included in these rituals are several from Native American culture which are instructive:
Sweat-lodge purification- a spiritual cleansing which allows renewed closeness to the Earth.
Vision quest- following the Sweat Lodge ritual a person embarks upon a journey into the wilderness, in the
mountains, and sustains periods of fasting and going without water while they contemplate who they are and
where they are going in life.
Making relatives - a ritual for creating kinship-like bonds with friends or elders.
Rites of passage programmes are being suggested here as a diversion option for young people who have
fallen foul of the law. But the rites and rituals of adolescent transformation are essential to all young people
and it would be wrong to require youths to offend in order to qualify for a significant and life-affirming
experience. The parameters of this paper, however, are narrowly focused on those who offend and require
attention. What has been suggested in proposals for a new Juvenile Justice Act are Family Group
Conferences as a way of relocating youth justice issues back to communities and families. These
conferences would be an important starting point in the development of a rites of passage programme. Such
a programme would require intensive discussion at community level, but the linkages and support structures
for this process are represented below.
WHEEL GRAPHIC HERE
Based on the four ritual orientations of earth, air, fire and water, processes are conceptualised under
the corresponding notions of place, learning, action and community.
In terms of the programme, Earth/Place represents the sites and physical situations in which the rites of
passage take place. These include the wilderness experience, the preparation of sacred ground, the vision
quest experience or „going solo‟ and the actual place where the young people will gather and call their own.
These situations connect with longer programmes and more permanent places such as holding centres,
shelters, a clubhouse movement and more on-going wilderness experiences.
Air/Learning represents rituals, rites, initiatory procedures and spiritual and temporal teaching which
are required in a rites of passage programme. These resonate with - and should link to - more aggregate
programmes such as parenting education, life skills training, vocational training, information centres and
formal education.
Social acknowledgement and ceremonies are grouped as Water/Community and comprise peer, public
and kinship ceremonies as well as elder involvement and mentoring. These link with more formal
programmes such as victim awareness, community service work, emotional and mental support
programmes, foster care, counseling, mediation services, Youth Brigades (an important idea which needs
urgent attention in South Africa), sex offender treatment programmes, shoplifter awareness and substance
abuse treatment.
The forth quadrant, Fire/Action, involves those parts of a rites of passage programme where action is
taken - training for a form of warriorhood (such as martial arts) and the actual induction process. Beyond
the rite itself, this connects with recreational programmes, gang programmes, crisis intervention, behaviour
management and parts of wilderness courses.
If the passage of a young person passing through courts to jail can be termed a Failure‟s Journey, what
is being suggested here is the opposite: a Hero‟s Journey. The path of this journey could be depicted as
follows.
SMALL CIRCLE IN HERE
Stitching these ideas together into a youth at risk programme first took place in South Africa in late 1995
when 20 young men were put forward for a year-long pilot study on the use of rites of passage. The results
of this and other similar pilot studies can be found elsewhere, but what is important here are some of the
ideas around which the programme was constructed.<$F Nicro National, forthcoming 1996. At the time of
writing these pilot projects were still in progress.> The youths were at „at risk‟, some in a place of safety
awaiting trial and most, probably, destined for prison. They were selected by Nicro and the Department of
Welfare and discussions took place with them and their parents (where these could be found). All agreed to
go on the programme, called The Journey, which consisted of the following:
A selection process and meeting of welcome between youths, their parents, course co-ordinators and
mentors.
A two-week wilderness experience involving strenuous physical and emotional activities.
A community welcoming ceremony for the youths when they returned from the wilderness.
The creation of a Club House as a base for the youths over the following year.
Life and job skills programmes run at the Club House.
A councilor available for mediation and support at personal and social crisis points.
The training of the youths to mentor the next group of boys after the year‟s programme ends.
Several important guidelines emerged from discussions which established the programme and from the
early phases of the programme itself:
Stories
When the young people joined the programme, it was clear that they were very insecure in adult company.
They had probably never shared their feelings and their life stories with anyone, let alone an adult. During
the wilderness experience they were encouraged to share their stories - particularly at times when they were
physically exhausted from their exertions and more vulnerable. Because of these talk-sessions, together with
their mastery of the tough environment as they climbed mountains, abseiled down cliffs and canoed down
rivers, their self-confidence increased rapidly within two weeks.
Physical challenge
During the wilderness experience the young people were physically challenged beyond all previous
experience. This led to great anger and fear, but also to a sense of achievement which they had seldom, if
ever, had before.
The welcoming ceremony
The young people had probably never been affirmed by adults during their time of adolescence. A
welcoming ceremony was planned which attempted to draw in as many important members of the
community as possible (for various reasons this was smaller than hoped). My guidelines for the ceremony
were as follows:
Can we get the community, the parents and important symbolic eaders to go out of their way for these kids? And
who are those symbolic leaders? The ceremony should have a particular format which should be kept secret from
the youths. Most traditional rites of passage work on the basis of four orientations - say north, south, east, west -
or earth, air, fire water. But at root they celebrate death and rebirth. This last is very important and should be built
into various phases throughout the year - but at the welcoming ceremony it needs to be the foremost thing. The
reason is, particularly with tough youths like these, that the most damaging thing that happens to them is negative
labeling. What we are trying to do is to allow that label, that stigma, to die and have the community indicate that
they acknowledge this and grant that the young men are reborn. This is essentially a de-labeling ceremony and is
our best chance to end recidivism. The ceremony should avoid any superficiality and should involve the following
orientations:
Earth- Xhosa youths are covered in mud which is washed of during the ceremony. Older Western traditions
involve burying, planting or covering with earth. Facial mud may work just as well - highly painted mud masks
which are washed off during the water ceremony.
Fire - The sense of renewal is often created by a ritual burning of the outer skin - the clothes - and the
presentation of a new skin - in this case perhaps track shoes and T-shirts. Sometimes snake symbolism is used for
obvious reasons. It would be ritually powerful if the young men burned their old clothes before receiving the new,
or if they brought something from their past which symbolised what they wanted to leave behind and burned it.
Water - The washing of the face masks could be part of a water ceremony. But more powerful would be the
handing round of a flagon of blessed (or in some way magically-charged) water, first to the youngsters to sip, then
to the rest of the gathering.
Air - This the most difficult. Often air is symbolised by singing. But a compelling moment may be produced by
one or two really big Guy Fawkes rockets, the kind which create a huge whump and mushroom a huge canopy of
fire over the people. It‟s not the act, but what it symbolises, that‟s important.
Afterwards the young men should be encouraged to form circles and share or enact their stories of the wilderness
experience with adults and friends who are present.
The emotional impact of ceremony is important because it resonates with deeper feelings of self-worth.
Conventional punishments tend to deaden emotion in young people (other than anger) whereas a rite of
passage programme works with emotion as a central ingredient. This is particularly important for boys who
are victims of cultural attitudes eschewing emotion. A comparison between emotional impact of
imprisonment and The Journey experience can be illustrated graphically:
The power of names
Names in ritual space have powerful transformative qualities. The above programme was named The
Journey and not a „programme‟ for this reason. The safe house was called a Club House and the young
people were encouraged to find a name for it. They, themselves, were asked to consider, on the basis of the
wilderness experience, what new names they might like to consider for each other and what they would call
their group. In African culture, as in many others, names are the cement for mental health and power and
influence can be particularly seen in gang usage.
Experiential education
In both the wilderness experience and in the choice of a club house, learning through experience was seen
as essential to the programme. Wild surroundings, particularly, have a transformative effect on people and
serve to jog young people - particularly from the city - out of their usual frame of thinking and acting.
Wilderness has the added value of inducing a fear which is possible to overcome but which sharpens
attention while it lasts. Kurt Hahn, the founder of Outward Bound, said of experience: „It is a sin of the soul
to force young people into opinions - indoctrination is of the devil - but it is culpable neglect not to impel
young people into experiences‟. Central to experiential education is finding older people who have
something to teach and younger people who are appropriate role-models for youth at risk.
By way of conclusion
What has been suggested above are experiments and conceptual categories - the beginnings of a map which
would require considerable discussion and planning to actualise. It suggests a new, culturally sensitive,
approach to diversion work. There is, in the end, no substitute for
thorough research into the rites and rituals of all cultures,
the development of procedures based on these understandings,
cultural sensitivity and acceptance, and
the re-invocation of older life-experienced people who become respected by young people.
To quote Ruth Benedict: „There has never been a time when civilisation stands more in need of
individuals who are genuinely culture conscious, who can see objectively the social behaviour of other
peoples without fear and recrimination.
What is being suggested in this paper underwrites an extensive re-evaluation of what it is that our
collective national cultures wish to teach our children. It is our contention that the formal education system,
while essential, has become bureaucratised and is unable - and was never designed - to undertake the
cultural, almost cellular, transfer of life knowledges essential to the well-being of young people. And many -
if not most - „modern‟ parents have lost the deep educational initiative without which young people lose
touch with ancient inherited cultural roots and simple human wisdom. They have done this either because
they do not know how to deal with their adolescent children, or because they believe school teaches these
things, or - even if their children are not at school - they believe it is the school system and the state which
should take responsibility to educate them. And, importantly for the many young men at risk, the notion of
father as teacher is being lost. In a non-alienated culture a son does not receive a hands-on healing from a
father, but a body-on healing. In more traditional societies the son‟s body, „now standing next to the father,
as they repair arrowheads, or repair ploughs, or wash pistons in gasoline, or care for birthing animals...can
dance to retune. Sons who have not received this retuning will have father-hunger all their lives.<$F Bly,
1990.>
Of course, most urban adolescents survive in their fashion. The lucky ones have parents who act on an
intuition that adolescents need both physical and emotional engagement. Some find mentors in their
teachers or neighbours or grandparents. Others measure themselves and find adult coaching in sport or
academic achievement. But many find only each other and they put together an emotional and symbolic life
as best they can: Music, dress, fads and fashions, drugs, romances and sexual encounters. And at the outer
edge are those who do not have any support systems, who go too far, join gangs which carry them beyond
the boundaries of social and legal acceptance. Some, like the eight young men who were discussed in the
introduction to this paper, attack cars and people in outrageous performances. It is these we define as young
people at risk, but any transformation of their lives requires that we look at what society provides for - and
requires of all adolescents. The boundary between the insiders and the outsiders is not a barrier but a
continuum along which teenagers are able to move with surprising ease and speed. Unless post-apartheid
South Africa reassesses its commitment to the support, education and parenting of all children - unless
families, communities and the collective wisdom of our many cultures are seen as central to this support -
then all young people are at risk.
Appendix
Subcultural theories were developed distinctly in relation to Western class-based societies and
interpret gangs as a reaction of lower class youth to their social circumstances - in particular to the
problematic experience of unemployment, educational disadvantage, and dead end jobs Within such a non-
opportunistic environment with so few career outlets, adolescents fail to succeed within the dominant
„success ethic‟ of the middle class. In order to succeed, through frustration and a need to survive, youths
enter a delinquent subculture and resort to delinquent measures such as crime.
The subculture is considered to substitute middle class values with an alternative status system,
conveying different norms, values, beliefs and ways of life to those of conventional society. This changed
social behaviour is said to offer a solution to the problems of adjustment. It represents an attempt to retrieve
some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in their parent culture due to structural disadvantage.
Social structure is therefore linked to social behaviour through the interpretation of adolescent gangs as a
cultural response to the problems posed on them by their disadvantaged material and social class. „It seems
that the latent function of subculture is ... to express and resolve, albeit “magically”, the contradictions
which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture‟.
In particular Clarke et al‟s article Resistance Through Rituals offers one of the most comprehensive
subcultural theories of delinquency. Using the same basic argument as above, he analyses delinquency from
a structural, cultural, and biographical perspective. Crudely speaking the structural perspective assesses the
surrounding material and economic conditions. The cultural perspective assesses „distinct patterns of life‟
that manifest in the dominant culture as middle values, the parent culture as lower class values, and the
subculture as „delinquent‟ values. The biographical perspective assesses how the youth‟s reaction to their
material circumstances manifest in their behaviour.
As an extension of these theories, Marxist and other structurally-based theories address the issue of
social power, looking at the central role of economic and political relationships in crime in modern society.
Working class delinquency is placed in the context of the class struggle. It is based on the axiom that class
conflict is inevitable in capitalist societies and that such dynamics relate to issues of deviance and control.
This does not mean that delinquency is simply a symptom of class warfare but that „connections are sought
between the structural “contradictions” of capitalist society and the forms of deviance and control‟.
Labeling theories examine the impact of society upon delinquents. They argue that the initial labeling
of an individual as „delinquent‟ causes rejection from accepted societal groups. This ostracization forces
the individual to join an organised deviant group such as a gang. According to Becker „deviance is not a
quality of the act the person commits,...deviant behaviour is behaviour that people so label‟. Labeling
theories shift the focus from the forms of deviant behaviour to the processes by which persons come to be
defined as deviant by others. Hence the critical variable in the study of deviance is seen as the social
audience. It offers a „procedural‟ model of becoming deviant, conceived in terms of the gradual
construction of a role and an identity.
Social disorganisation theories identify the lessening of social bonds in a community as the primary
cause of gangsterism. Gangsterism thereby reflects a decline in social control by traditional institutions,
such as family, schools, community organisations, over the individual. Social organisations in the slum
areas are inadequate to meet the social and psychological needs of an adolescent boy, hence they become
more vulnerable to criminal influence. The gang becomes an alternative institution to fulfill those needs
which the larger social structures could not.
Psychogenic approachesare individually based theories that see gang youths as „sick‟, „maladjusted‟,
and „emotionally disturbed‟. This disturbed psychological state is contributed to by disturbed family
patterns and relationships in the early years of the child. According to Bronfenbrenner it would seem that
the child turns to his possibly undesirable age-mates less by choice than by default. From this perspective
gangs are interpreted to function as a mechanism of emotional support.
All of these theories contribute something to an understanding of gang formation and dynamics.
Subcultural and structurally based theories are important in the context of South Africa, offering a macro
perspective of the gang phenomenon, informative of the structural and material circumstances from which
adolescent gangs arise. In conjunction with labeling theories, they allow one to pinpoint those groups in
society which are more prone to being labelled deviant than others.
Process orientated theories such as social disorganisation further allow one to understand the rise of
gangs as a response, in part, to social change. In the South African context this is of particular importance,
as Pinnock‟s empirical study conducted in the early eighties, illustrated. This study claimed that the
removals instituted by the Group Areas Act resulted in social disintegration, the breakdown in social control
and communal family structure. The family unit no longer offered security and support and the youth in
these areas were forced into gangs as a way of obtaining some social support.
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