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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