The Impact of Organised Crime on State Social Control: Organised Criminal Groups and Local Governance on the Cape Flats, Cape Town, South Africa

This study primarily investigates the power dynamics between organised crime, the state and society in order to assess the impact of organised crime on social control by the state. Using the Cape Flats community of Manenberg as a case study, this article examines the interaction of organised criminal gangs with the South African state at the level of local government to provide a descriptive analysis of the power dynamics between the local state, the community and criminal groups. It is argued that organised criminal groups act as a rival social organisation and have acquired forms of social control lost by the state. As a result, the state is not regarded as the most prominent organisation in Manenberg but, rather, as only one actor functioning in a system of local power dynamics. The position of actors within that system can shift and change as configurations of power change dynamically. Nor are the elements of this system necessarily in conflict with each other: state, society and organised crime can sometimes function in a mutually supportive relationship that works in favour of all three. Accordingly, new configurations of power are continually being established and reshaped.