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Date of Award

Spring 2020

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Historical & Political Studies; College of Arts & Sciences

First Advisor

Jennifer Riggan

Abstract

This research, focused in contemporary South Africa, analyzes criminality through the interlinkages between marginalization, space, and public discourse. The discursive stigmatization projected upon certain racial groups directly results in the criminalization of these groups and their township communities. These racial groups and related geographical territories mirror the same segregated and discriminatory political system that was, and arguably still remains, as apartheid South Africa. These constructed stigmatizations perpetuate apartheid-era collective memory—one that is deeply embedded with institutionalized racism as well as the structural and historical remains of apartheid geographies. As a result, the state-sponsored violence that is waged against these groups is justified through this criminalization, and subsequently waged through the rapid militarization of the police force. Despite the symbolic essence of change which followed the democratic transition in 1994, the new South African government continues to militarize the police force and deploy them into townships to fight the disillusioned War on Crime. Because these apartheid-era geographies are unduly criminalized through popularized understandings of crime and criminality, the socio-political landscape of apartheid maintains its integrity. The data collected helps illustrate how the black South African township dweller has been thrust into a racial and spatial historicization of society which has already labeled him as criminal through discursive propaganda that constructs ideas of criminality and misconstrues them with notions of space, race, morality and humanness; further, these discursive stigmas have worked within public discourse and through public policy to justify the army’s deployment into vulnerable township communities, destabilizing these communities and perpetuating their suffering.

Comments

International Studies

Additional Files

IS Thesis Full Text Final Copy.docx (85 kB)

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Externalizing the Internal: The Criminalization and Externalization of the Black Township-dweller in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This research, focused in contemporary South Africa, analyzes criminality through the interlinkages between marginalization, space, and public discourse. The discursive stigmatization projected upon certain racial groups directly results in the criminalization of these groups and their township communities. These racial groups and related geographical territories mirror the same segregated and discriminatory political system that was, and arguably still remains, as apartheid South Africa. These constructed stigmatizations perpetuate apartheid-era collective memory—one that is deeply embedded with institutionalized racism as well as the structural and historical remains of apartheid geographies. As a result, the state-sponsored violence that is waged against these groups is justified through this criminalization, and subsequently waged through the rapid militarization of the police force. Despite the symbolic essence of change which followed the democratic transition in 1994, the new South African government continues to militarize the police force and deploy them into townships to fight the disillusioned War on Crime. Because these apartheid-era geographies are unduly criminalized through popularized understandings of crime and criminality, the socio-political landscape of apartheid maintains its integrity. The data collected helps illustrate how the black South African township dweller has been thrust into a racial and spatial historicization of society which has already labeled him as criminal through discursive propaganda that constructs ideas of criminality and misconstrues them with notions of space, race, morality and humanness; further, these discursive stigmas have worked within public discourse and through public policy to justify the army’s deployment into vulnerable township communities, destabilizing these communities and perpetuating their suffering.