On the politics of vision and touch: encountering ...

On the politics of vision and touch: encountering fearful and fearsome bodies in Cape Town, South Africa

Nick Schuermans12 1 Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research Department of Geography Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 B-1050 Brussels Belgium +3226293185 [email protected] 2. Centre on Inequalities, Poverty, Social Exclusion and the City Department of Sociology University of Antwerp Sint-Jacobstraat 2 B-2000 Antwerpen Belgium +3232655135 [email protected]

Full reference: Schuermans, N. (2016). On the politics of vision and touch: encountering fearful and fearsome bodies in Cape Town, South Africa. In Darling, J., Wilson, H.F. (eds.) Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York (pp. 97-110). Milton Park: Routledge.

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1. Introduction South African cities are generally not understood in terms of encounter and interaction, but rather in terms of segregation and separation. During the apartheid years, the state planned mono-racial residential zones in such a way that whites, coloureds, Blacks and Indians1 did not have to cross each other’s paths (Christopher, 2001). Industrial areas, hills and wet river valleys acted as buffer zones between ‘group areas’ for different races (Western, 1996). Racially divided seating arrangements on public transport, racially segregated places of boarding and disembarkation and racially distinctive transport routes enforced segregation on the move (Pirie 1992). As such, the geography of the apartheid city was meant to inhibit racial mixing altogether. In the words of Nahnsen (2006, p. 100), “public urban space as a place of encountering, mixing and mingling was conceived of as a threat by the governing authorities”. The circumvention of interracial encounters was not only motivated by the need for a cheap and docile black labour force in the mining industry (Wolpe, 1972), but also by the racist project to consolidate an unambiguous and superior white identity that was based on social and spatial distance from blacks (Ballard, 2004). Since the repeal of the apartheid laws, South African policymakers have been eager to transform the spatial legacies of the past (Newton and Schuermans, 2013). The need for a better social and functional mix is not only discussed in light of transport costs, service provisions and energy usage, but also with regards to equity, democracy and social change (Harrison, Huchzermeyer & Mayekiso, 2003). By way of example, it is hoped that more inclusive notions of citizenship will emerge through school desegregation and inclusionary housing policies (Staeheli & Hammett, 2013; Klug, Rubin & Todes, 2013). Yet, despite all the good intentions, the full potential of interracial and cross-class encounters has never been realized. Many of the processes and dynamics initiated in apartheid years continue to reproduce the geography of the apartheid city. Whilst most new low-cost housing projects are still located in the urban peripheries (Huchzermeyer, 2001), wealthy South Africans continue to retreat to fortified homes, gated communities, shopping malls and secured office complexes where they mostly encounter people similar to themselves both in terms of class and race (Lemanski, 2004; Murray, 2011). The persistence of segregation was made clear in 2006 when a countrywide survey revealed that more than 40 per cent of the Black population had no contact with whites whatsoever (Durrheim and Dixon, 2010, p. 277). In international comparisons, South Africa is generally considered to be one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world (Louw, 2007). Altbeker (2007, p. 41) calculated, for instance, that the 2006 murder rate of South Africa was eight times higher than in the United States and 122 times higher than in Western Europe. Figures on the extent of fear of crime are similarly disheartening. The South African Social Attitudes Survey reveals that the proportion of South Africans feeling “very unsafe” or “a bit unsafe” increased from 15 per cent to 33 per cent between 1998 and 2005, while the percentage that reported feeling very unsafe on most days trebled from 5 to 15 per cent over the same period of time (Roberts, 2010, p. 261). More specific measures indicate that as much as 65 per cent of all white South Africans would feel unsafe walking in their neighbourhoods at night (Teeger, 2014, p. 75).

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Drawing on a case study in Cape Town, this chapter will argue that these exceptionally high levels of crime and fear of crime impede encounters with difference and the positive impacts that such encounters might present. First, I will argue that many security strategies of middle class whites are based on attempts to circumvent encounters with poor blacks. Secondly, I will contend that the preconceived categories of whiteness, blackness, poverty and wealth are generally not challenged, but further reinforced when encounters across lines of race and class do occur. This, I suggest, is because people repeatedly fall back on racialized and classed stereotypes about the ‘suspicious body’. By demonstrating the negative impact of encounters between fearful and fearsome bodies in Cape Town, this chapter feeds into work that has troubled the assumption that encounters with difference automatically translate into respect and tolerance (cfr. Valentine, 2008, p. 325). In doing so, I will infer that the feeling of safety from bodily harm is a conditio sine qua non for encounters to have positive effects (cfr. Van Leeuwen, 2008). To make these points, I draw on photo-elicitation interviews with 78 middle class whites in two privileged neighbourhoods of Cape Town. Tamboerskloof is situated close to the centre, while Vredekloof is located in the Northern Suburbs. In both neighbourhoods, my interviews focused on feelings of fear and comfort in different parts of the city and how these were influenced by encounters with different people. I triangulated the interview data with participatory observations and a complementary analysis of crime reports and other messages posted on community websites. I also returned to Cape Town to conduct 9 member checking interviews with some of my original respondents2. Having situated my study, section 2 draws on the post-colonial and feminist work of Sara Ahmed to substantiate the politics of vision and touch associated with embodied encounters with feared others. This section adds to the geographies of encounter literature by conceptualizing the encounter at the intimate scale of the body and by theorizing the role of vision and touch within encounters. Moving to the empirical findings, sections 3 and 4 focus on the role of bodily markers of race and class in the visual recognition of supposed criminals and victims of crime. Taking these forward, section 5 deals with spatial strategies to avoid suspicious people, whilst finally, the conclusion considers how scopic and tactile regimes of racialized and classed categorization inform – and are informed by - embodied encounters with difference in Cape Town.

2. Encountering fearful and fearsome bodies Over the last decade, the geographies of encounter literature has inspired an examination of cities as sites of encounter, interaction and connection (Amin, 2002; 2012; Lawson and Elwood, 2014; Valentine, 2008; Wilson, 2014). In this body of work, the significance of encounter – as a product of spatial proximity – is generally explored with regards to its role in mediating prevailing meanings, discomforts and anxieties around race, class, ethnicity or sexuality(cfr. Valentine and Waite, 2012, p. 475). In a concern for examining ‘contact zones’ (Askins and Pain 2011) or ‘spaces of encounters’ (Leitner 2012), many researchers have focused on occasional exchanges between strangers in public space (Valentine, 2008; Matejskova and Leitner, 2011). Others have followed Amin’s (2002) call to investigate routine 3

interactions in spaces of work (Cook, Dwyer and Waite, 2011), education (Wilson, 2014) and leisure (Askins and Pain, 2011). Inspired by the growing body of work on the emotional geographies of embodiment (Davidson & Milligan, 2004), this chapter extends such work by looking at the body as an “intimate contact zone” in its own right (cf. Price, 2012, p. 581). My South African case study will also add to the field by studying not only real, but also imaginary encounters with difference. To conceptualize the body as a space of encounter, I draw on Ahmed’s work on ‘strange encounters’ (2000). She contends that subjects are produced through a politics of vision and touch which emerges out of embodied encounters with others. To substantiate the politics of vision, she argues that face-to-face encounters involve modes of recognition that differentiate between familiar and strange others based on appearance. People read the bodies they face in order to ground aspects of their own identities and to recognize those of others. Ahmed’s elaboration of a politics of vision thus understands the skin as an “inscriptive surface” (Grosz, 1994, p. 138) and as “a mirror of society in which people can find their place in the social structure” (Pile, 1996, p. 187). In this context, we might think, as Amin (2010) suggests, of how ‘visual regimes’ of racial categorization distinguish particular conjunctions of skin colour, clothing and behaviour as triggers of racist acts and thoughts. By way of example, Swanton’s (2010) ethnographic study in a former mill town in Northern England details how race and racism give shape to – and take form through – accumulated encounters in restaurants, shops, taxis and schools. It is worth quoting Amin (2010, p. 8) at length here in his description of the ‘remainders of race’: “The details of colour, shape, smell, behaviour, disposition, intent, picked out by racial scopic regimes as tellers of human grouping and social standing – etched over a long historical period across a spectrum of communication media – come to frame the thoughts, actions and feelings of the condemning and the condemned.” Ahmed’s work (2000) is crucial in highlighting that the body is not only invested with meaning as a visual signifier, but that it also polices social difference through touch or indeed, lack of it. Based on the observation that the bodies of familiar others are allowed near, while the bodies of abject strangers are generally kept at bay, she infers that the function of the body as a marker of social differentiation is as tactile and haptic as it is visual and scopic. “Just as some others are ‘seen’ and recognized as stranger than other others”, Ahmed (2000, p. 49) argues, “so too some skins are touched as stranger than other skins”. By way of an example, this can been seen in Saldanha’s (2005) study on Goa’s rave scene, where he examines how white girls treat the bumping and touching of European bodies on the dance floor differently to those of domestic, Indian tourists. For Saldanha (2005, p. 719), this demonstrates that race is never simply a given, but that it emerges and persists time and time again through differential experiences of touch. Such understanding of the politics of touch is in line with geographical work that understands the body to be “our first and foremost, most immediate and intimately felt geography” (Davidson & Milligan, 2004, p. 523; Dixon and Straughan, 2010; Paterson, 2009). Central to the remainder of this chapter is Ahmed’s (2004) substantiation that fear is an embodied phenomenon that is affected by the politics of vision and touch. While positive feelings, affects and emotions such as joy and trust generally result in 4

proximity and closeness, negative emotions such as fear and disgust usually bring about distance and separation (cf. Dixon & Straughan, 2010, p. 453). It is not the fearsome body at a distance that people are afraid of, but the fearsome body that is nearby. When bodies come so close that they can touch each other and thus hurt each other, feelings of vulnerability work to re-establish the bodily boundaries of a ‘personal space’ in which some are allowed and others are excluded (Rodaway, 1994; Sibley & Van Hoven, 2008). It is precisely when fear becomes a relationship of proximity that it “does something”, for in Ahmed’s words, “it re-establishes distance between bodies whose difference is read off the surface” (2004, p. 63, original emphasis). Whilst this observation is well documented, I suggest that it is necessary to recognise that it is not only physical proximity that can do something. Rather, the imaginary potential of proximity is also significant, especially in the South African case. If fearful encounters are affected by a politics of touch, they are also affected by a politics of vision. In the words of Ahmed (2000, p. 44), “the very habits and gestures of marking out bodily space involve differentiating ‘others’ into familiar (assimilable, touchable) and strange (unassimilable, untouchable)”. When people come across unknown others, they rely on shared stereotypes about who is suspicious and who is not in order to make this differentiation. The difference between the innocent and the threatening is often seen through the preconceived categories of who or what is normal and who or what is ‘strange’. While this is evident in the way that an extreme fear of terrorism in the West is generally read off bodies with a Middle Eastern appearance (Ahmed, 2004; Haldrup, Koefoed & Simonsen, 2007), the following sections will demonstrate that many middle class, white South Africans project their fears upon impoverished blacks.

3. Race and the politics of vision On a daily basis, security announcements, reminders and alerts advise the residents of Tamboerskloof and Vredekloof to “watch out for suspicious and unusual behaviour”. The Tamboerskloof Neighbourhood Watch suggests that “the duty of members on patrol is to report any suspicious person or vehicle or unusual situation”. Yet, apart from vague references to the body language of supposed criminals, neighbourhood watches, security initiatives and armed response operators fail to provide ways to distinguish who or what is actually suspicious, leaving this open to interpretation (see also Simon, this collection). A hijacking awareness guide published on the website of the Tamboerskloof Security Initiative even underlines that “a suspicious person can be any person that you feel acts in a strange manner” and that “colour, race, sex or age are not distinguishing features”. Ahmed (2000, p. 29) understands this failure to provide clear indications of who or what is suspicious as “a technique of knowledge”. In her understanding, the signifier ‘suspicious’ does an enormous amount of work in safety and security discourses “precisely insofar as it is empty” (ibid.). Because the nature of suspicious people, acts and situations is left open to interpretation, people fall back on shared stereotypes about who or what is suspicious. In the South African case, many of these stereotypes are rooted in the racialized history of the country. According to former president Mbeki (2004), the psychological residue of apartheid has burdened a lot of 5

white South Africans with the conviction that they cannot survive “in a sea of black savages”. Many scholars agree that seemingly acceptable discourses and ‘politically correct’ explanations for (fear of) crime, serve as a code word for blatantly racist fears of difference (Ballard, 2004; Lemanski, 2006). My interviews confirmed that racialized schemes guide middle class, white South Africans’ understanding of what supposed criminals look like. Nearly all interviewees told me that they were much more suspicious of unfamiliar blacks than of unknown whites. For example, a pensioner in Tamboerskloof said that she would be more afraid “if it would be a coloured person or a Black person” that she met on the streets. When I asked a mother of two who she thought had assaulted the girlfriend of her daughter, she said that she was unsure “whether they were coloureds or Blacks”, making it quite clear that she had failed to consider the possibility that they may have been white. While some of the most racist comments suggested that it was in the nature of blacks to commit crimes, others considered the link between race and crime to be a result of culture (“black men do not value property”), history (“in apartheid, if you were Black, you did not count”) or place (“if you live in an environment of hate, you will hate too”). Residents in both Tamboerskloof and Vredekloof, also had the impression that their own skin colour affected their chances of getting mugged or robbed. While some emphasized that Black South Africans are statistically the most likely to become the victim of crime, most were convinced that their chance of victimization was strongly affected by the visibility of their whiteness. In Tamboerskloof, two respondents felt that “you’re more visible if you’re white” and that “[you’re] just more of an obvious target if [you’re] the only white person around”. In Vredekloof, two other interviewees thought that “white people become a target quickly” and that “you feel unsafe because you’re white”. As such, it is evident that skin colour is not only used to differentiate between imagined criminals and innocent citizens, but that criminals are also expected to select their victims by reading race off the body. Whereas it is often assumed that whiteness is unmarked and invisible to those who benefit from its privileges, fear of crime certainly confronts middle class, white South Africans with their own whiteness, providing another case that can be fed into wider discourses of ‘white vulnerability’ (cf. Fechter, 2005). By focusing on the role of a racialized politics of vision, it becomes clear that interactions across difference do not necessarily hold the possibility for transformation. Since unanticipated interactions with racial others are overpowered by established fears and anxieties, racial stereotypes and anxieties are rarely shattered when white South Africans encounter black compatriots in public space. By setting up a mental binary between the good, law-abiding, but vulnerable white citizen and the bad, black criminal, they feel safe when they encounter unfamiliar white people, but unsafe when they come across black strangers. Hence, the grounds for a true encounter are destroyed by relying on the racial recognition of suspicious people and potential victims of crime. Racialized assumptions about crime, risk and fear are not only nurtured by shocking newspaper headlines, frightening messages in chain-mail and alarming reports on community websites, but also by past encounters with difference. For example, in Tamboerskloof, a respondent stated that a hold-up had made her mother far more 6

wary of coloured and Black people than she had been before. In Vredekloof, someone else argued that “it is much easier to hate a specific race if an armed robbery happens to you”. On the one hand, these quotes are, once again, a testimony to the strong racialization of crime and the deep criminalization of race. On the other hand, they also reveal that the high levels of (fear of) crime have created a climate in which the perceived value of such stereotypes and prejudices is constantly confirmed (cf. Altbeker, 2007, p. 66). While much of the geographies of encounter literature attempts to examine whether repeated interactions across difference may challenge the status quo, these findings suggest that a singular encounter with negative outcomes can have a much larger resonance than numerous positive ones. As such, we should not only look at the power of rumours and media reports, but also at the way in which negative experiences produce, reproduce and seemingly justify centuries-old stereotypes about black ‘savages’ and vulnerable whites.

4. Class and the politics of vision Given the strength of these racialized imaginaries, experiences with white criminals confused a lot of my interviewees. For instance, a respondent in Vredekloof was amazed to find out that his CCTV camera had recorded white youngsters breaking into his car. My neighbours in Tamboerskloof were also surprised to hear that the criminal caught red-handed in our block of flats was not the Black caretaker that they had suspected, but rather an unfamiliar white man. From the 362 crime reports that were published on the websites of Tamboerskloof Neighbourhood Watch and the Tamboerskloof Security Initiative, 153 mentioned the suspected race of the suspects. In the eight cases dealing with white suspects, the supposed perpetrators were not only characterized by their white skin, but also by the fact that they were “poor” or “unusually scruffy looking”. In this way, the writers of the reports made it clear that white criminals are not included in the kind of whiteness the interviewees lay claim to. Significantly, experiences with white criminals have begun to challenge the ability of white middle class South Africans to supposedly identify risk by reading race. The visual identification of dangerous criminals and harmless citizens is not only based on skin colour, but also on bodily markers of class identity such as dress and appearance. Interviewees in Tamboerskloof and Vredekloof specified, for example, that “a black person in a sports car” is not supposed to be a criminal, but that “a young, but full grown black man who is not well dressed becomes immediately suspicious”. Indeed, the manager of the security operations in Vredekloof told me that he would not suspect anyone with a decent shirt and decent trousers, but that he would scrutinize anyone with broken shoes, dirty hair and an unshaven face. These discourses of class also fed into discourses of vulnerability. Even though many respondents admitted that it is hard to disentangle race and class in post-apartheid South Africa, they were convinced that embodied symbols of social status, such as healthy teeth, jewellery or expensive clothes, had become another way in which potential victims of crime might be identified. One man told me that he did not think that he would be less vulnerable if he wore the same clothes, but had a black skin. Another participant also suggested that whilst “you’re a target” as a white person, “it also depends how you look”. In a newsflash of the Tamboerskloof Security Initiative, it was indicated that the victims of burglaries were “usually affluent home owners who 7

displayed their wealth with jewellery, double-storey residences and fancy cars”. As such, the chairperson argued that it was important to be discrete and avoid visibility. He underlined that “showing off ones wealth can lead to one becoming a target”. These discourses reveal that class identity has become a crucial aspect in the ‘politics of vision’ associated with fearful encounters. In the conviction that both criminals and victims of crime have a certain class appearance, people not only fall back on old dichotomies between black and white when they encounter strangers, but also on new dichotomies between rich and poor. On the one hand, this demonstrates that subjectivities of white middle class South Africans have shifted from a strong identification with the racist divisions of apartheid to divisions based on far more individualized and consumerist identities built around the growing gap between the privileged and the underprivileged (cf. Hyslop, 2000; Davies, 2012). On the other hand, it also suggests that the popular association between crime and poverty might in part have stimulated the formation of these subjectivities. After all, the politics of vision associated with embodied encounters with difference not only confronted my respondents with their own whiteness, but also with their exceptionally privileged economic position in a country with so much desperate poverty. In this context, how class is performed in encounters between the fearful and the fearsome is significant. While skin colour is a racial marker that is permanently connected to the body (Alcoff, 2006), many visual signs of class distinction are only provisionally attached to the body and can therefore be concealed, removed, or altered. Hence, the residents of Vredekloof and Tamboerskloof are conscious of the possibility that people who may appear middle class might actually be lower-class criminals who have dressed up. At the same time, they themselves are encouraged to dress down in places with a mixed crowd so as to reduce their own chances of becoming a target. Many middle class whites thus leave necklaces, watches and ostentatious clothes at home when they go to places where they feel unsafe.

5. The politics of touch According to many respondents, what makes crime in South Africa distinctive is not so much the volume, but the violence that goes with it. Many residents of Tamboerskloof and Vredekloof feared most that their bodies and those of their family might be harmed or violated during a robbery or hijacking. The chairperson of the Vredekloof Safety Council indicated, for example, that he was motivated to reduce crime in his neighbourhood because he did not want to arrive home and “find out that the throat of my wife and children has been sliced”. A lot of the women that were interviewed also demonstrated a fear that a burglary or a robbery could involve sexual violence. Unlike the negative encounters described in the previous section that had spoiled the grounds for future encounters, these are based on imagined encounters – violent encounters that had not yet happened, or indeed, may never happen. Because imagined encounters with supposed criminals bring about strong feelings of vulnerability and insecurity, white middle class South Africans try to keep their bodies away from bodies that are perceived to be threatening. To reduce the likelihood of victimization, many interviewees maintained a personal space around their bodies in 8

which they avoided the presence of suspicious others. The safety tips that appeared on local websites also encouraged this. The Tamboerskloof Security Initiative website advised, for instance that you should “remain at least two arms lengths away (…) if someone asks you for directions”. The website of the Oranjekloof City Improvement District emphasized that “even if they [strangers] appear to be neatly dressed and well spoken, do not allow them into your personal space as they could strike”. This suggests, once again, that quick evaluations of visible markers are not always reliable and that a neatly dressed appearance can create a false sense of security, presenting any unknown person as a potential threat. The mention of personal space and the dangers of letting someone into it also highlights how imaginary personal boundaries are policed to keep bodies apart or at arm’s length. While strategies to avoid touch are developed at the intimate scale of the body, they have far reaching consequences at other spatial scales. It appeared, for instance, that the popularity of automobility among middle class white South Africans is not only motivated by the freedom and the flexibility provided by cars in a rapidly sprawling city, but also by the lack of personal space that buses, trains and train stations allow and the fact that public transport is mostly used by black South Africans who cannot afford a car. In Tamboerskloof, a respondent stated that she avoided the area around the central train station “because it is busy” and because “you can get close to people’s personal space because of the crowds”. A similar sentiment was highlighted in a woman’s account of why she had never taken a 16seater minibus taxi, suggesting that “to sit that physically close to another person would be very uncomfortable” because she enjoys “a certain amount of personal space”. Again, imaginary scenarios were common, with one woman emphasizing just how much she detested “the idea that you don’t know with whom you will ride. Maybe it’s a desperate man that had his last decent meal three weeks ago” (cf. Schuermans, 2014). Many South African scholars point out that the exceptionally high levels of spatial separation in post-apartheid cities impede meaningful encounters across difference (e.g. Lemanski, 2004; Murray, 2011). They say that transformative interactions have become rare now that wealthy South Africans of all races have retreated to fortified homes, gated communities, patrolled neighbourhoods, guarded shopping malls and secured office complexes. By focusing on the politics of touch at the intimate scale of the body, it becomes clear that the shortage of meaningful encounters is not simply a by-product of the lay-out of the post-apartheid city. In-stead, the deliberate circumvention of interactions with poor blacks is an important driver behind the hardening of socio-spatial boundaries by means of walls, fences and booms. By voluntarily limiting their freedom of movement to fortified houses, patrolled neighbourhoods, secured offices and shopping malls, the residents of Vredekloof and Tamboerskloof aim to extend and harden the mental boundaries of the personal space around their bodies into a couple of solid capsules (cf. Schuermans, 2013 & 2014). If the rich inhabitants of a dramatically unequal city such as Cape Town retreat into an ever decreasing number of enclaves interlinked by car trips, it is because they do not want certain kinds of bodies - which are easily identifiable by their visual appearance - to come so close that they might touch and harm.

6. Conclusion 9

In South Africa, many scholars and policy makers are convinced that more crossracial encounters are necessary to redress the legacy of apartheid segregation. In line with the literature on the geographies of encounter, there is a strong belief – and hope – that the desegregation of public spaces will begin to address the reproduction of stereotypes and prejudices and thus stimulate a move towards racial tolerance and non-discrimination. Yet, starting from Ahmed’s theories on strange encounters, this chapter has indicated that the grounds of many encounters are taken away by the strategies middle class, white South Africans deploy to deal with (fear of) crime. First, it is clear that spatial strategies to manage the risk of unwanted encounters at the scale of the body stimulate the materialization of new urban geographies that are characterized by separation, securitization and a retreat into fortified homes and patrolled streets (cf. Lemanski, 2004; Murray, 2011). Many potentially meaningful encounters with social difference in public space do not occur because the security strategies of the rich are based on attempts to circumvent bodily encounters with those perceived as a threat. Second, it is crucial that popular images of suspiciousness and victimhood are instigated by the visual recognition of race and class characteristics on the bodies of unknown others. For Ahmed (2000, p. 36), the projection of danger onto specific social categories expels crime and violence from the purified life of the white middle class citizen. It leads to an exaggerated fear when black people who look poor enter personal space and an excessive sense of security when one is nearby fellow whites who appear to be privileged. It also reproduces the racialized dichotomies of the past and the classed dichotomies of the present. If Ahmed (2000) argues that the stranger is produced through face-to-face interactions with others, it is clear that encounters marked by stranger danger produce the figure of the stranger as much as they are informed by it. As such, my research in Tamboerskloof and Vredekloof warns that stereotypes and prejudices are generally not challenged, but confirmed and even re-instigated as seemingly banal encounters are constantly refracted through the prism of crime and fear of crime. It demonstrates the enduring effects of negative encounters with difference and furthermore, how rumours, stories and even imaginary encounters stand in for first-hand experience in a context of continuing segregation. Even when unexpected encounters across lines of race and class do occur, preconceived categories of whiteness, blackness, poverty and wealth are rarely shattered. While racialized assumptions about the chances of becoming the victim of crime confront middle class whites with their whiteness and wealth, this rarely translates into a more critical reflection on their privilege and entitlement. Obviously, such trends have been observed globally in studies on enclave urbanism (e.g. Wissink, 2013), but the emphasis placed on the fear of violent crime in South Africa is important. Within work on encounter, discussions on personal space and the violation of it, tend to focus on unwritten rules of appropriate conduct. Yet in Cape Town, the maintenance of personal space in public is not just about civility or a desire to avoid discomforting emotions, but a genuine belief that the maintenance of personal space is a necessary strategy for survival. The maintenance of distance is not only about managing discomfort or disdain, but is one that is persistently 10

recommended by security forces as one way of avoiding bodily harm. As such, violent crime and the fear of it must be addressed as central to any discussion on desegregation and cross-racial contact. While these conclusions offer a pessimistic reading about the potential effects of encounters with difference, they should encourage us to look more carefully for the places where – and the conditions under which – encounters can become transformative. This endeavour demands a closer engagement with the intimate scale of the body as a contact zone, but also demands interventions capable of creating safe environments that don’t fall into the trap of eradicating the riskiness and unpredictability associated with encounters in the name of a safety-seeking politics of vision and touch (cf. Van Leeuwen, 2008). It is only once fear of bodily harm is addressed, that better grounds for encounter can be laid and dominant ideas about race and poverty can be reconsidered.

Acknowledgements My research in Tamboerskloof and Vredekloof was funded by a grant of the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation through Science and Technology in Flanders (IWTVlaanderen). I would like to thank Jonathan Darling, Helen Wilson and all respondents for their time and feedback.

Notes 1. Although it is generally accepted that the racial classifications of the apartheid era are a social construction serving white interests, the post-apartheid government continues to use the fourfold division of the population in coloureds, Indians, whites and Blacks in the context of racial redress. While Blacks with a capital B refers to the Black African population group, blacks without a capital b refers to coloureds, Indians and Black Africans altogether (see Posel, 2001). 2. See Schuermans, 2011, p. 128-166 for a detailed discussion of my methodology.

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