The Racial Geographies of Criminal Panic

How are the politics of crime in South Africa’s predominantly white suburbs and predominantly black townships similar or different? Through an analysis of what organizers billed as the largest anti-crime protest in South Africa’s history—a virtually all-white affair at a Pretoria rugby club—the chapter shows similarities between the areas in the claims made about crime, and particularly about how the post-apartheid rights regime enables insecurity. However, the chapter reveals two important differences between the suburbs and townships. First, it shows the more directly racialized language through which fear of crime is expressed in the suburbs. Second, it shows how vigilante violence is differently practiced in the different areas, as it is aimed primarily at “outsiders” in South Africa’s suburbs rather than “insiders” in the country’s townships.