South Africa’s second largest city is plagued by crime and drugs. Twenty-five years after the fall of apartheid, the country has set a number one world record in inequality, and Cape Town, which is both a popular tourist destination and an important business centre, has also become one of the most dangerous cities in the world with raging gang-wars in the neglected townships.
In these townships, the poverty and unemployment is too often dulled with pot, ‘tik’ and ‘meth’ – the synthetic sleeping medicine Mandrax. To combat this massive drug abuse and the sky-rocketing murder rate – 2302 homicides by first half year of 2019 – harder methods are now taken into use. A newly formed hard-hitting police unit has been formed and together with the national army they are being deployed into the overcrowded townships.
But to what degree can the iron fist approach loosen the South African knot?
