CHILD RAPE & ABUSE
Guns, Power and Identity
(abridged by SpeakOut!)
A research project of the Zimiseleni Researchers
October 2001

Glynis Clacherty and Johanna Kistner

The research reported on here is a product of a research and intervention project, the Zimiseleni Researchers Project. The project is jointly run by Ekupholeni Mental Health Centre and Clacherty Research.

Ekupholeni Mental Health Centre is a non-governmental organisation offering an innovative and comprehensive mental health service in the Kathorus area east of Johannesburg. The Zimiseleni Group is composed of 15 boys who have been referred to Ekupholeni because of behavioural problems. They range in age from 12 to 16. When the group started, about half of the boys were in school and the other half out of school. All of them live in deep poverty and all come from difficult and deprived home situations. Most of the boys are involved in crime. This ranges from petty crime to rape and gang involvement, though those involved in gangs are still on the edge of criminal gang activity because of their age. The criminal activities these boys are engaged in have, in most cases, not yet been identified and/or acted on by the law enforcement authorities. While Ekupholeni does not condone the boy's crimes and has in one case not stood in the way of a boy being arrested, the centre aims to prevent the boys getting involved in further criminal activity. Some of the boys are also involved in substance abuse. The boys meet in the Zimseleni Group after school once a week for two hours, as well as three times a year for a day, and once a year for a weekend camp.
The Zimiseleni Group was established by Ekupholeni in the middle of 1999 but struggled for months to achieve a sense of identity, purpose and cohesiveness. Members drifted in and out of sessions, found it difficult to contain anger and deal with conflict and actively refused to identify themselves with any kind of healing activity. The Ekupholeni team was desperately looking for a way of reaching and assisting these boys to grow through the emotional difficulties that were pushing them into the criminal underworld.
The idea of creating a research project that would at the same time develop into a therapeutic intervention was born in early 2000 when the Ekupholeni staff met with Glynis Clacherty, a specialist in participatory research with children. This researcher wanted to explore the realities of boys living on the edge of crime and to use their experiences and perceptions to make child-centred recommendations to policy makers and service providers alike.
The researcher, the psychologist and the lay counsellor began to brainstorm creative ways of reaching these very defensive, yet vulnerable and emotionally needy boys, and at the same time undertake research into the lives of boys on the edge of crime. Driven initially by the research need to document the reality of boys on the edge of crime, the decision was made to use a participatory research approach and make the boys researchers into their own lives. The staff at Ekupholeni knew, however, that the boys were too guarded to talk about their own lives, so the decision was made to make the focus of the research 'the lives of boys in Kathorus'. What emerged as the project developed was a powerful model for intervention based on the idea of youth as researchers.
The main research tool used by the boys in the early stages was disposable cameras. These provided a way of catching the boys' interest, in that the technology was inherently interesting.
The boys took photographs that illustrated the 'lives of boys in Kathrorus'. Time was spent labelling the photographs and talking about them; all the time with the boys in the role of 'objective' researchers. This discussion was taped-recorded and became the qualitative data that the adult researcher used to develop a picture of the reality of boys on the edge of crime and what pushed them into crime. The research was experienced by the boys as 'real' research. This fact was reinforced when the boys presented their findings at an academic conference of psychologists.
Alongside this research process, something else was also happening. The research approach provided a unique means of overcoming the defence mechanisms the boys had built up because of their experience of relationships in the past. By making the boys researchers into the 'lives of boys in Kathorus', they were able to explore and discover their own difficulties and processes from a relatively safe distance. While looking at the realities of other children, the group was exploring their own reality, without unduly threatening the defensive structures that had been built up over the years, which had, in fact, helped the children to survive.
It is important to note that this process had to be done with extreme caution. It would have been destructive to strip away these defences too quickly and leave the boys exposed and vulnerable. For this reason, the process described here took many months and required frequent contact with the boys.
This approach is aligned to the narrative therapy paradigm which recognises the importance of helping children, in particular, to view their problems from a distance, to depersonalise them and find active means of reasserting control over their own behaviours and experiences (Freeman, Epston and Lobovitz, 1991). In this way the child is freed from the label of 'problem child'. Instead he or she is seen as an active agent who labels, confronts and deals with the problem behaviour.
A model that uses research as an intervention has emerged. It is summed up in this diagram which describes the dual role of therapy and research and how they work together.
The boys began to use the research to provide insight into their lives and the context they lived in. The role of researcher provided the distance they needed to 'see' their own problems and slowly begin to own them. The model of research and intervention has been the main approach adopted in the group. Over the last two years the boys have in addition to the initial research on 'boys in Kathorus' undertaken research into school issues and substance abuse all the while beginning to 'see' and tentatively solve their own problems.
It is important to note that the boys are not doing 'token' research. Over the past two years they have learned how to define a research question, devise research tools, conduct an interview and a focus group discussion. They have become particularly good at asking probing questions and often raise issues that we as adult researchers would be afraid to ask. Some of the older boys have also been involved in writing transcripts of tapes and the thematic analysis of these transcripts. They are also involved in presenting their research. For instance, research on schools was presented to the Gauteng Education Department and substance abuse research was fed into the audience research for Soul Buddyz 2, a children's television initiative.

3. Research for Gun Free South Africa

During 2001 Gun Free South Africa, a non-governmental organisation working to educate and lobby for a gun-free society, heard about the Zimiseleni Project and saw an opportunity to work with the group to look at how at-risk boys perceived firearms and what role they played in their lives.

4. The scope of the research

The boys decided that they would look at where boys got guns and how and why boys in Kathorus carried guns. This report focuses only on why boys carry guns. The Zimiseleni boys decided that they could not do the research with boys outside the Zimiseleni Project as this would place them at risk. They suggested that the research focus on them and their perceptions. The findings presented here are a small in-depth case study of the perceptions about guns of 15 at-risk-boys. The reflective skills the boys have developed through the project and the level of trust with the adult researcher, careworker and psychologist (which is a product of the long term nature of the project) make this information particularly rich.

Guns get money
According to the boys the most obvious reason why boys in Kathorus carry guns is because they are poor and need money.People who are poor, carry the gun to force people to give them money by force. A gun was seen as the best way to get money through crime. The boys described how young boys use knives to get money and then use the money for a gun. A gun was seen as more effective than a knife as people were more scared of a gun. A gun was a ticket to easy money. People don't argue with a gun. Everybody knows who has not paid school fees. They sit on the floor, or don' t get stationery. If you can't afford to cover your books, the teacher forces you to take off your shirt. The boys who described themselves as all-powerful when they held the gun consistently said they felt weak when they put the gun down. According to the boys 'clevers' are criminals. They also refer to them as 'bully brothers'. The quote below shows how the boys distinguish between 'good brothers' and bully brothers' who think they are 'clevers'. It also shows how they are pressured to become part of the 'clevers'. This is one place they will have power. Guns are associated with the bully brothers and 'clevers'. This one has been in jail (referring to a photo of a man with a jail tattoo) and wants to influence the young ones. This kind of brother is a bully to us. The bully brothers smoke pills and dagga and when we pass they intimidate us. We don't want to be like them when we grow up. They have guns and they chase people at night and take their money from them. They think they are 'clevers'.
To be 'clever' is to think you are powerful and stronger than older people. 'Clevers' get involved in crimes as young people. But a true clever learns at school and succeeds. It is hard to be a true clever because some people don't like school and they find it hard. It is also hard because bully brothers pressurise you to join them and when you get into their group you will never be a true clever again.

Guns give dignity and respect

Usually when you don't have the gun you don't have dignity.

Most of the boys in the group have had severely traumatic experiences in primary relationships with their parents. This is illustrated by the story below:
I was born in 1982 at Thembisa. I stayed with my mother. I was still young and unable to recognise her. I didn't know what kind of a person she was. In 1983 I came to Katlehong to stay with my father and his mother who was my granny. I realized that my mother was not showing up to see me grow. I started to ask 'who is my mother?' I kept wondering. Other people too asked me who is my mother. In 1985 I was still staying at Hlahatsi wondering and thinking who is my mother. But I was still young and didn't take too much note of it. In 1990 I started school and I kept on asking, 'who is my mother?' In 1998 I started searching for my mother. My granny told me that my mother stays in Thembisa. Sometimes when I had money I used to go and search for my mother because my mother's absence hurt me. Even if I find my mother I won't go and stay with her because I don't know what kind of person she is and what she thinks for me. I do not know what kind of person can leave their child like that.

This kind of early experience of abandonment results in the boys defending themselves against meaningful relationships with any one else and further isolates them in the family and community.
Another theme that that emerged from the research around guns was the fatalism with which many of the boys viewed their lives. This is what one boy said while playing a game about the future: In 10 years time I will be a killer and in jail. For boys in Kathorus that is all there is. Crime is all there is. The only university you go to is jail. Boys in Kathorus become gangsters. This same fatalism is expressed below.
- What are your future plans?
- I will do this until I die.
- How old will you be when you die?
- Maybe 30 years old.
- Is 30 young or old?
- Young
- So its ok that you are going to die young?
- Yes, I will die young because people know I am a problem to them. I think I will be killed young.
This fatalism is linked to the fact that the boys agree that many people in Kathorus don't worry about killing someone else because they have seen death so many times.
When you go to bed hungry all the time you think that life is nothing. You have nothing so life is nothing.
Ekupholeni Mental Health Centre
PO Box 124182
Alrode 1451 South Africa
E-mail: ekupholeni@icon.co.za

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