As a Community We Are Saying No to Gangs: Community Peacebuilding in South Africa

Dan village in rural South Africa managed to eradicate organised crime by resiliently mobilising the community to patrol the area and collectively take a stance against violence. The purpose of this qualitative instrumental case study is to critically engage the empirical data consisting of interviews and secondary sources to explore the theories of webbing and community policing. Both these theories struggle empirically to identify and cooperate with stakeholders who have the capacity to mobilise the population. To address this problem, the study engages the questions: How did community stakeholders cooperate to address crime? The findings argue that community stakeholders cooperated through a network of formal and informal relations which were centred around community meetings that generated the initiative to mobilise for neighbourhood patrols. Combining the two theories proved to yield analytical benefits when studying the case by overcoming their individual shortcomings