CQ No. 25


SA Crime Quarterly no 26 • December 2008 21

Hoekwil is a tiny town in the south Western
Cape. So tiny, in fact, that you would be hard
pressed to find a map that reflects its location.
The village is close to the larger town of George
and the well-known holiday destination,
Wilderness. Apartheid planning saw to it that,
much like every other village or town in South
Africa, the majority of residents live in a
township, Touwsranten, some 200 metres from
the village. Stretching all the way from Hoekwil
through the hills and natural forest to Knysna is a
farming district that yields vegetable and dairy
produce found in Woolworths and Pick n Pay
stores from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and
even Tescos and Marks and Spencer in the United
Kingdom. 

In many respects Hoekwil is an unlikely location
for a crime reduction initiative, not least because
the rate of crime in the area is low by comparison
to the more densely populated George and its
surrounding townships of Thembalethu, Conville
and Pacaltsdorp. Yet 12 months ago some of the
most prominent commercial farmers in the area
became concerned when the young men and
teenage children whose parents labour on their
farms started forming gangs. On several occasions
these groups of young men engaged in violent
fights over weekends and there were rumours that
some had firearms. It was feared that unless
something was done to change the situation,
violent crime would become an entrenched
problem. 

To measure and
what to measure
Towards assessing the impac t
of social crime prevention
projects

Chandré Gould

Institute for Security Studies
cgould@issafrica.org

The idea that it is necessary to address crime through social development is gaining currency in South
Africa. Indeed, in the face of high crime rates that seem not to respond significantly to increases in the
number of policemen and women, and in the face of seemingly intractable problems in the criminal
justice system, there is a need to determine and address the social causes of crime. In order to convince
government, funding institutions and the public that social interventions offer a long-term solution it is
necessary to be able to measure their impact. This article describes a social development initiative aimed
at preventing and reducing crime in a rural area in the Western Cape. It argues that while it is possible to
identify indicators of success, measuring the impact of these kinds of interventions cannot be achieved in
the short term. Also, while monitoring and evaluation are important, a balance must be found between
allocating resources to core activities, and to monitoring and evaluation.



22 Institute for Security Studies

An unscientific, but probably fairly accurate
analysis of the problem by the farmers led to the
conclusion that the problem was boredom – there
was not much for young people to do on the
farms over the weekends. This, in combination
with the alcohol abuse that is common amongst
young people and their parents in the area,
created fertile conditions for violence to flare up.
Initially the farmers thought that if they were to
provide the impetus and resources for sports
activities over the weekends it would go some way
towards alleviating the problem. Twelve months
later the youth development programme that has
developed from this initial idea is doing a great
deal more than that. 

The Seven Passes Initiative is now a registered
non-profit organisation operating in the area
between the Hoogekraal river and Hoekwil,
encompassing some 38 commercial farms, two
former state forestry reserves, as well as the
residential areas of Hoekwil and Touwsranten.
The Initiative is managed by a board made up of
farmers, local businessmen, a prominent member
of the Touwsranten community, the head of the
Dutch Reformed Church in Touwsranten, a
representative from Eden Campus (an
entrepreneurial school located near the even
smaller town of Karatara), and the author of this
article, both as a member of the Hoekwil
community and as an ISS researcher. 

In January 2008 the farmers agreed that a portion
of the financial allocation given to them by local
government to subsidise their security costs could
go towards paying a fulltime co-ordinator for the
Initiative. They did this based on the
understanding that a social intervention aimed at
youth development could have as much, if not
more, impact on their security in the long run
than policing the problem through increasing the
number of guards in the district. The money that
became available was sufficient to pay a full-time
local co-ordinator. The idea was that the co-
ordinator would ensure that children, particularly
those from disadvantaged backgrounds, were
engaged in positive activities in the afternoons
after school and over weekends and holidays.
These activities were intended to include at least
sport, drama, and music.

Very early on the board decided that the Initiative
should begin by establishing homework clubs for
children living on farms and in Touwsranten. It
was reasoned that the children living on the farms
are, in many cases, unable to turn to their parents
for help with their homework, either because their
parents are illiterate or because they work long
hours and are too tired in the evening to assist
them. In the absence of any homework support,
the children are unlikely to perform optimally at
school, which in turn affects their self-esteem and
motivation to pay attention to their schoolwork. It
was also quite evident that high levels of alcohol
abuse by some of the parents affected their
children’s ability to cope at school and socially.
The homework clubs were identified both as an
end in themselves and a way of gathering children
together so that they could be involved in other
activities. 

As an initiative that is aimed at the long and
medium-term reduction and prevention of crime
and at positive youth development, the challenge
has been to establish indicators of success. Indeed,
in the context of increased calls for a social
development response to the high crime rate in
South Africa, projects like this need to be able to
show whether in fact they can contribute to
making communities, and ultimately society in
general, safer. Unless they can show their worth
through ongoing monitoring of indicators, it is
unlikely that they will attract support in the long
run. However, the challenge with any endeavour
aimed at bringing about positive social change,
and in particular changing behaviour, is that such
change takes place slowly and in ways that are
hard to measure. Indeed, measurement itself can
become expensive, and attract resources away
from initiatives themselves. 

Some measure of success or failure is essential in
order to determine whether allocating resources
to these kinds of initiatives, rather than to more
traditional forms of crime control, is worthwhile.
Yet determining the unit of measurement and the
most accurate indicators is no simple matter.
Indeed, while it is vital to ensure that
measurement and assessment of activities such as
this take place, it is equally important to make



SA Crime Quarterly no 26 • December 2008 23

sure that the process of measurement does not
become so burdensome to the implementing
organisation that it takes resources away from
core activities. In the following section an
overview is provided of the relationships that the
organisation has established in order to be
sustainable, and some of the indicators that have
been identified to measure the success of the
project.

ALLIANCES AND INDICATORS

Eden campus is a small post-matric
entrepreneurial training centre linked to the
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. It is
located in Karatara, a former forestry settlement
that borders on the area covered by the Seven
Passes Initiative. Through consultations with the
students, who themselves come from
disadvantaged communities in the Western Cape,
it was agreed that students would make
themselves available on a volunteer basis to
supervise the homework clubs and assist the
children with their homework. Since the
beginning of 2008 a handful of students have
made themselves available twice a week (on a
Tuesday and Thursday evening between 5 and
7pm) to supervise homework. They have been
transported from Eden campus to two farm halls
and a church hall (and later the community hall)
in Touwsranten where high school children have
gathered to do their homework.

At these locations the children are provided with
a light snack (sandwiches or soup).  While the
feedback received by the Committee suggests that
the homework clubs have become an important
aspect of some of the children’s lives, there were
some unforeseen problems. For example:

• The students were not always able to assist the 
children with homework in certain subjects;
particularly those subjects they did not take at
school or themselves struggled with. During
exam times when the school children should
have been receiving extra assistance with their
studies, the students were also writing exams
and were unable to come to homework clubs

• Although the homework clubs were aimed 
primarily at high school students, the younger
children in Touwsranten started coming to the
hall and initially disrupted the classes, as they
were noisy and uncontrollable.

This last problem has subsequently been solved by
establishing a junior homework class that has,
over time, developed even more consistent and
diligent participation than the senior clubs. The
junior class is managed by volunteers from the
Hoekwil and Touwsranten communities. 

The problem of students not being able to assist
the children in certain subjects has been
overcome by forming an alliance with a private
school in George. A small number of teachers
from this school (Maths and Science teachers in
particular) have volunteered to come to one of the
farms one afternoon a week to provide extra
lessons in the subjects that the students have
identified as problematic. Although it took some
time for the children to appreciate and take
advantage of the service being offered (there were
a few weeks when no children arrived for extra
lessons), over the past two terms the classes have
become more popular and are regularly attended.

What the board has come to realise is that while
the homework clubs can assist children who do
relatively well at school to do better, they do not
assist children who are failing or who have
learning difficulties. These children, who appear
to be in the majority, require far more intensive
and specialised assistance that they are not
receiving at school or at home. It has also become
clear that children in rural and impoverished
communities are at a tremendous disadvantage
when it comes to meeting the project-related
requirements of the OBE system. In order to
complete research projects the children require
access to libraries or the Internet, neither of which
is readily available. The area co-ordinator
therefore spent a great deal of time in the public
library copying resource books for the children to
use for projects. As helpful as this may be, it
points to a failure of the schools and Department
of Education to understand the circumstances of
learners. As such, the homework clubs themselves



can provide indicators of where schools are
failing.

INDICATOR 1: LEVEL OF
PARTICIPATION IN HOMEWORK
CLUBS 

Registers are kept of the children who attend
homework club. The registers include the name of
the child, his or her grade, and remarks about
what assistance was required. Through these
registers it is possible to assess whether there is
regular attendance and when attendance rises or
falls. Over the year a small group of children
(particularly those who are doing well at school)
has regularly attended homework clubs, while
others come only when they need particular help. 

Although this indicator does not provide any
information about the extent to which the
Initiative is specifically contributing to crime
reduction, the fact that there is a core group of
children who attend regularly suggests that the
intervention is meeting a need.

INDICATOR 2: SCHOOL
ACHIEVEMENT

In order to monitor the progress of children in
the catchment area, the area co-ordinator
obtained permission from those learners and
their parents to see copies of their quarterly
school reports. To get copies of the reports the
area co-ordinator had to establish a relationship
with all the schools attended by children from the
area. In 2008 a number of the children’s reports
were accessed and scrutinised. Although over
time it should be possible to determine whether
individual children’s marks are increasing or
decreasing, it is impossible to directly link the
cause of the increase or decrease to homework
club participation in the short term. In the long
term, however, (over say two or three years) it will
be possible to determine trends. If, for example, a
significant proportion of homework club
members’ marks go up or down, it may suggest
that the homework clubs have had an effect. The

children who do not attend would provide a
control group against which results could be
measured. In the short term, however, monitoring
the results does allow the area co-ordinator to
identify whether he needs to intervene, for
example by speaking to a child and/or his or her
parents about marks that are going down, or by
assisting a teenager who is doing well to apply to
tertiary institutions. 

There are several teenagers whose consistently low
marks and low school attendance have alerted the
board to problems. A few of these children have
extreme learning difficulties that the schools are
unable to address. Indeed, given the large number
of children who appear to have foetal alcohol
spectrum disorders, this is a problem that is likely
to continue for many years to come. The fact is
that in the absence of state institutions that can
provide support in the form of skills training or
protected employment, there is very little that can
be done to prevent vulnerable teenagers from
falling into poverty and unemployment.

INDICATOR 3: CRIME STATISTICS

For a citizen involved in an initiative like Seven
Passes, obtaining regular police statistics is no
simple matter. Thus monitoring the local police
statistics over a period of time is not as easy as it
first may seem, especially since the area covered
by the local police station does not correspond
neatly to the area covered by the Initiative.
Nevertheless, the fact that a relationship was built
between the head of the local police station and
the area co-ordinator and members of the board
of the Initiative did facilitate the flow of
information. In addition, the security company
employed by the farmers in the area has a strong
and functional relationship with the SAPS and
with Seven Passes. The board was thus able to
obtain the police statistics to establish a baseline. 

However, it soon emerged that many of the crimes
that plague the community are not recorded in the
statistics. The statistics for example did not, and
could not be expected to, provide an indication of
the level of violence resulting from the gang
activities. That is because in some cases the police

24 Institute for Security Studies



SA Crime Quarterly no 26 • December 2008 25

INDICATOR 4: POSITIVE
PARENTING

Over time, the Initiative has established a range of
activities in collaboration with local government,
local sports clubs and other service organisations.
During the course of 2008 children in the area
have taken part in sailing lessons, first-aid
courses, and sports teams (rugby, soccer and
netball) have been established. Drama and
singing groups have emerged. In the case of these
activities records have been maintained, not only
of the children’s participation but also of their
parents’ participation in showcase events. The
Initiative aims to increase parental involvement in
children’s lives and thus make a small
contribution to encouraging better parenting.
Monitoring whether parents increase or decrease
their involvement in these kinds of activities will
allow an assessment of successes in this area.
Once again, change is unlikely to be evident in
the short-term.

Other indicators such as a drop in teenage
pregnancy rates and an increase in the number of
children who apply for and are accepted at
universities will also be used to assess the impact
of the initiative. Of course, increases in the
number of teenage pregnancies would be a
warning sign that the programme is not achieving
its objectives.  

CONCLUSION

Ongoing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of
programmes such as the Seven Passes Initiative is
vitally important to assess whether they can have
an effect on crime rates and social development.
Yet few CBOs or NGOs that are project-focused
have the skills or the time required for ongoing
M&E. In this case a partnership between a
research institute and the CBO allows for M&E to
take place on an ongoing basis at relatively little
cost.

It remains to be seen whether Seven Passes will in
fact make a long-term difference to the
community. At this point the crisis in the world 

were not called to respond to the activities, or
broke up fights with warnings rather than
charging individuals. Indeed, the head of the local
police station (Wilderness) told members of the
board that although there is a mechanism for
recording cases of domestic violence, even those
that don’t result in any judicial action, drunken
assault is not recorded at police station level other
than in the notebooks of individual officers and
perhaps the Occurrence Book. So these acts,
while they certainly have an impact at community
level, cannot be monitored through use of police
statistics. The following table shows the crimes
recorded by the local SAPS between 1 May and 31
July 2008.

Table 1: Police crime stats: 1 May – 31 July 
2008

Offence Total number 
of cases

Liquor trade, liquor products and 7 
sorghum beer

Assault GBH 9

Burglary at residential premises 8

Offences under the Drugs and 4
Trafficking Act

Common assault 5

In possession of presumed stolen 2
property

Attempted rape (not wife by 1
own husband)

Domestic violence 1

Indecent assault 1

Theft general 2

Unlawful intrusion of premises 1
with criminal intent

Robbery 1

Murder 1

Theft from a motor vehicle 1

Theft of motor vehicle and motor 
cycle 1

Source: SAPS: Crime Statistics Analysis, George Blocks 

101946, 101945, 101950



26 Institute for Security Studies

economy is already being felt in the farming
district with a number of dairy farmers currently
having to sell their milk at less than what it costs
them to produce it. This has led to job losses in
the commercial dairy sector in the area, with
more expected to follow. It means that Seven
Passes is unlikely to be able to rely on the
financial support from commercial agriculture
that has kept it afloat for the past year. Ideally
local businesses and local government should step
in to fill the gap because it is fairly obvious that
initiatives such as this are only sustainable in the
long term if they have the support and buy-in
from people and businesses in the area in which
they operate.