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Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics

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The use of sport by a Health Promoting School to address community conflict

Patricia Struthers
a a

School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, Bellville (Cape Town), South Africa Version of record first published: 07 Dec 2011.

To cite this article: Patricia Struthers (2011): The use of sport by a Health Promoting School to address community conflict, Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, 14:9, 1251-1264 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2011.614782

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Sport in Society Vol. 14, No. 9, November 2011, 12511264

The use of sport by a Health Promoting School to address community conict

Patricia Struthers*
School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, Bellville (Cape Town), South Africa

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Sport has been utilized as a tool to address situations of conict globally. This article describes one South African primary school that has identied itself as a Health Promoting School and its use of sport to strengthen the role of the school as a safe place in the community and thus facilitate the learning taking place in the school. The school is situated in a socio-economically deprived community, with a culture of gangsterism and drug abuse, in a densely populated area in Cape Town. Within the school there are very few students with physical disabilities, however, intellectual disability is common and emotional instability, closely associated with violence in the community, is a major disabling factor. The concept of who is considered other in this community is explored. A netball tournament organized by the school enabled all students, boys and girls, regardless of ability or gang alliance, to participate, and brought different factions of the community together.

Sport has been utilized as a tool to address situations of conict globally. This article describes one South African primary school that has identied itself as a Health Promoting School and its use of sport to strengthen the role of the school as a safe place in the community and thus facilitate the learning taking place in the school. The school is situated in a socio-economically deprived community, with a culture of gangsterism and drug abuse, in a densely populated area in Cape Town. The Western Cape Province, one of nine provinces in the Republic of South Africa, had a population 5.3 million in 2007, 10.9% of the total population of South Africa (48.5 million).1 It occupies 10.6% of the land surface area. In some respects, the Western Cape Province is different from the other provinces. Although black Africans form the majority of the population (73.8 97.2%) in most provinces,2 the Western Cape is one of two provinces where, for historical reasons which did not allow for urban migration of black Africans, the majority of the population (50.2%) identify themselves as coloured3 although this group only comprises 9% of the national population. Despite having 11 ofcial languages in South Africa, the three languages most commonly spoken in the Western Cape are Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch (55.3%), isiXhosa (23.7%) and English (19.3%). Amongst the coloured population 79.5% speak Afrikaans. The educational colour level in the Western Cape is higher than the national average, with 5.7% of adults aged over 20 years having no education compared with 17.9% nationally. The Western Cape has the lowest unemployment gure of all the provinces (18% of persons aged 15 65, compared with 29% nationally). Although considered a lesser problem in the Western Cape than in other provinces, poverty has a major impact on

*Email: pstruthers@uwc.ac.za
ISSN 1743-0437 print/ISSN 1743-0445 online q 2011 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2011.614782 http://www.tandfonline.com

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education. Poorer communities have a shortage of housing, with amenities such as toilets and water taps shared among families. Child hunger, substance abuse including alcohol and other drug abuse, and HIV are major problems affecting the health of students. School dropout is very high and youth unemployment as high as 50%. In 2004, the under-ve mortality rate was 58.09 per 1000 in the Western Cape a long way off the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing child mortality to 20 deaths per 1000 live births by 2015. Denitions of disability

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In any community, the World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that approximately 10% of the population has a disability. The 2001 South African Census estimated that 5% of the population has a disability with the Western Cape having a disability prevalence of 4.1%.4 The percentage of disabled people with a sight disability was the highest (32%) followed by physical disability (30%), hearing disability (20%), emotional disability (16%), intellectual disability (12%) and communication disability (7%).5 Gathering this information in developing countries is difcult, not least because there rst needs to be recognition that there is impairment, followed by a professional diagnosis. This understanding of disability stems from a medical or individual model where disability is understood as being the consequence of the impairment. The World Health Organization denition does not necessarily correlate with local understandings as to what constitutes disability at either the personal or medical level. Disability activists internationally, and in South Africa, criticize this model and argue that disability needs to be viewed within a social model that reects the social and political aspects of disability.6 Within this model there is an interaction between personal factors, including the impairment, and the context in which the person lives, including the external environment and the attitudinal or social factors. This interaction will lead to either disability or functioning, depending on whether the other factors act as barriers or facilitators. Thus changing the environment, and providing appropriate support, can act as the facilitation needed to change the impact of the personal health condition and enable functioning.7 The school environment With the international trend towards inclusive education,8 students with disabilities are encouraged by governments to attend mainstream schools or ordinary schools.9 In South Africa, education policy changes have been based on a human rights perspective, in line with the South African Constitution. The rights of persons with disabilities have been afrmed by South Africa signing and ratifying the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.10 The key policy document on the establishment of an inclusive education system, Education White Paper 6 (EWP6),11 links this development to the establishment of a caring and humane society. Historically, a separate inequitable system of schooling was developed for children with disabilities, with schools being disability specic and racially segregated. Most special schools for children with disabilities only provided education for white children with only a small proportion of coloured and African children having the opportunity to attend a special school. Coloured and African children with less severe or less obvious disabilities attended their local school with no additional support to the student or the school. This led to a gap between the education support provided to students with diagnosed disabilities who attended special schools and those with undiagnosed disabilities attending ordinary schools, with the result being large numbers of students having difculties with learning not getting appropriate support.

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Furthermore, in 1997 it was estimated that 70% of children with disabilities of school-going age were out of school12 and in 2001 the South African EWP613 estimated that between 260,000 and 280,000 children with disabilities had no proper care or educational provision. School and community violence A serious challenge to schools in South Africa and internationally is conict and violence within the school and within the community. In a study in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, 100% of schools reported weapons on school premises, 90% reported vandalism, 90% reported drug abuse, 60% reported incidents of assault and 25% reported incidents of rape.14 The violence in South African society is deep rooted, affecting the political, social and community life of all.15 With the extreme poverty and economic inequity in the country, the political differences that were encouraged under apartheid led to conict within communities and, in combination with unemployment, developed into criminal activity.16 Additionally, violent behaviour in the home is common. The reported incidence rate of sexual assault on children aged 0 13 years is 1.7 per 1000 children.17 This daily experience of aggression has resulted in a generation of young people who nd violence acceptable and human life cheap.18 Intentional injuries, including stabbing and shooting, are one of the highest causes of mortality,19 with young males at particular risk. One form of community conict, in many communities internationally, has been the development of gangs whose activities are frequently linked to violence and drug trafcking. Rocha-Silva and Ryan argue that there is a complex relationship between drugs and violence.20 In their view, this link can be best understood by using the tripartite conceptual framework of Goldstein that describes the systemic connection between drugs and violence.21 This is typical of the violence that results from within the underground economy of the drug-distribution system in areas in Cape Town, the largest city in the Western Cape, and some neighbouring small towns.22 Without any legal means of settling disputes and disagreements related to drug distribution this is done through intimidation, extortion, bribing and violence. Shoot-outs are used with killing continuing until an equal number of members of different gangs or their family members have been killed. Taylor and Chermack also emphasize the importance of the environment in violence.23 While the violence has an effect on the social capital of community, the effect of violence on the individual is also profound. Physical disability, resulting from gunshot wounds or stabbing is more common among adults, in particular young men, than among children. However, the emotional trauma that the children experience growing up in a violent home and community has a lasting impact on their emotional stability. Additionally, the heavy drug and alcohol use associated with the violence has led to a high proportion of children in the community having learning or intellectual disabilities. Social and economic inequities in many communities are the root cause of this conict. The gang violence in the community inevitably spills over into the local schools and the presence of members of gangs in schools affects the learning process of gang members and other students as well as the day-by-day life of the school. Health Promoting School Health for all A framework that is identied as appropriate for a successful inclusion of students with disabilities or different learning needs is the Health Promoting School.24 This framework,

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developed by the WHO and the outcome of the First International Health Promotion Conference in Ottawa, Canada, in 1986, is the Ottawa Charter.25 The framework is based on ve principles: to develop healthy school policies; to develop a healthy school environment including both the physical environment and the psychosocial environment; to develop a healthy network between the school and the community to help empower the community; to develop healthy personal skills of all in the school community, including students, teachers, parents and other community members; and to develop support services that give appropriate support to the school. The importance of the school as a setting for the promotion of health was also identied by the WHO in the Jakarta Declaration in 1997.26 Health Promoting Schools have been developed internationally to promote the health of all in the school community, including students, teachers, parents and others in the community. There is evidence from Denman et al. that this development has an impact on the health of students, teachers and parents.27 In South Africa there are Health Promoting Schools in all nine provinces,28 often in poorer communities, where the particular schools are striving for change and improvement. These schools have been identied as a tool for whole school development, in the support for activities that encompass both the formal and informal curriculum.29 While the formal curriculum includes the syllabus, the informal curriculum relates to the aims and purpose of the entire school programme and how these are carried out.30 From biomedical to social denitions of health Within the Health Promoting School context, the concept of health is understood broadly and holistically. The concept goes beyond the traditional biomedical view of health to incorporate the WHOs denition of health as being: A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or inrmity.31 The South Africa Department of Health further states that all aspects of life impact on ones health and wellbeing, including physical, mental, social, environmental, economic and spiritual aspects.32 Consequently, the Health Promoting School takes all these aspects into consideration in the development of the school and the support that it gives to a diverse population of students.
The Health Promoting School aims at achieving healthy lifestyles for the total school population by developing supportive environments conducive to the promotion of health. It offers opportunities for, and requires commitments to, the provision of a safe and healthenhancing social and physical environment.33

objetivo

It is within this context that there are opportunities for students with different needs, including students with disabilities, to feel at home and supported. Students who come from unhealthy home situations, with families afliated to gangs, and those who do belong to gangs, are able to learn and play sport together. Team sport can be seen as an alternative to the gang activities as it can provide a sense of belonging and sense of achievement. However, gangs do play sport, mostly soccer, against each other. Additionally, gangs have grown out of the sports clubs either when members engage in delinquent activities and turn to violence or, as an indirect result of the closure of soccer clubs in the Western Cape. Sport and cohesion in school and in the community Harms describes how, rst, sport can be a tool for social integration to overcome cultural barriers and otherness;34 second, sport programmes can be occasions of collective experience and involve direct physical contact, which have an intense effect on both parties with the potential to build cohesion; third, sport can be a medium that transcends

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class divisions; and fourth, sport can be used as a cultural instrument with the norms and rules of the sport that transcend the divisions between groups. This theoretical framework is valuable in planning and reecting on any sports intervention. Sport has been identied as a tool for addressing conict and has been utilized in peace-building interventions internationally.35 It has been used to convey a message of non-violence, mobilize and develop communities. Anecdotally, sport is considered to make a signicant difference in childrens lives by boosting self-condence, increasing understanding of difference, leading to tolerance and mutual acceptance. It has been described as a tool for the development of the social capital of the community.36 Unfortunately, it is frequently found that students with disabilities attending ordinary schools in South Africa, unlike the USA or UK, are excluded from the sporting activities.37 Adapted physical education is not offered in ordinary schools so students with disabilities can only take part in the regular sports offered by the school for students without disabilities.38 Only a very few better resourced schools offer students with disabilities opportunities to participate in sport. Consequently, students with disabilities will sit on the sidelines during this time. By cintrast, most special schools for students with disabilities do offer adapted sports and sporting events are organized between special schools. This article reports on an ordinary primary school in the Western Cape Province that has identied itself as a Health Promoting School. The research question is: In a community with a high level of social conict, as a major disabling factor, how effective is school sport as an implementation of the Health Promoting Schools framework? The research setting Primary school A is situated in a township on the Cape Flats, a socio-economically deprived community in a densely populated area of the city of Cape Town. In the 1960s, under the apartheid era, the community was formed when people classied as coloured by the government were forcibly removed from residential areas that had been declared for whites only. During this time, by law, people were classied by the government into different racial groups which determined the area where people were allowed to live. There were separate (and unequal) facilities such as hospitals, post ofces, beaches and schools for people of different racial groups. The implementation of this policy involved the social restructuring of areas people lived in to ensure that people of different racial groups lived in their own area. During this restructuring, a class separation was implemented by the state with coloured people identied as poorer placed in communities, including this township, where smaller houses or apartments were built and rented to the residents by the city council. Piped water, inside ush toilets and electricity were provided. Forty years later in this high-density area there are rows of apartments, two or three stories high separated by washing lines, groups of unemployed youth on street corners, and very few trees, parks or recreational facilities in the area. Where there is small piece of land attached to the home/apartment a small wood and iron structure is frequently built and rented to a family needing accommodation (the backyard dwellings). There are a few small shops for bread, milk and cigarettes, but no street markets and people do the bulk of their shopping outside the area. Many households are made up of extended families, with several generations living together in two or three small rooms. The average household size in the coloured community is 4.3 persons compared with 3.8 persons nationally. Single-parent families are common. Socializing happens at home with a lot of time spent watching TV and parents hesitant to allow young children outside to play. Five kilometres away from this slice of the third world are the leafy suburbs of Cape Town

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where wealthier people have large homes, private swimming pools and easy access to a rst world lifestyle. The large numbers of unemployed people living in this community have produced a culture of gangsterism, with extensive involvement in drugs and violence. Since the 1990s there has been a proliferation of gang-related violence in the Western Cape.39 Kinnes argues that many young people, who have been rejected by their families or the community, have joined gangs to gain a sense of identity and of belonging. Others join gangs to gain materially. It is estimated that approximately 60% of the population of this township, including women and children, are aligned to one gang or another. Jensen describes the township as the zone from which gangsters living in that area go to steal and commit acts of violence in other equally disadvantaged surrounding areas zones of poverty and social disintegration.40 It is considered by the council ofcials as a particularly violent space within a broader geographical area and is described as a special case where the prevalence of gangs, poverty, crime and overcrowding went hand in hand with a civil society in sharp opposition to state agencies.41 Methodology Primary school A has been actively developing as a Health Promoting School for a number of years. While this development was initiated by the school nurse who visits the school from the Department of Health, it is fully supported by the principal and school personnel who work closely with the school nurse to develop healthy school policy, a healthy school environment, make links with the community, develop the skills of the teachers, students and parents, and to make links with support services. In-depth interviews were conducted at the school. The school was visited several times over a period of 18 months. With the use of an interview guide, open-ended questions were asked. Ethical considerations included getting consent from participants and the understanding that there would be anonymity for participants and the school. Results and discussion School: a neutral zone Primary school A, a small school with 450 students, is one of 11 primary schools in this township. Despite being situated in a very poor community, the leadership of the school has been determined to turn a very ordinary, struggling primary school into a centre of excellence and a creative centre of learning for all in the community.42 Despite this, only 27% of students in the school have reached the expected literacy level, according to national literacy standards. In a partnership between the principal, teachers and the school nurse, this school has actively worked to implement the principles of the Ottawa Charter towards developing the school into a Health Promoting School, including prioritizing the development of the relationship between the school and the community.43 The school has been striving for the identity of being a neutral zone within this strife-torn community, with the top priority being to provide world-class education that parents in the community would be proud to send their children to. Parents are encouraged to visit the school and have learnt to respect the fact that parents from rival gangs may be at the school. Despite attempts for a neutral zone, many activities in the school must be duplicated to allow students and families of different gangs to attend. As an example, the development of a counselling centre at the school included training for some mothers as lay counsellors. Training for mothers aligned to different gangs was necessary as women would not go for counselling with a woman linked to another gang.

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The Other populations: who is different, and what is deviant behaviour? In schools across the world there are groups of students that can be described who are considered different from the ordinary students. In primary school A two groups considered others by the teachers are the students with disabilities and the students who are gang members. What is unusual is that the other may even be the majority in a particular school class, challenging the teachers who have on average 4045 students in a class. Additionally, many students who experience difculties with learning come from homes where adults have a low level of literacy so are not viewed as other within the family. Likewise, the students who are members of gangs often have older siblings or even parents who are gang members. Consequently, within this township, these students do not have the identity of being other. Students with an intellectual disability In the past, there have been a small number of students at the school with moderate intellectual disability.44 However, teachers at primary school A are not keen to have students with moderate intellectual disabilities in their classes as they feel they do not have the skills to assist these students to learn. They complain that there is no extra support provided by the Department of Education for the students or teachers when students experience barriers to learning. Some students have been referred from this school to special schools, but the principal reports how the students struggle in the different cultural environment of the special school, where there is no understanding of the students daily experience of poverty, and the low levels of literacy in their homes. Additionally, students feel stigmatized by having a special bus collect them from home instead of being able to walk to the local school, and most students soon stop attending any school. A common cause of intellectual disability in South Africa is foetal alcohol syndrome. This township has been identied as a community with a very high prevalence of alcohol use and abuse, and, as a consequence, there is a high prevalence of students with foetal alcohol syndrome or mild intellectual disabilities; many of whom would not have had any formal diagnosis of this problem. Advocacy programmes in the community, such as the Sensible Drinking Campaign have been discontinued due to a lack of funding. A second common cause of intellectual disability is the use of methamphetamine (locally known as Tik), the most frequently used illegal drug in the community, with reports of children as young as seven years using Tik. Students with emotional instability There are a very large number of students at primary school A with emotional difculties. According to the school principal, recent psychological tests on all students throughout the primary school found 90% of students to be emotionally unstable; 70% of students having a feeling of complete helplessness; 10% being extremely aggressive; and 5% with attention decit disorder and not on any medication or treatment. The latter two groups (15% of students) are described as taking over the school (according to the principal) and disrupting learning. This apparent norm of emotional instability has established an alternate reality for these children who have no experience of life in a different community.45 The principal explains that this emotional instability is partly the result of the conict in the community, with normal developmental activities unable to take place for months at a time while there is active violence. Parents do not allow their children outside and they may be absent from school for long periods as the same gangs that are present in the community have a presence in the school. Even when the students are allowed out of the

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home, there are unwritten rules about where people may go in the community, for example, the library is in the Clever Kids area so the Hard Livings people [two opposing gangs] dont cross the boundaries to go to the library. There is a similar difculty with the use of sports elds in the area unless they are in your own territory. There is only one real sports eld in the township, the Greens. This was developed subsequent to the netball tournament described below, and in part as an outcome of this tournament. Other than this, there are a few small playgrounds for young children in the community with asphalt areas that people use to play sport on or they use the roads in the community as their sports elds. This lack of opportunity in the environment to interact normally with others affects childrens emotional and cognitive development. Many students in the school come from single-parent families where the mothers have very poor parenting skills. Teenage pregnancies are common in this community with students as early as Grades 7 and 8 (14 15 years old) becoming pregnant. Consequently, when their children start school in Grade R and Grade 1 (at 6 7 years) the mothers are still trying to complete secondary school. This has an impact on the learning of both the mother and the child. The mother is unable to take appropriate responsibility for her child, in turn affecting the broader community. Students who are members of gangs Primary chool A stands geographically between the territories of two rival powerful gangs with a number of other gangs in the area. Social interaction in the community occurs within, and not between, rival gangs. While the men and boys in families tend to become more directly involved in violent activities, such as shooting, the women and girls provide support by carrying weapons or drugs as they are considered less likely to be searched by the police. Nevertheless, many of the children from different gangs attend primary school A. According to their principal:
There is an alley directly opposite the school. One side of the alley is the territory of the one gang and the other side of the alley is the territory of the other gang. When the gang war was active male gang members would line up behind the fences along each side of the alley. Then the women and girls from each gang would come with the guns, and walk down the alley to hand out the guns. Then the shooting would start and would continue until an equal number of gang members on both sides had been killed. Afterwards the women and girls would walk down the alley and collect the guns, so that when the police arrived the men would not have the guns and the women and girls could disappear with the guns hidden in their clothes.

The school considers itself fortunate as it has a solid fence and gates that lock to stop the gangsters running through the school. However, this does not ensure complete protection. One day two students at the school got into a ght. One girl left the school, went home and came back to school with her fathers gun to settle the ght. On this occasion, the principal successfully intervened to control the situation. The principal, teachers and the school nurse are not members of this particular community making it easier for them to stay out of gang-related alliances. Need for healing The high proportion of students who experience emotional instability is reected in the wider community, which can thus be described as an emotionally unstable society, where much of the social structure has disintegrated. It is a community with intense power struggles, both between rival gangs and between politicians (unrelated to the gangs) in the area, leading to many factions in the community.

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In the school, emphasis is placed on understanding the needs of the students and the community with all programmes being directed to addressing the need for healing. The notion of South Africa as a wounded society has been offered by Pinnock and Van Wyk and Theron in describing the disintegration of society following the Group Areas Act when family and community networks were destroyed.46 The greatest need of the individual students and the community, emphasized by the principal, is the need for healing the emotional instability and hurt: healing of individual students; healing of the students families; and healing of the community.

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Sport and healing Sport has been identied by the school as one tool for addressing this need for healing. The township has a number of sports clubs with a variety of sports offered including soccer, cricket, swimming, karate, table tennis and weight lifting. A popular sport offered by clubs that is played by children, including boys and girls, and adults is netball. This sport, similar, in some respects, to basketball, is often played in schools in South Africa by girls and increasingly some boys. Netball teams are developed for the range of age groups under 13, under 15, a B team and an A team, often for adults. With the community divided into different areas associated with specic gangs, sports clubs are associated with one specic area. Although these clubs do not strictly belonging to a specic gang, people will not walk into another gangs territory. For example, in the Hard Livings (gang) area, the people who participate in that particular club will all live in the area. The outcome of this is that each club has its own netball teams with little interaction between the different clubs. The teams usually practise on the asphalt in the courtyards of their apartments and when they want to play a game they ask the schools if they can borrow the netball posts for the weekend. For the game, they will nd a larger piece of asphalt to play on or use the road. Occasionally, they may get the opportunity to use the one proper sports eld in the area The Green but it is largely used for soccer, the most popular of all sports in the area. In 2006, on June 16, National Youth Day, and the following day a two-day netball tournament for the whole community was organized at primary school A bringing girls and boys from 20 community netball teams together from all the clubs in the community. The tournament had taken months of organizing with regular meetings between a school committee, from primary school A, and the chairladies of the sports clubs. This organizing group decided on how the day would be structured and the rules that the teams would have to follow. The clubs indicated that it was easier to make these decisions with the school committee seen as a neutral body to negotiate with, that was not afliated to any particular team and that respected the clubs knowledge of the rules. The supporters of the clubs, the families of the players, including the parents, brothers, sisters and other relatives, came as spectators to watch the tournament and enjoy a funlled family day. Many of the spectators had disabilities as a number of young adults in the community have physical disabilities, such as paraplegia, resulting from the violence in the community. All were there to support their teams. They came from different factions in the community, to support the youth within an atmosphere of peace and calm, while the school saw its role as being to force integration in a very diplomatic way (according to their principal). Small stalls were set up at the school and food and drinks were sold by teachers and families. Live entertainment was organized between the netball matches. There was a special speaker as it was National Youth Day and an exhibition for all to learn

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more about, or remember the political background to the day. At the end of the two days trophies, donated by sponsoring companies, were given out to the winning teams. The question must inevitably arise about violence at the tournament. Holding the tournament and ensuring there would be no violence was partly dependent on what was happening in the community. The school nurse explained: The community is like a volcano that sleeps and then erupts. The tournament needed to be held during the time the volcano was asleep and there are periods when things are quieter in the community and this was one of those times. The school went ahead with organizing the tournament and the people from the community who attended respected the schools position of being a neutral zone and so there was no ghting. Students with mild intellectual or learning disability were included in the teams as many of them excelled in playing sport. In addition, it was an opportunity for not only the 90% of students from primary school A with emotional difculties to participate, but also for many other emotionally scarred students and adults in other teams in the community to experience the tournament and the days when integration was possible in the community. The event was repeated the following year. On this occasion, there were spectators from outside the community including the Western Province Netball Association who subsequently worked with the teams to develop a Netball Union. For two years the event was very successful. The principal then describes how the local politicians became involved, insisting that the event be held away from the school, in the community, in commemoration of June 16, 1976 when youth were shot by the police in Soweto, Johannesburg. Public holidays in South Africa are used by politicians as an opportunity to hold political rallies which the local community is expected to attend. This kind of rally cannot be held at a school. By insisting on the move away from the relative safety of the school, the neutral zone, the members of the community were no longer willing to attend the sports event. By 2008, this netball tournament had stopped. Conclusion The years of building primary school A as a Health Promoting School, as a safe place for all students and their families, has had an important impact on the relationship between the school and the community. Additionally, there has been improved trust of the school by the community through using sport as a tool to bring the community together at a neutral venue. Members of opposing gangs could jointly participate in this community sporting event. This sports development suggests that the use of the Health Promoting Schools framework, as a tool to improve the relationship between the school and the community, can have a positive impact on the social and emotional health of the whole school community including students, teachers and the families. The outcome demonstrates that sports can be used as a specic tool to strengthen the community. The development of a Netball Union is a positive development for the community which will assist in the sustainability of netball in the community. Unfortunately, the annual netball tournament has stopped. It appears an element of conict between the school and political organizations led to reduced support from the school for an event outside the school. In hindsight, the prominent role of the principal and the time and work put into the making the event a success needs to be acknowledged and continued to ensure future joint community netball events either at the school or in the community. Perhaps the most strategic way forward would be for the school to work with other schools in the community, rather than directly with political organizations, and reinstitute the netball tournament on a day that does not have strong political associations.

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However, the principal is sceptical of whether it would be possible to get the commitment of other schools in the area to the work that is needed for a successful tournament to take place. There is evidence that the sports intervention has had an impact on the development of social capital in the community with the transformation in the use of the local disused park from an illicit meeting place to a fenced sports eld, this is known as the Greens and is well maintained, with markings on the ground for soccer and soccer goal posts. It is used by all the community. This suggests that the development of the netball tournament has strengthened the ties in the community by enabling sports teams associated with the different gangs to meet on neutral community territory where there is seldom violence. The study does not provide information on the direct impact of sports on the gangs in the area. However, there was an important outcome for the school in strengthening its goal from being a neutral zone to a zone where all can meet; a zone where all can learn; a zone where the steps towards healing a community are being undertaken. Although prior to the tournament students from rival gangs were already integrated in the classroom, the principal indicates that sport has helped to ease the tensions. It has forced further integration and normalization of the broken community. Through a change to the environment the school has had an impact on the students who have disabilities, including those with intellectual disabilities or learning difculties, and those who have experienced emotional trauma, facilitating their full participation in this community event. Through the lens of the social model of disability, the effect of facilitating changes in the physical and the psychosocial environment surrounding the netball tournament could reduce the experience of disability. What is also of signicance is the involvement of the families of the students, extending the impact beyond the school to the broader community. On its own, sport cannot solve the enormous social problems in Cape Town or more widely in developed and developing countries, where there is extreme poverty, endemic violence, unemployment and rampant HIV/AIDS. With multiple social factors involved it is not easy to nd hard evidence of the impact of a sports intervention on a community. However, the evidence does suggest that using sport as a tool for social change may offer some impetus for change. The sustainability of this change will depend, in part, on whether the intervention is viewed as a sports plus or plus sports intervention.47 In the rst instance, sports plus, the sports intervention is considered more important than addressing the wider social issue of violence. In the second instance, plus sports, sport is only used as a tool to achieve the objective of addressing violence. Changes in conict are generally considered more important than the sustainability of the sports; however, perhaps it is possible for both sports development and changes to happen in a community simultaneously. It is recommended that more extensive evaluation is done on the impact of Health Promoting Schools on reducing violence in the community. Evidence is needed to back the experience of the principal on the value of addressing the needs of the students and the school holistically through the use of the Health Promoting School framework: If I dont do that (develop a Health Promoting School) I cannot take anybody forward.

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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the principal of primary school A whose commitment to the community is an inspiration and Dr Brian van Wyk, UWC, for gang-related information.

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5 6

7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Groenewald, Western Cape, 11. Statistics South Africa, Census in Brief. The last census in South Africa was in 2001. People are still classied by racial group in South Africa in order to monitor the progress in moving away from the apartheid-based discrimination of the past. Statistics South Africa uses the following options for selfclassication: Black African, Coloured, Indian or Asian, White and Other. Coloured includes a varied group of persons, for example, a person of mixed race or with ancestry from countries such as Malaysia might consider themselves as Coloured. (http://www.statssa.gov.za/keyindicators/ keyindicators.asp) Statistics South Africa, Census 2001. Ibid. Howell, Chalklen, and Alberts, Disability Rights Movement. The Disability Rights Movement in South Africa has a history of opposing oppression and has been active in the promotion of inclusive policy. World Health Organization (WHO), International Classication of Functioning. United Nations Educational, Scientic, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), The Salamanca Statement. This document supporting inclusion of children with disabilities in all schools was the outcome of a conference with representatives of 92 governments and 25 international organizations, hosted by UNESCO, in Salamanca, Spain in 1994. Mainstream schools are referred to as ordinary schools by the South African Department of Education. These are public schools that any child or adolescent from the community can attend. South Africa signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on March 30, 2007 and it was ratied on November 30, 2007. Department of Education, South Africa, Education White Paper 6. This paper outlines an inclusive education system for South Africa; Department of Education. Report of national commission is an important document for background to inclusive education in South Africa. Ofce of the Deputy President of South Africa, White Paper Disability Strategy. Department of Education, South Africa, Education White Paper 6. Frank, Missed Opportunities. rf, Resurgence of Urban Street Gangs, cited in van Wyk and Theron, Fighting Scha Gangsterism in South Africa, 54. Pinnock, Rituals, Rites and Punishment, cited in van Wyk and Theron Fighting Gangsterism in South Africa, 54. Dawes and Ward, Levels, Trends and Determinants of Child Maltreatment, 111. Lombard and van der Merwe, Preventive Programmes for Schools, 371. Bradshaw et al., Initial Burden of Disease. Mortality causes in South Africa: HIV/AIDS (29%), cardiovascular disease (16.6%), infectious and parasitic diseases (10.3%), malignant neoplasms (7.9%), intentional injuries (7.0%), unintentional injuries (5.4%). Rocha-Silva and Ryan, Drugs and Violence. Ibid. Van Wyk and Theron, Fighting Gangsterism in South Africa. Ibid. Department of Education, South Africa, Report OF THE National Commission on Special Needs. WHO, Ottawa Charter. WHO, Jakarta Declaration. Denman et al., Health Promoting School. Department of Health, South Africa, School Health Policy. Department of Health, South Africa, Draft Guidelines for the Development of Health Promoting Schools. Donald, Lazarus and Lolwana, Educational Psychology in Social Context. 2.1. WHO, Constitution. Department of Health, South Africa, Draft Guidelines for the Development of Health Promoting Schools. These guidelines have remained in this draft format. WHO, The overall progress of the European Network of Health Promoting Schools, cited in Tones and Tilford, Health Promotion: Effectiveness, Efciency and Equity, 223. Harms, cited in Keim, Sport as Opportunity for Community Development. Keim, Sport as Opportunity for Community Development.

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37 38 39 40 41 42

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43

44

45 46 47

The development of social capital through sport is discussed by a number of authors: Bailey, m, Evaluating the Relationship; Misener and Mason, Creating Community Networks; Lindstro stergren, Socioeconomic Differences; Stone, Research Paper 24. Hansen, and O Reiman, Sports for Learners; Block, Teachers Guide to Including Students. Reiman, Sports for Learners. Kinnes, Struggle for the Cape Flats. Jensen, Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town. Ibid., 116. The school has attempted to address widespread illiteracy in the community. First, within the school, a small library has been started and computer laboratories have been provided by the Department of Education and Microsoft. Second, for adolescents who have left secondary school without qualications, a night school has been organized with more than 100 registered students, to enable them to complete their matriculation examinations. Third, for adults who are illiterate, the night school provides adult literacy classes. The school hosts a food kitchen which cooks meals at a very low cost for students or for community members to buy. This facility, housed in a small container, remains open throughout the year for the community. Activities have included addressing substance abuse, as there is widespread use of Tik (methamphetamine), dagga (marijuana) and heroin from as young as 8 or 9 years. This has included the use of role plays, students demonstrating against the use of drugs, and holding posters in a human chain on the side of the busy road. The school has a policy related to drug use. A school drug-action committee, comprising staff and parents, supports students using drugs to go for counselling. Despite the South African policy of inclusive education, there are few, if any, students attending School A with moderate or severe physical disabilities, visual disabilities, hearing disabilities or severe intellectual disabilities as these students are expected to attend the special schools in neighbouring areas. This may change in the future as the policy of an inclusive education system is implemented, but implementation is still in its infancy with minimal additional support available for ordinary schools. Lindegaard. Navigating Terrains of Violence. Lindegaard discusses the challenges experienced by young people who attempt to break away from these violent communities. Van Wyk and Theron Fighting Gangsterism in South Africa, 54. Keim, Sport for Community Development.

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