Essay About Street Culture

As a young girl, living in the township of Sebokeng in the province of Gauteng, street corner gangs of young men were a common sight. Male youth street culture formed part of township life and mesmerized my early childhood. Young men dressed in bright coloured striped shirts from the Pringle brand with Agna pants, Dickies pants or shoes and All Star shoes [Converse]. The dress style was their trade mark. They hung out in small groups on the street corners where they would smoke, drink and chat for a large part of the day. The street corners were not the only area where young men would meet. They also socialised at the local shops, where they would play dice. Throwing/rolling dice is a game, but can also be used to hustle some money. Township residents regarded some of these young men who occupied these spaces as hoodlums or ruffians.
Male youth drew on popular styles to create different township identities. The key components that distinguished their styles were dress (although now clothing is no longer as closely linked to subcultural styles), dance style, and their usage of ‘slang’. Young men did not have a name for the way they spoke, but considered it to be the way boys

Ngwenya (1995:13) suggests that the word tsotsi originated from a South Sotho verb ho tsotsa meaning to sharpen and the word was associated with committing petty crime. On the other hand, Glaser (1992) posits that tsotsi takes its name from the US Zoot-suit which describes narrow bottom trousers that were popular among urban African youth in the 1940s. Additionally, tsotsis were seen as “street-corner dandies, lounging in the doorways of vacant stores, idling in the train station and bus terminals, giving passers by the hard eye” Glaser (1992:27). More recently, the term tsotsi has come to describe young black men who are seen as thugs or gangsters (Msimang 1989, Fenwick 1996, Kynoch 1999, Breckenridge