{"id":602787,"date":"2026-09-01T17:10:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/602787\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T17:10:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:10:29","slug":"why-tupac-lives-on-in-cape-town-30-years-after-he-was-murdered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/602787\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Tupac lives on in Cape Town 30 years after he was murdered"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thirty years after world famous US rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down<\/a> at the age of 25, his legacy has remained a lasting and continuous presence in Africa<\/a>. <\/p>\n

During my many years of work as a criminologist and researcher, I have witnessed young people in countries as far-flung as Guinea, South Sudan and Zimbabwe strutting the streets in T-shirts emblazoned with his likeness. I\u2019ve also seen murals memorialising him painted on walls in Sierra Leonean villages and in South African townships<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was so struck by Tupac\u2019s influence in Africa that understanding it became part<\/a> of five years of ethnographic research for a book<\/a> on street culture, violent practices, and gang exit in Cape Town\u2019s peripheral Cape Flats communities. Fieldwork included hundreds of hours of interviews with those who live in areas marked by poverty and insecurity that\u2019s driven an estimated 100,000<\/a> people into some 130 gangs<\/a> \u2013 fighting each other in a daily struggle over identity and turf wars.<\/p>\n

My study of Tupac\u2019s ongoing impact in Cape Town was published in a paper<\/a> in the journal Ethnography. It found that for marginalised people living on the Cape Flats, Tupac Shakur is more than a musician \u2013 he\u2019s a symbol they draw on for dignity and grit to push back against physical threats, material insecurity, and social and personal disempowerment.<\/p>\n

It is men \u2013 especially poor young men \u2013 that most stereotypically connect to the militant fervour of Tupac\u2019s gangsta rap<\/a>. They look up to him as a street cultural outlaw who attains power and wealth through crime and violence. <\/p>\n

But gangster masculinity is only one part of the picture. Female gang members also draw on Shakur\u2019s image as a \u201cstreet soldier\u201d to perform street culture<\/a> for many of the same reasons that men do \u2013 protection, income, status, and so on \u2013 as well as due to threats of sexual violence faced specifically by females.<\/p>\n

For those resisting gangs, Tupac acts as a \u201cghetto prophet\u201d and template for positive transformation. The juxtaposition of rap with religion is significant. It represents another key aspect of his own mythology; he is frequently referred to as a \u201cghetto saint<\/a>\u201d because he gave voice to the suffering of Black communities trapped in poverty and violence.<\/p>\n

Tupac\u2019s music and legend give marginalised young people in Cape Town\u2019s townships a shared symbolic language to resist oppression and reclaim agency over their own identities. As his music rings out from speakers and headphones all over the Cape Flats, Tupac\u2019s fans hear their own struggles in lyrics, and imagine a better life beyond the boundaries they were born into.<\/p>\n

Gang girls<\/p>\n

One gang girl I interviewed, named Kelly, started calling herself \u201cTupac\u201d at the age of 14 after she fled her abusive father. She cut her hair, started wearing a bandanna, and got a nose ring in the style of her rap idol \u2013 starting fights, stabbing and robbing to prove that she was a \u201cbadass bitch\u201d and a \u201creal west-sider\u201d (a term for US west coast rappers like Tupac). Eventually she was noticed by \u2013 and joined \u2013 the 28s gang that ruled her community.<\/p>\n

Tupac\u2019s legacy on gender is far from straightforward. His music could honour women in one breath and demean them in the next. Songs like Keep Ya Head Up<\/a> criticised the mistreatment of Black women, while Dear Mama<\/a> was a tribute to his mother Afeni Shakur<\/a> \u2013 a prominent political activist and a vocal member of the Black Panther Party. But he also used derogatory language towards females, and degraded his enemies by feminising them<\/a>, especially rival east coast rappers.<\/p>\n

Another woman named Meryl \u2013 who never joined a gang, but survived an abusive and alcoholic father and later her own addiction \u2013 told me she saw Shakur\u2019s story of hardship and resilience mirrored in her own.<\/p>\n

His music speaks to different parts of my life, even up until today.<\/p>\n

More than a decade sober and working in her community as a counsellor, she said his music had tracked her own transformation, from Hit \u2018Em Up<\/a> in her partying years to Changes<\/a> as she found sobriety and a deeper purpose.<\/p>\n

Ghetto gospel<\/p>\n

Gavin first thought Tupac was a cartoon character, after his older brother played him the animated video for the song Do For Love<\/a>. That brother was a member of the Mongrels and 28s prison gangs in Cape Town \u2013 both of which Gavin would eventually follow him into. He recalled:<\/p>\n

I see the big boys, they always moving Pac-style \u2026 And I\u2019m just a little motherf\u2014er, moving with my brother and them.<\/p>\n

While serving 10 years in prison for a gang-related murder, Gavin later tattooed himself with the words \u201cLife Goes On\u201d \u2013 the title of a well-known Tupac song<\/a> \u2013 as a reminder that \u201clife had to go on in prison\u201d. In his cell the warders would only allow him a Tupac poster and a bible.<\/p>\n

Converted by Tupac\u2019s ghetto gospel, Gavin decided to leave gangs to pursue a career in hip-hop:<\/p>\n

He was like a ghetto prophet \u2026 I want to be the Pac of the Cape Flats. To be an inspiration like Pac, for another kid like me, that is coming from the gutter. <\/p>\n

To follow that vision, Gavin leaned into the politically charged parts of Tupac\u2019s discography and songs that tackle issues like teen pregnancy<\/a> and police harassment<\/a> in Black communities. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s this more conscious side of Tupac\u2019s music that helped cement his status as a symbol of Black Power<\/a> in the US, as well as a conduit for broader pan-African struggles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lasting legacy<\/p>\n

Tupac\u2019s legacy is different things to different people at different times. He is gangster, prophet and revolutionary all at once. <\/p>\n

But the common chord is that in his music, Cape Town\u2019s gangland residents find a shared refrain of survival and pride, echoing their own defiance against racism, violence and poverty in Tupac\u2019s voice. <\/p>\n

Read more:
\n Here\u2019s how some of Cape Town\u2019s gangsters got out \u2013 and stayed out<\/a><\/p>\n

For Kelly, Meryl, Gavin, and others, Tupac is proof that being young, marginal and Black does not necessarily mean being powerless.<\/p>\n

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