'r'et today, many of these prisons continue to exist. The 11th of February also marks 54 years since residents of District Six were forcibly removed from their homes. The empty stands just a few kilometres from the city centre are a scar across lCape Town, a physical mark. The emptiness serves as a reminder of the pain that thousands had to endure. Those removals led to new prisons on the Cape Flats where many were placed. Research has continually linked those removals with a destruction of self and place and there is a direct link to the gang culture we see today to those removals. The gangs on the Cape Flats have those links with prisons, as for many, life inside and outside is just a movement between prisons. The bars between literal and gurative prisons are blurred. And these conditions have not only imprisoned those we see as gangsters and criminals but all of us. Especially in our townships, daily life is marked by invisible bars. This is felt even more by women and queer South Africans who bear the brunt of a patriarchal system and high levels of gender-based violence