Do you feel as though the police make things worse rather than better?’ a police sector manager asks me. I am accompanying him while he is patrolling the streets of Philippi East. I awkwardly laugh off his question to deflect having to answer. We continue driving for a short distance, and I mull over what he’d said.

‘Why did you ask me that?’ I finally ask, curious to hear the answer.

‘Oh, I was thinking about the fining that you were asking about,’ he says. ‘I don't think it's helping the situation.’

Later, when he drops me off at Philippi East police station, I ask him whether he knows who ordered the fining operation.

‘The orders came from above,’ he replies vaguely. I decide not to press the issue any further, and thank him for his time.

A couple of weeks earlier, in November 2011, I had met Omar, a Somali community activist, to find out more about mobilisations against Somali spaza shops in Philippi earlier that year. We had arranged to meet at Nando's in Tyger Valley, the fast-food restaurant being more anonymous than Little Mogadishu in Bellville. Conveniently, too, it serves halal food. It is not that Omar wishes to meet with me discreetly; this was my suggestion. I sometimes find the stark visibility of being a white female researcher in Bellville something of a weight. Sometimes I prefer to meet in the more diverse and familiar interior of the popular South African chicken takeout franchise. We find a table and I switch on my voice recorder. The restaurant is busy and so, unfortunately, loud chatter reverberates over the bad saxophone music coming out of the restaurant's speakers; together they almost drown our voices.

Omar speaks animatedly about recent meetings with South African retailers in Philippi. But then the conversation takes a surprising twist. ‘Yesterday's meeting,’ he says, ‘in the beginning it was okay, but then it seems like the government departments are involved. They have been using some of the Metro Police friends.’ The Metro Police serve the City of Cape Town's law enforcement department. They are responsible for enforcing the city's by-laws and traffic regulations. ‘Some of the Metro Police officers went to Somali shops in Gugulethu and Nyanga, where they issued fines against Somalis of R1 000 or R1 500.’