A giant smiley face painted on a shack, a stripey t-shirt on a beach, a crook of an elbow in a rural dusty goat pen, and an offbeat finger puppet on a Cape Town city wall: Street art or vandalism?

The work of Falko Starr, which splits a giant mural over four different South African locations, could be classed as vandalism under a new Cape Town clamp-down that lumps graffiti with drugs, crime and gangs.

The toughened attitude is backed by a new control unit and by-law that classifies all graffiti as a public nuisance with a hefty €1,600 fine or three months in jail for first time offences.

“The need arose for legislation in this regard because of basically the amount of graffiti that appears right across the city,” said city official Anton Visser.

The aim is to wipe out tagging – individual graffiti signatures – and in particular gangster tagging and offensive graffiti.