Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-7nlkj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T18:16:36.387Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From General to Commissioner to General—On the Popular State of Policing in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Julia Hornberger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Less than two decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa is witnessing a range of policy interventions that almost iconoclastically challenge the premises of democratic governance. Police military ranks have been reintroduced and an exemplary postapartheid law governing the use of lethal force has also been amended in favor of police discretion. Simultaneously, however, community policing, a benchmark for democratic policing, is being rolled out on unprecedented scale. This article argues that the seemingly contradictory mobilization of militarized policing and popular civilian institutional forms has a definite logic and captures the postcolonial condition of policing in South Africa: a populist-oriented ANC administration has allowed practices of popular policing underwritten by a desire for a forceful state to capture the law that had previously restrained this kind of policing. The result is a violent but intimate relationship between police and people, a situation in which the law is estranged from itself and normalized into the informal realm of private policing.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , Summer 2013 , pp. 598 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Benjamin, Walter. 1965. Zur Kritik der Gewalt und andere Aufsätze . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. The Force of Law: Towards a Sociology of the Juridical Field. Hastings Law Journal 38:814–853.Google Scholar
Bregman, Joel, and Bici, Wanda. 2011. Police Need Policing. Times Live. http://www.timeslive.co.za/opinion/commentary/2011/07/28/police‐need‐policing (accessed August 31, 2011).Google Scholar
Brewer, John. 1994. Black and Blue: Policing in South Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bruce, David. 2010a. Shoot to Kill: The Use of Deadly Force by Police (Contribution 1). In Policing in South Africa 2010 and Beyond, ed. Newham, Gareth and Dissel, Amanda. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies.Google Scholar
Bruce, David. 2010b. An Acceptable Price to Pay—The Use of Lethal Force by Police in South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: Open Society Foundation. http://www.osf.org.za/File%20_Uploads/%20docs/CJI_Occasional_Paper_8.pdf (accessed August 31, 2011).Google Scholar
Bruce, David. 2011. Beyond Section 49: Control of the Use of Lethal Force. SA Crime Quarterly 36:3–12.Google Scholar
Buur, Lars. 2006. Reordering Society: Vigilantism and Expressions of Sovereignty in Port Elisabeth's Townships. Development and Change 37 (4): 735–757.Google Scholar
Chipkin, Ivor. 2011. Chess Moves Against the ANC Youth League. Sunday Times. http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/2011/07/03/chess‐moves‐against‐the‐anc‐youth‐league (accessed August 31, 2011).Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean. 2009. “Populism: The New Form of Radicalism?” Salon 1 (online journal). http://jwtc.org.za/the_salon/volume_1/jean_comaroff_populism%20_the%20_new_form_of_radicalism.htm (accessed August 31, 2011).Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John L. 2004. Criminal Obsessions, After Foucault: Postcoloniality, Policing and the Metaphysics of Disorder. Critical Inquiry 30 (4): 800–824.Google Scholar
De Vos, Pierre. 2010. Selebi Conviction Leaves Many Questions Unanswered. Constitutionally Speaking (blog). http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/selebi‐conviction‐leaves‐many‐questions‐unanswered/ (posted on July 2, 2010) (accessed February 2, 2012).Google Scholar
Eckert, Julia. 2005. The Trimurti of the State: State Violence and the Promises of Order and Destruction. Working Paper No. 80, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale.Google Scholar
Geldenhuys, Tertius. 2010. Shoot to Kill: The Use of Deadly Force by Police (Contribution 2). In Policing in South Africa 2010 and Beyond, ed. Newham, Gareth and Dissel, Amanda. Pretoria: Institute of Security Studies.Google Scholar
Goethe, , von Wolfgang, Johann. [1779] 1955. Der Zauberlehrling/The Sorccerer's Apprentice. In Goethe, the Lyrist: 100 Poems in new Translation. Trans. Edwin H. Zeydel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Grundy, Kenneth. 1988. The Militarization of South African Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Thomas Blom. 2006. Performers of Sovereignty: On the Privatization of Security in Urban South Africa. Critical Anthropology 26 (3): 279–295.Google Scholar
Hornberger, Julia. 2003. “Maman bat Papa” De Loi Sur la Violence Domestique à Sophiatown, Johannesburg. Politique Africaine 91:83–99.Google Scholar
Hornberger, Julia. 2008. Policing Xenophobia—Xenophobic Policing: A Clash of Legitimacy. In Go Home or Die Here: Violence, Xenophobia and the Reinvention of Difference in Southern Africa, ed. Hassim, Shireen and Worby, Eric, 133–143, Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University Press.Google Scholar
Hornberger, Julia. 2009. “Ma‐Slaan‐Pa Dockets.” Negotiations at the Boundary Between the Private and the Public. In Governance of Daily Life in Africa, ed. Blundo, Giorgio and Le Meur, Pierre‐Yves, 171–204, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Press.Google Scholar
Hornberger, Julia. 2011. Policing and Human Rights: The Meaning of Violence and Justice in Everyday Policing in Johannesburg. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hornberger, Julia. Forthcoming. “God Moves Big Time in Sophiatown.” Community Policing and the “Fight Against Evil” in a Poor Johannesburg Neighbourhood. In Religion in Disputes, ed. Benda‐Beckmann, Kebeet and Benda‐Beckmann, Frantz. London: Ashgate Publishing.Google Scholar
Huggins, Martha. 1998. Political Policing: The United States and Latin America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jauregui, Beatrice. 2007. Policing in Northern India as a Different Kind of Political Science: Ethnographic Rethinking of Normative “Political Interference” in Investigations and Order Maintenance. Asian Pacific Journal of Police and Criminal Studies 5 (1): 15–48.Google Scholar
Kelly, Tobias, and Shah, Alpa. 2006. Introduction—A Double‐Edged Sword: Protection and State Violence. Critical Anthropology 26 (3): 251–257.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques. 1988. Book I: Freud's Papers on Technique, ed. Miller, Jacques‐Alain. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Leggett, Ted. 2006. The State of Crime and Policing. In State of the Nation: South Africa 2005–2006, ed. Buhlungu, Sakhela et al., 144–176. Pretoria: HSRC Press.Google Scholar
Maughan, Karyn. 2008. Fight for Secret Mbeki Letter. IOL News May 8. http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/fight‐for‐secret‐mbeki‐letter‐1.399386 (accessed February 25, 2011).Google Scholar
Minnaar, Anthony. 2010. From a Service to a Force—Is the SAPS Militarising? Understanding the Dynamics of Police Discipline and Rank. In Policing in South Africa 2010 and Beyond, ed. Newham, Gareth and Dissel, Amanda. Pretoria: Institute of Security Studies.Google Scholar
Omar, Bilkis. 2009. New “Tough on Crime” Policy Will Need a Better‐Trained Police Force. Institute for Security Studies (online newsletter). http://www.issafrica.org/iss_today.php?ID=1097 (accessed August 31, 2011).Google Scholar
Reiner, Robert. 2010. The Politics of the Police, 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shaw, Mark. 2002. Crime and Policing in Post‐Apartheid South Africa: Transforming Under Fire. Cape Town/Johannesburg, South Africa: David Philip Publishers.Google Scholar
Shearing, Clifford, and McCarthy, Janet. 2002. Crime, Rights and Order: Reflections on an Analytical Framework. Paper presented at the Focus Meeting of the International Council on Human Rights Policy, Crime, Public Order and Human Rights Project, Review Seminar, October 21–22, New York.Google Scholar
Skolnick, Jerome, and Fyfe, James. 1993. Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force. New York: Free Press Google Scholar
South African Police Service (SAPS). 2005a. South African Police Service: 10 Years Review. Policing in a Democracy, 1995–2005. Pretoria, South Africa: South African Police Service.Google Scholar
South African Police Service (SAPS). 2005b. The Strategic Plan for the South African Police Service, 2005–2010. Pretoria, South Africa: South African Police Service.Google Scholar
Steinberg, Jonny. 2011. Crime Prevention Goes Abroad: Policy Transfer and Policing in Post‐Apartheid South Africa. Theoretical Criminology 15 (4): 349–364.Google Scholar
Stone, Christopher, and Ward, Haether. 2000. Democratic Policing: A Framework for Action. Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy 10:11–45.Google Scholar
Vigneswaran, Darshan, and Hornberger, Julia. 2009. Beyond “Good Cop”/“Bad Cop”: Understanding Informality and Police Corruption. Research Report. Johannesburg: Forced Migration Program, Wits University.Google Scholar
White, Hylton. 2012. A Postfordist Ethnicity—Insecurity, Authority and Identity in South Africa. Anthropological Quarterly 85 (2): 397–428.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

State v. Makwanyane and Another, 1995 (3) SA 391 (CC); 1995 (6) BCLR 665 (CC).Google Scholar
State v. Walters 2002 (4) SA 613 (CC).Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

South Africa, Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977. http://www.gov.za/.Google Scholar
South Africa, The Civilian Secretariat of Policing Service Bill of 2011.http://www.gov.za/.Google Scholar