Police Militarisation and the ‘War on Crime’ in South Africa

Lamb, Guy

doi:10.1080/03057070.2018.1503831

Cited by 17 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…Due to the process of assimilation (mentioned above), the SAPS also inherited an institutional culture of aggressive masculinity (Clarke, 2008) and militarism (Lamb, 2018), which gestated during colonial rule and was encouraged during the apartheid era and has been present in the SAP, as well as in the Bantustan forces (Brewer, 1994; Cawthra, 1993). The outcome of this was an acutely hierarchical and hawkish police organisation.…”

Section: A ‘New’ Police For a ‘New’ South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The outcome of this was an acutely hierarchical and hawkish police organisation. Government initially sought to demilitarise the SAPS, through the civilianisation of police uniforms and the ranking system, as well as through the phasing out of military equipment for policing purposes (Lamb, 2018). Nevertheless, progress in reforming the police and policing approaches were stymied by both internal and external factors.…”

Section: Brutalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Safeguarding the Republic? The South African Police Service, Legitimacy and the Tribulations of Policing a Violent Democracy

Lamb

2021

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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Since 1994 the South African Police Service (SAPS) has undertaken various efforts to build legitimacy in South Africa. Extensive community policing resources have been made available, and a hybrid community-oriented programme (sector policing) has been pursued. Nevertheless, public opinion data has shown that there are low levels of public trust in the police. Using Goldsmith’s framework of trust-diminishing police behaviours, this article suggests that indifference, a lack of professionalism, incompetence and corruption on the part of the police, particularly in high-crime areas, have eroded public trust in the SAPS. Furthermore, in an effort to maintain order, reduce crime and assert the authority of the state, the police have adopted militaristic strategies and practices, which have contributed to numerous cases of excessive use of force, which has consequently weakened police legitimacy in South Africa

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Section: A ‘New’ Police For a ‘New’ South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Brutalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Safeguarding the Republic? The South African Police Service, Legitimacy and the Tribulations of Policing a Violent Democracy

Lamb

2021

Journal of Asian and African Studies

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“…No doubt, though, that organised crime, corruption, lawlessness, and extreme levels of homicide in certain geographical areas and communities in South Africa are increasingly threatening the stability of the country as a whole. 77 Mentally and geographically, South Africa increasingly functions in enclaved mode at provincial, municipal and neighbourhood level. Instead of becoming a more integrated and open society, it tends to be more siloed, exclusive and cocoonistic.…”

Section: South African Domestic Insecuritiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The South African security predicament: making sense of the objective realities

Esterhuyse

2021

SCIM

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This article reflects an effort to make sense of the objective realities of the South African security predicament. The objective realities on the security agenda are rooted in the practical reality of experience and are open for public discussion, debate and speculation. These realities are informed by the threats facing South Africans on a daily basis. Government provides security with subjective content to the extent that political power demarcates the threat agenda, prioritises the items on the threat agenda, and foots the security bill. Since the creation of the Union in 1910, South Africa has had to find a balance between the security realities emanating from three key security domains -irrespective of the ruling entity: security threats from outside Africa, those threats facing the country from within Africa, and security threats from within the borders of South Africa. The article aims at a scholarly demarcation of some of the most critical, important, and key features of the South African security agenda using these three domains as a framework for discussion. On a secondary level, the discussion also critically reflects on the ability of the human security paradigm to address the South African security predicament.

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“…In spite of early debates about how to advance humane forms of redress (Super 2011), new administrations reinvested in carceral punishment. Police violence and mass incarceration continue to characterize the state's approach to crime (Lamb 2018;Hornberger 2011;Gillespie 2008;Alexander 2016). In the 2018-19 fiscal year, there were 270 accusations of torture and another 3,835 accusations of assault implicating South African police officers, according to a government report (IPID 2020, 38).…”

Section: P U N I S H I N G C R I M I N a L S I N T H E N E W S O U T H A F R I C Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Mens Daemonica: Guilt, Justice, and the Occult in South Africa

Rupcic

2021

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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In winter 2014, the town of Thohoyandou, South Africa was gripped with panic after a series of rapes and murders. In this area, notorious for its occult specialists and witchcraft, stories began to circulate attributing the violence to demonic forces. These stories were given credence by the young man who was charged with these crimes. In his testimony, he confirmed that he was possessed by evil forces. Taking this story as a point of departure, this article provides an empirical account of the ambivalent ways state sites of criminal justice grapple with the occult in South Africa. Drawing on twenty-two months of ethnographic fieldwork, I describe how spirit possession is not easily reconciled with legal methods of parsing criminal liability in courtrooms. And yet, when imprisoned people are paroled, the state entertains the possibility of bewitchment in public ceremonies of reconciliation. Abstracting from local stories about the occult, this article proposes mens daemonica (“demonic mind”) to describe this state of hijacked selfhood and as an alternative to the mens rea (“criminal mind”) observed in criminal law. While the latter seeks the cause of wrongdoing in the authentic will of the autonomous, self-governing subject, mens daemonica describes a putatively extra-legal idea of captured volition that implicates a vast and ultimately unknowable range of others and objects in what only appears to be a singular act of wrongdoing. This way of reckoning culpability has the potential to inspire new approaches to justice.

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Police Militarisation and the ‘War on Crime’ in South Africa

Cited by 17 publications

References 0 publications

Safeguarding the Republic? The South African Police Service, Legitimacy and the Tribulations of Policing a Violent Democracy

Safeguarding the Republic? The South African Police Service, Legitimacy and the Tribulations of Policing a Violent Democracy

The South African security predicament: making sense of the objective realities

Mens Daemonica: Guilt, Justice, and the Occult in South Africa

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