Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T16:29:27.499Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

BEHIND CLOSED GATES: EVERYDAY POLICING IN DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2016

Sarah-Jane Cooper-Knock
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Studies of everyday policing in predominantly white areas in South Africa often focus on the spectacle of secured architecture and private policing services, concluding that the growth of the private security industry has created atomized units of residence that are alienated from the state. Such conclusions are important but incomplete: they do not look sufficiently behind closed gates to explore how private security is justified, utilized, supplemented or avoided in daily life. In this article, I explore the everyday policing of theft and robbery in a predominantly white policing sector in Durban. I demonstrate that people have not simply transferred their dependence or allegiance from public to private policing. Instead, their approach to everyday policing straddles these two spheres, perpetually disrupts any simple dichotomy between them, and illustrates how all forms of policing are entangled in the wider inequalities and insecurities of post-apartheid South Africa. In making this argument, I highlight how residents remain reliant on the bureaucratic authority of the state police, are distrustful of their employees who supposedly protect them, and appear far more willing to take matters into their own hands than many interviewees admit or imagine.

Résumé

Les études sur la police quotidienne dans les régions d'Afrique du Sud à population majoritairement blanche se concentrent souvent sur le spectacle de l'architecture sécurisée et les services de police privée, et concluent que l'essor du secteur de la police privée a créé des unités résidentielles atomisées aliénées de l’État. Ces conclusions sont importantes mais incomplètes : elles n'explorent pas suffisamment, derrière les portes de ces résidences protégées, comment la sécurité privée est justifiée, utilisée, renforcée ou évitée dans la vie quotidienne. Dans cet article, l'auteur examine la police quotidienne des vols dans un secteur de police de Durban à majorité blanche. Il démontre que les habitants n'ont pas tout simplement transféré leur dépendance ou allégeance d'une police d’État à une police privée. Au lieu de cela, leur approche de la police quotidienne est à cheval sur ces deux sphères, perturbe sans cesse la simple dichotomie qui pourrait exister entre elles et illustre comment toutes les formes de police sont entremêlées aux inégalités et aux insécurités plus larges de l'Afrique du Sud postapartheid. L'auteur met en lumière, dans son argument, le fait que les résidents restent tributaires de l'autorité bureaucratique de la police d’État, qu'ils se méfient de leurs employés pourtant supposés les protéger et qu'ils semblent bien plus disposés qu'ils ne l'admettent ou ne l'imaginent, pour un grande nombre, à prendre les choses en main.

Type
Law and Social Order in Africa
Information
Africa , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 98 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2016 

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

Allport, G. (1954) The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge MA: Perseus Books.Google Scholar
Ally, S. (2011) From Servants to Workers: South African domestic workers and the democratic state. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Altbeker, A. (2007) A Country at War with Itself: South Africa's crisis of crime. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers.Google Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Baker, B. (2002) ‘Living with non-state policing in South Africa: the issues and dilemmas’, Journal of Modern African Studies 40 (1): 29–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ballard, R. (2004) ‘Assimilation, emigration, semigration and integration: “white” peoples’ strategies for finding a comfort zone in post-apartheid South Africa’ in Distiller, M. and Steyn, M. (eds) Under Construction: ‘race’ and identity in South Africa today. Sandton: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Bénit-Gbaffou, C. (2008) ‘Community policing and disputed norms for local social control in post-apartheid Johannesburg’, Journal of Southern African Studies 34 (1): 93–109.Google Scholar
Bénit-Gbaffou, C., Didier, S. and Morange, M. (2008) ‘Communities, the private sector, and the state: contested forms of security governance in Cape Town and Johannesburg’, Urban Affairs Review 43: 691–717.Google Scholar
Berg, J. (2010) ‘Seeing like private security: evolving mentalities of public space protection in South Africa’, Criminology and Criminal Justice 10: 287–301.Google Scholar
Blaser, T. M. (2007) ‘Afrikaner identity after nationalism: young Afrikaners and the “new” South Africa’. DPhil thesis, University of the Witwatersrand.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006) Racism Without Racists: color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Brogden, M. (2002) ‘Implanting community policing in South Africa: a failure of history, of context, and of theory’, Liverpool Law Review 24: 157–79.Google Scholar
Brogden, M. (2004) ‘Commentary: community policing: a panacea from the West’, African Affairs 103 (413): 635–49.Google Scholar
Brogden, M. and Nijhar, P. (1998) ‘Corruption and the South African police’, Crime, Law and Social Change 30 (1): 89–106.Google Scholar
Burger Allen, D. (2002) ‘Race, crime and social exclusion: a qualitative study of white women's fear of crime in Johannesburg’, Urban Forum 13 (3): 54–79.Google Scholar
Buur, L. (2003) ‘Crime and punishment on the margins of the post-apartheid state’, Anthropology and Humanism 28 (1): 23–42.Google Scholar
Buur, L. (2006) ‘Reordering society: vigilantism and expressions of sovereignty in Port Elizabeth's townships’, Development and Change 37 (4): 735–57.Google Scholar
Buur, L. (2008a) ‘Democracy and its discontents: vigilantism, sovereignty and human rights in South Africa’, Review of African Political Economy 35 (118): 571–84.Google Scholar
Buur, L. (2008b) ‘Fluctuating personhood: vigilantism and citizenship in Port Elizabeth's townships’ in Pratten, D. and Sen, A. (eds) Global Vigilantes. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Buur, L. and Jensen, S. (2004) ‘Introduction: vigilantism and the policing of everyday life in South Africa’, African Studies 63 (2): 139–52.Google Scholar
Cawthra, G. (1993) Policing South Africa: the South African police & the transition from apartheid. Johannesburg: David Philip Publishers.Google Scholar
Cock, J. (1980) Maids and Madams: a study in the politics of exploitation. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, J. and Comaroff, J. L. (2006) An Excursion into the criminal anthropology of the brave neo South Africa. Carl Schlettwein Lectures. Berlin: LIT Verlag.Google Scholar
Cooper-Knock, S. (2008) ‘The role of citizens in post-apartheid South Africa: a case-study of citizen involvement in informal settlement projects, eThekwini’. MPhil thesis, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Cooper-Knock, S. J. (2014) ‘Policing in intimate crowds: moving beyond “the mob” in South Africa’, African Affairs 113 (453): 563–82.Google Scholar
Cooper-Knock, S. J. and Owen, O. (2015) ‘Between vigilantism and bureaucracy: improving our understanding of police work in Nigeria and South Africa’, Theoretical Criminology 19 (3): 355–75.Google Scholar
Crapanzano, V. (1985) Waiting: the whites of South Africa. New York NY: Random House.Google Scholar
Davis, M. (1992) ‘Fortress Los Angeles: the militarization of urban space’ in Sorkin, M. (ed.) Variations on a Theme Park: the new American city and the end of public space. New York NY: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Dirsuweit, T. (2007) ‘Between ontological security and the right difference: road closures, communitarianism and urban ethics in Johannesburg, South Africa’, Autrepart 42 (2): 53–71.Google Scholar
Dixon, B. (2007) ‘Globalising the local: a genealogy of sector policing in South Africa’, International Relations 21 (2): 163–82.Google Scholar
Do Rio Caldeira, T. P. (2001) City of Walls: crime, segregation, and citizenship in Sao Paulo. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Douglas, M. (2003) Purity and Danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London and New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Douglas, M. and Wildavsky, A. (1983) Risk and Culture: an essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Durrheim, K., Mtose, X. and Brown, L. (2011) Race Trouble: race, identity, and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Lanham MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Durrington, M. (2006) ‘Race, space, and place in suburban Durban: an ethnographic assessment of gated community environments and residents’, GeoJournal 66: 147–60.Google Scholar
Durrington, M. (2009) ‘Suburban fear, media and gated communities in Durban, South Africa’, Home Cultures 6 (1): 71–88.Google Scholar
Elmer, G. (2012) ‘Panopticon–discipline–control’ in Ball, K., Haggerty, K. and Lyon, D. (eds) Routledge Handbook of Surveillance Studies. Abingdon and New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Z. (2005) Race and Identity in the Nation. Pretoria: Human Sciences Resource Council.Google Scholar
Fourchard, L. (2011) ‘The politics of mobilization for security in South African townships’, African Affairs 110 (441): 607–27.Google Scholar
Garland, D. (ed.) (2001) Mass Imprisonment: social causes and consequences. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, D. (2008) ‘Flexible justice: neo-liberal violence and “self-help” security in Bolivia’ in Pratten, D. and Sen, A. (eds) Global Vigilantes. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, D. (2001) ‘Democratic consolidation and community policing: conflicting imperatives in South Africa’, Policing and Society 11 (2): 121–50.Google Scholar
Gordon, D. (2006) Transformation and Trouble: crime, justice and participation in post-apartheid South Africa. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Grant, E. (1989) ‘Private policing’, Acta Juridica: 92–117.Google Scholar
Hansen, T. B. (2012) Melancholia of Freedom: social life in an Indian township in South Africa. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, T. B. and Stepputat, F. (2001) States of Imagination: ethnographic explorations of the postcolonial state. Durham NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, T. and Stepputat, F. (2006) ‘Sovereignty revisited’, Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 295–315.Google Scholar
Holloway, W. and Jefferson, T. (2000) ‘The role of anxiety in the fear of crime’ in Sparks, R. and Hope, T. (eds) Crime, Risk and Insecurity: law and order in everyday life and political discourse. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Holston, J. (2008) Insurgent Citizenship: disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hook, D. and Vrdoljak, M. (2002) ‘Gated communities, heterotopia and a “right” of privilege: a “heterotopology” of the South African security-park’, Geoforum 33 (2): 195–219.Google Scholar
Hornberger, J. (2004) ‘Your police – my police: the informal privatisation of the police in the inner city of Johannesburg’, African Studies 63 (2): 213–30.Google Scholar
Jensen, S. (2008a) Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town. Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Jensen, S. (2008b) ‘Policing Nkomazi: crime, masculinity and generational conflicts’ in Sen, A. and Pratten, D. (eds) Global Vigilantes. New York NY: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Judd, D. (1994) ‘Urban violence and enclave politics: crime as text, race as subtext’ in Dunn, S. (ed.) Managing Divided Cities. London: Ryburn Publishing.Google Scholar
Keith, M. (2005) After the Cosmopolitan? Multicultural cities and the future of racism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lemanski, C. (2006) ‘Residential responses to fear (of crime plus) in two Cape Town suburbs: implications for the post-apartheid city’, Journal of International Development 18 (6): 787–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loader, I. (2006) ‘Policing, recognition, and belonging’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 605 (1): 201–21.Google Scholar
Loader, I. and Walker, N.. (2004) ‘State of denial? Rethinking the governance of security’, Punishment and Society 6 (2): 221–8.Google Scholar
Lupton, D. and Tulloch, J. (1999) ‘Theorizing fear of crime: beyond the rational/irrational opposition’, British Journal of Sociology 50 (3): 507–23.Google Scholar
Marks, M. and Wood, J.. (2007) ‘The South African policing “nexus”: charting the policing landscape in Durban’, South African Review of Sociology 38 (2): 134–60.Google Scholar
Minaar, A. (2001) The New Vigilantism in Post-1994 South Africa: crime prevention or an expression of lawlessness? Johannesburg: Institute for Human Rights and Criminal Justice Studies.Google Scholar
Oomen, B. (2004) ‘Vigilantism or alternative citizenship? The rise of Mapogo a Mathamaga’, African Studies 63 (2): 153–71.Google Scholar
Plessis, A. and Louw, A. (2005) ‘Crime and crime prevention in South Africa: 10 years after’, Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 427: 427–46.Google Scholar
Posel, D. (2004) ‘Afterword: vigilantism and the burden of rights: reflections on the paradoxes of freedom in post-apartheid South Africa’, African Studies 63 (2): 231–6.Google Scholar
PSIRA (2011) Annual Report 2010/2011. Johannesburg: Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority (PSIRA).Google Scholar
RSA (1977) ‘Criminal Procedure Act No. 51’. Cape Town: Republic of South Africa (RSA).Google Scholar
RSA (1998) ‘Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Occupation of the Land Act’. Cape Town: Republic of South Africa (RSA).Google Scholar
SALC (2000) Conviction Rates and Other Outcomes of Crimes Reported in Eight South African Police Areas. SALC criminal case outcome research report no. 82. Pretoria: South African Law Commission (SALC).Google Scholar
Samara, T. R. (2003) ‘State security in transition: the war on crime in post-apartheid South Africa’, Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 9 (2): 277–312.Google Scholar
Samara, T. R. (2011) Cape Town after Apartheid: crime and governance in the divided city. Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Sasson, T. (1995) Crime Talk: how citizens construct a social problem. Piscataway NJ: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Scharf, W. (1989) ‘Community policing in South Africa’, Acta Juridica: 206–33.Google Scholar
Schonteich, M. (1999) ‘Fighting crime with private muscle: the private sector and crime prevention’, African Security Review 8 (5): 65–75.Google Scholar
Shearing, C. and Wood, J. (2003) ‘Nodal governance, democracy and the new “denizens”’, Journal of Law and Society 30 (3): 400–19.Google Scholar
Shirlow, P. and Pain, R. (2003) ‘The geographies and politics of fear’, Capital and Class 60: 15–26.Google Scholar
Spinks, C. (2001) ‘A new apartheid? Urban spatiality, (fear of) crime, and segregation in Cape Town, South Africa’, Development Studies Institute Working Paper Series: 1–42.Google Scholar
Steyn, M. (2001) Whiteness Just Isn't What It Used To Be: white identity in a changing South Africa. Albany NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Weber, M. (1998) From Max Weber: essays in sociology. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wedeen, L. (2003) ‘Seeing like a citizen, acting like a state: exemplary events in unified Yemen’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (4): 680–713.Google Scholar
Wilson, M. H. (1951) ‘Witch beliefs and social structure’, American Journal of Sociology LVI (4): 307–13.Google Scholar

INTERVIEWS

Carol, Berea resident, June 2010.Google Scholar
David, Berea resident, June 2011.Google Scholar
Duncan, Berea resident, July 2010.Google Scholar
Geoff, Berea resident, June 2013.Google Scholar
Geoff and Rachel, Berea residents, July 2010.Google Scholar
Isaac, Berea resident, June 2010.Google Scholar
Johannes, Berea police, June 2011.Google Scholar
John, Berea resident, August 2010.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Berea resident, July 2010.Google Scholar
Lionel, Berea resident, July 2011.Google Scholar
Lola, Berea resident, July 2011.Google Scholar
Lorna, Berea resident, July 2010.Google Scholar
Nancy, Berea resident, July 2011.Google Scholar
Patricia, Berea resident, July 2011.Google Scholar
Peter, Berea resident, June 2010.Google Scholar
Peter, Berea resident, August 2011.Google Scholar
Phumzile, Chatsworth domestic worker, June 2013.Google Scholar
Ronald, Chatsworth town guard, June 2013.Google Scholar
Sally, Berea resident, August 2011.Google Scholar
Shemi, Chatsworth resident, June 2013.Google Scholar
Sifiso, Berea guard, May 2013.Google Scholar
Sylvia, Berea resident, July 2010.Google Scholar
Tom, Berea resident, July 2011.Google Scholar