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Community Policing and Disputed Norms for Local Social Control in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070701832908

1465-3893

Claire Bénit-Gbaffou,

Crime Patterns and Interventions

Abstract Ryan Carrier (1999), reflecting on policing in South Africa, has pointed out that there may be different types of order that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: he argues that the type of order that the state seeks to guarantee may be different from the type of order that businesses, affluent suburbs, townships and corporations wish to establish or preserve. He concludes by saying that different types of order may call for different types of policing. Whilst this idea seems interesting regarding the way communities can gain control over their direct environment, it is also quite challenging when thinking of equality in the access to security – especially in South Africa, where the idea of ‘separate but equal’ development has sinister overtones. In the current worldwide context of security governance and of development of community policing principles, the line between what communities are entitled to do and what they should leave to the police is very blurred, particularly so when norms regarding social order vary in space and time. Security norms to be implemented at the neighbourhood level have to be negotiated between communities and public authorities, and within communities themselves. This article, based on field study in suburbs and townships in post-apartheid Johannesburg, argues that there are different ‘cultures’ of policing and different conceptions of local social order embedded in different local histories and contrasting socio-economic settings. The South African state is currently attempting to homogenise security practices and to ‘educate’ people in a democratic policing culture. At the same time it is also firmly setting some limits (for instance by rejecting road closures and vigilantism) to the local security experiments developed in the period following the demise of apartheid. However, its current policy, supposedly designed to ‘unify’ the policing systems under common principles, is based on the broad encouragement of community participation in the production of security, as well as on the promotion of zero-tolerance principles. These policies actually serve to exacerbate local differentiation regarding the content and practice of policing as well as the undemocratic principles rhetorically resisted by the state. Notes * Thanks to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) for supporting the research on which this article is based. I am currently located at the University of the Witwatersrand, and can be contacted there. 1 All the names of interviewees quoted in the article have been changed. 2 For an analysis on the blurred distinction between ‘community’ and ‘business’ security initiatives, see C. Bénit-Gbaffou, ‘Policing Johannesburg Wealthy Neighborhoods: The Uncertain ‘Partnerships’ Between Police, Communities and Private Security Companies’, Trialog (July 2006). 3 M. Foucault, Surveiller et Punir (Paris, Gallimard, 1975). 4 C. Shearing, ‘Changing Paradigms of Policing: the Significance of Community Policing for the Governance of Security’ (Institute for Security Studies, Occasional Paper 34, 1998). 5 M. Shaw, ‘Crime, Police and Public in Transitional Societies’, Transformation, 49 (2002), pp. 1–24. 6 SA Government, White Paper on Safety and Security, 1998. 7 C. Shearing and W. Kempa, ‘The Role of “Private Security” in Transitional Democracies’ (unpublished paper presented at the ‘Crime and policing in transitional societies’ Conference, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 2000). 9 R. Carrier, ‘Dissolving Boundaries: Private Security and Policing in South Africa’, African Security Review, 8, 6 (1999). 8 Shearing and Kempa, ‘The Role of “Private Security”’. 10 This reflection owes a lot to a stimulating discussion by Sylvy Jaglin on the theme of ‘splintering urbanism’ in the context of shrinking public resources. She argues for the necessity of adapting to local contexts and local norms in the public provision of urban services in the context of shrinking public resources. See S. Jaglin, ‘The Differentiation of Technical Services in Cape Town: Echoing Splintering Urbanism?’ (unpublished paper, International Workshop, ‘Placing Splintering Urbanism: Changing Networks, Service Provision and Urban Dynamics in Cross-national Perspective, Autun, France, 22–24 June 2005). 11 C. Bénit-Gbaffou, ‘Splintering Policing: Are Security Systems in Johannesburg “Fragmented”?’, unpublished paper, International Workshop, ‘Placing Splintering Urbanism: Changing Networks, Service Provision and Urban Dynamics in Cross-national Perspective’ (Autun, France, 22–24 June 2005). 12 J. Seekings, ‘The Revival of “People's Courts”: Informal Justice in Transitional South Africa’, South African Review, 6 (1992), pp. 186–200; D. Mistry, ‘The Dilemma of Case Withdrawal: Policing in the “New” South Africa’, British Criminology Conference: Selected Proceedings, Volume 3 (2000); W. Schärf and D. Nina, The Other Law: Non-State Ordering in South Africa (Cape Town, Juta Law, 2001); B. Tshehla, Traditional Justice in Practice: a Limpopo Case Study, ISS Monograph 115 (April 2005). 13 J. Seekings, ‘Social Ordering and Control in the African Townships of South Africa: an Historical Overview of Extra-State Initiatives from the 1940s to the 1990s’, in Schärf and Nina, The Other Law, pp. 71–97. 14 Seekings, ‘The Revival of “People's Courts”’. 15 Numerous interviews were conducted with the different security stakeholders in each case study: from civil society (Community Policing Forums, Sector Crime Forums, Street Committees, Road Closure Committees, as well as residents associations and civics); from selected security companies, and from the public authorities (City of Johannesburg, Johannesburg Roads Agency, local ward councillors; Metro police officers; SAPS police officers). Besides the interviews, the fieldwork consisted of observation through the attendance of various meetings in each area studied (Community Policing Forums, Crime Sector Forums, Street Committee meetings, Residents Association meetings, Police management meetings; Municipal and Community Court hearings). 16 Discussions with stakeholders committed at the metropolitan level (in the police, the Metro or CPFs), or having a wide experience of different neighbourhoods in Johannesburg, as well as engagement with researchers and the broader literature on this topic, allowed us to try to go beyond our few case studies to build this typology. This research was funded by the French Institute of South Africa, within the broader research programme on ‘The Privatisation of Security in African Cities: Urban Dynamics and New Forms of Governance’, 2003–2005. It was further supported in 2005 by a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand, Public and Development Management. 17 Shearing and Kempa, ‘The Role of “Private Security”’. 18 The laager refers to the wagon enclosures built by Afrikaners during the nineteenth-century Great Trek as a means to defend themselves against the African ‘enemy’. Today it is used to refer to the way in which some white residents attempt to create elite, discriminatory, exclusive and racist community enclaves. 19 It should be noted, though, that the demand for road closure is more income based than racially based: A. Mabin, P. Harrison, ‘Security and Space: Managing Contradictions of Access Restriction in Johannesburg’, Environment and Planning B (forthcoming); C. Bénit-Gbaffou, ‘Community Policing and the Difficult Relationship between Community, Police and the Municipality: Lessons from Yeoville and Observatory, Johannesburg’, Urban Forum (forthcoming). 20 South African Human Rights Commission, Report on the Issue of Road Closures, Security Booms and Related Measures (Pretoria, 2005). 21 T. Dirsuweit, ‘Johannesburg: Fearful City?’, Urban Forum, 13, 3 (2002), pp. 4–19. 22 The Community Policing Forum is a statutory body set up by the police at the local level to foster partnerships with the residents. 23 Here again, security issues are a powerful tool to try and build new forms of collectivities, if not ‘communities’. These meetings indeed constitute a rare opportunity for such flexible, post-modern and spatially scattered workers to meet in big groups, and discuss broader, everyday-life issues. However, these groups are still very instrumentalised: the police use them for the recruitment of informers, fostering mutual suspicion more than trust. 24 Seekings, ‘Social Ordering and Control in the African Townships of South Africa’. 25 M. Brogden and C. Shearing, Policing for a New South Africa (London, Routledge, 1993); Shearing, Changing Paradigms of Policing. 26 Bénit-Gbaffou, ‘Community Policing’. 27 Seekings, ‘Social Ordering and Control in the African Townships of South Africa’. 28 To be excluded or ostracised by the community is no longer a real threat. 29 M. Marks, Young Warriors: Youth, Politics, Identity and Crisis in South Africa (Braamfontein, Wits University Press, 2004). 30 Shaw, ‘Crime, Police and Public in Transitional Societies’. 31 G. Kynoch, ‘Apartheid Nostalgia: Personal Security Concerns in South African Townships’, SA Crime Quarterly, 5 (September 2003), pp. 7–10. 32 Seekings, ‘The Revival of “People's Courts”’; Marks, Young Warriors. 33 Seekings, ‘Social Ordering and Control in the African Townships of South Africa’. 34 M. Sekhonyane and A. Louw, Violent Justice, Vigilantism and the State's Response, ISS monograph 72 (2002). 35 M. Shaw, Crime and Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Transforming Under Fire (Johannesburg, David Philip Publishers, 2002). 36 And to shift, in 2000, from a National Crime Prevention Strategy to a National Crime Combating Strategy: see T. Leggett, ‘The State of Crime and Policing’, in J. Daniel et al., South Africa State of the Nation 2004–2005 (Pretoria, HSRC Press, 2005), pp. 144–76. 37 South African Police Service Act no 68 (1995). 38 National Task Team Draft, Regulations for Community Police Forums and Boards in Terms of the SAPS Act, Act 68 of 1995: draft 6 (February 2002). 39 Gauteng Provincial Guidelines for the Community Policing Forums and Boards (draft paper, 2005). 40 D. Mistry, ‘The State of Community Police Forums (CPFs) and their Challenge’ (unpublished paper presented at Crimsa/Unisa's Third International Crime Conference, Crime and Justice in the Nineties, Unisa, Pretoria, 3–5 July 1996). 41 C. Lemanski, ‘Spaces of Exclusivity or Connection? Linkages between a Gated community and its Poorer Neighbour in a Cape Town Master Plan Development’, Urban Studies, 43, 2 (2006), pp. 397–420. 42 See also N. Brenner, ‘Urban Governance and the Production of New State Spaces in Western Europe’, Review of International Political Economy, 11, 3 (August 2004), pp. 447–88. 43 L. Wacquant, ‘The Penalisation of Poverty and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism’, European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, 9 (2001), pp. 401–12. 44 P. Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement (Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1979). 49 ‘Police Update’, Rosebank Killarney Gazette (week ending 3 June 2005). 45 Section 13(1) of Notice 832 (2004), City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality Public Roads and Miscellaneous By-laws. 46 This might also encourage corruption. Furthermore, these requests discredit the police officers’ job itself, as they are sometimes absurd and out of scope. There has been some resistance, in particular from the SAPS, to these new ‘social’ functions: see J. Hornberger, ‘Maman bat papa: la loi sur la violence domestique à Sophiatown, Johannesburg’, Politique Africaine, 91 (2003); A. Altbekker, The Dirty Work of Democracy: Policing the Streets of Johannesburg (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 2005); and M. Marks, Transforming the Robocops: Changing Police in South Africa (Pietermaritzburg, University of KwaZulu Natal Press, 2005). 47 This community court covers a number of northern suburbs neighbourhoods, including Parkview, Rosebank and Norwood, as well as those in the inner city, Hillbrow and Yeoville. 48 The custom is to arrest ‘loiterers’ (beggars, prostitutes, homeless people) on Fridays, and keep them in jail for the weekend: then they are ‘judged’ in a package, 30 by 30 – they just have to plead ‘guilty’ when confronted with their ‘crime’, and they are out on the Monday afternoon. As the National Prosecutor hesitantly explained to me, it is mostly a ‘preventive’ measure aimed at keeping ‘those people’ off the streets for the week-end. 50 City of Johannesburg, Johannesburg City Safety Strategy (2004). 51 C. Bénit and P. Gervais-Lambony, ‘Globalisation as Local Political Instrument in South African Metropolitan Areas (Johannesburg and Ekhuruleni): the “poor” and the “shop window”’, Transformation, 57 (2005). 52 She refers in particular to legkotla, traditional dispute resolution mechanisms enhancing dialogue and restoration between the offender and the victim, often mediated by the community leaders or elders: Mistry, ‘The Dilemma of Case Withdrawal’. 53 The Inspection Judge of Prisons, Annual Report for the Period 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004, submitted to Mr. Thabo Mbeki. 54 ‘NPA to Shift its Attention to Crime of Greed, Not Poverty’, Cape Times, 6 July 2005. Additional informationNotes on contributorsClaire Bénit-Gbaffou * * Thanks to the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) for supporting the research on which this article is based. I am currently located at the University of the Witwatersrand, and can be contacted there.