Community Justice and Community Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Summaries Reform of policing in South Africa forms a critical part of the transition from white minority, authoritarian rule to a more democratic system that reflects the aspirations of the majority African communities. The article focuses on two kinds of community policing that have developed since the end of apartheid: official partnerships between the state police and local residents, as exemplified in the Community Policing Forums, and ‘community‐initiated policing’ based on local collective organisations (vigilantism), semi‐political groupings and private associations. The official police‐community partnerships have achieved some success in increasing mutual understanding, ‘de‐demonising’ their perceptions of each other and putting respect for human rights on the agenda. Ultimately, however, the pressures of rising crime and the internal upheavals experienced by the police during the transition have forced the police back into their more traditional crime‐fighting mode, in which the community is seen simply as an aid to intelligence gathering — the ‘eyes and ears’ of the police. The South African state continues to flirt with private‐ and community‐based vigilantism, motivated by its overriding concern to ‘do something’ about the bad image created internationally by the crime wave. But there are considerable dangers in this strategy if it does not attempt to bring these organisations within a more law‐abiding way of operating. These issues are so politically sensitive that they can only be understood within the overall regime context.

The African post-conflict policing agenda in Sierra Leone

“…The policy is currently being pursued in South Africa under the banner of Community Safety Forums. 72 Community Safety Forums demonstrate that it is possible for community based groups to be incorporated into police reform. Indeed, as Marenin notes, it may be a necessity, 'as such groups have legitimate grounding in community support hence will not fade away easily'.…”

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

“…That is, under apartheid, many of these high-crime communities had constructed indigenous systems and methods of policing and protection, which often resulted in more immediate forms of justice and punishment. Much of this non-state policing persisted after 1994 (Buur, 2006; Schärf, 2001; Super, 2015), with additional forms of both benign and predatory community policing emerging (Baker, 2002; Marks and Wood, 2010). Furthermore, such places have also been perilous for SAPS members, with fear of high-crime areas by police being a prominent theme in a number of police studies (Bruce, 2001; Marks, 2005; Steinberg, 2008).…”

Highway informal policing in Kajola Local Government, Oyo State, Nigeria

“…Armed robbery has over time remained an intractable social problem in Nigeria; it has become more pronounced since 1967, around the time the Nigerian civil war started (Aderinto, 2002;Ojedokun, 2014). The emergence of informal policing or community-initiated policing in some other places have similarly been attributed to the perceived rise in crime, the perceived failure of the state to provide citizens with the protection they require and the inadequacies of the formal police service when it comes to controlling criminal activities (Alemika and Chukwuma, 2004;Okunola, 2009;Scharf, 2000;Sekhonyane, 2002;Shaw, 2000). Furthermore, it can also be deduced from the findings that members of the highway informal policing outfit in Kajola Local Government were hunters by profession and had no direct connection with the Odua Peoples Congress, the ethnic militia in South Western Nigeria.…”

“…'Informal policing' or 'the policing of everyday life' are favourite terms for describing the de facto policing taking place (mostly) outside the regulatory framework of the state (Scharf, 2000). In many places around the world, policing is carried out by a wide range of groups independent of the state police; that is to say, policing is not simply 'what The Police do' (Baker, 2002).…”