State police forces in Africa are a curiously neglected subject of study, even within the framework of security issues and African states. This work brings together criminologists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, political scientists and others who have engaged with police forces across the continent and the publics with whom they interact to provide street-level perspectives from below and inside Africa's police forces.
Slaps in the face, kicks, beatings, and other forms of run-of-the-mill violence were a quotidian part of life in German Southwest Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century. Unearthing this culture of normalized violence in a settler colony, Violence as Usual uncovers the workings of a powerful state that was built in an improvised fashion by low-level state representatives. Marie A. Muschalek's fascinating portrayal of the daily deeds of African and German men enrolled in the colonial police force called the Landespolizei is a historical anthropology of police practice and the normalization of imperial power. Replete with anecdotes of everyday experiences both of the policemen and of colonized people and settlers, Violence as Usual re-examines fundamental questions about the relationship between power and violence. Muschalek gives us a new perspective on violence beyond the solely destructive and the instrumental. She overcomes, too, the notion that modern states operate exclusively according to modes of rationalized functionality. Violence as Usual offers an unusual assessment of the history of rule in settler colonialism and an alternative to dominant narratives of an ostensibly weak colonial state.
Policing Criminality and Insurgency in Africa: Perspectives on the Changing Wave of Law Enforcement provides critical insights into the trends and patterns of crime and insurgency in contemporary African society. In Africa criminals and insurgents are becoming more resourceful, smart, and connected, as criminal syndicates are increasingly deploying modern technologies to commit crimes in ways and manners that are profoundly daring, and on a transnational and global scale. Meanwhile, the capacity of local, state, and security forces to stem the tide of crimes and insurgencies is decimated by dwindling resources on the part of the state due to official corruption, down-sizing of public institutions and a fierce competition for resources between security and other developmental agencies. In this volume, the contributors, who are expert academics in policing and security in Africa as well as security practitioners, provide detailed explanations of the new wave of crime, characterized by cyber insecurity, terror financing, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, and transnational networking among criminal syndicates. The volume forensically explores how these complex waves and emerging trends of criminality and insurgency impact on the socio-economic and political development of Africa. Editors, Usman A. Tar and Dawud Muhammad Dawud highlight how these factors affect and shape policing and law enforcement in an era of “smart crimes” and insurgency within the continent.
This wide-ranging collection offers fresh insights into a critical factor in development and politics on the African continent. It critically examines and illustrates the centrality of policing in transition societies in Africa, and outlines and assesses the emergence and impact of the diversity of state and non-state policing agencies.
Policing in South Africa has gained notoriety through its extensive history of oppressive law enforcement. In 1994, as the country’s apartheid system was replaced with a democratic order, the new government faced the significant challenge of transforming the South African police force into a democratic police agency—the South African Police Service (SAPS)—that would provide unbiased policing to all the country’s people. More than two decades since the initiation of the reforms, it appears that the SAPS has rapidly developed a reputation as a police agency beset by challenges to its integrity. This book offers a unique perspective by providing in-depth analyses of police integrity in South Africa. It is a case study that systematically and empirically explores the contours of police integrity in a young democracy. Using the organizational theory of police integrity, the book analyzes the complex set of historical, legal, political, social, and economic circumstances shaping police integrity. A discussion of the theoretical framework is accompanied by the results of a nationwide survey of nearly 900 SAPS officers, probing their familiarity with official rules, their expectations of discipline within the SAPS, and their willingness to report misconduct. The book also examines the influence of the respondents’ race, gender, and supervisory status on police integrity. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology, political science, as well as to police administrators interested in expanding their knowledge about police integrity and enhancing it in their organizations.
Often overlooked by journalists and scholars, the police forces of the African continents are a significant and little-studied phenomenon. This book seeks to redress that lacuna. The studies span the continent, from South Africa to Sierra Leone, keeping a strong ethnographic focus on police officers and their work.
South Africa boasts the largest private security sector in the entire world, reflecting deep anxieties about violence, security, and governance. Twilight Policing is an ethnographic study of the daily policing practices of armed response officersÑa specific type of private security officerÑand their interactions with citizens and the state police in Durban, South Africa. This book shows how their policing practices simultaneously undermine and support the state, resulting in actions that are neither public nor private, but something in between, something Òtwilight.Ó Their performances of security are also punitive, disciplinary, and exclusionary, and they work to reinforce post-apartheid racial and economic inequalities. Ultimately, Twilight Policing helps to illuminate how citizens survive volatile conditions and to whom they assign the authority to guide them in the process.
"In South Africa, both 'crime' and 'safety' are loaded terms. Ziyanda Stuurman unpacks the complex and fraught history of policing, courts and prisons in South Africa. In her analysis of the problems nationally and in putting those problems in context with the rest of the world, she concludes that more resources won't necessarily lead to more safety. What then, will? Ziyanda unpacks this complex question deftly with a view of a better future for us all"--Provided by Publisher.
