The Dirty Work of Democracy: A Year on the Streets with the SAPS
by Antony Altbeker
(Jonathan Ball)
Transforming the Robocops: Changing Police in South Africa
by Monique Marks
(University of KwaZulu-Natal Press)
Many today, when playing word association, will connect “corruption” to the word “police”. Those of a slightly earlier generation might come up with “brutality”. Sadly, these words sum up, in much of the popular consciousness, the image we have of the South African police. But are such associations either fair or true? These two new books go a considerable way to helping us see the new South African Police Service (SAPS) more fairly.
Antony Altbeker and Monique Marks look at the new SAPS from two distinct perspectives. Altbeker seeks to portray and analyse the SAPS primarily from a journalist’s perspective, while Marks’s approach is more academic in tone and more focused, her subject being the Durban Public Order Police (POP) — formerly known (and feared) as the riot police.
Starting with cases of domestic violence in Galeshewe, Kimberley, and moving from stock theft units on the Lesotho border, through the suburbs and townships of Cape Town and Johannesburg, to police stations in Limpopo and Mpumalanga, Altbeker takes us into the day-to-day workings of the SAPS and into the lives of many police officers. Without going into long theoretical discussions of policing and “cop culture”, he presents an unvarnished account of “life on the streets”. Each chapter is set in a different place, framed around either a police officer or a case, with the result being a broad picture of the state of policing in South Africa.
Durban sociologist Marks focuses, by contrast, on the transformation of the Durban POP unit, epitomised, as one officer puts it, by the shift from “crowd control” to “crowd management”. But, Marks shows, the POP also does “sweep and search” operations, deals with occasions of mob violence and specialised tasks (including security for public events, hostage situations and the protection of prominent persons at gatherings). Marks examines how transformation has affected the unit.
Transformation is a common theme. Since 1994, some police have welcomed the “demilitarisation” of the SAPS and the move towards “community policing”. Others see it as a disaster, particularly for crime fighting. One policeman Altbeker interviews sees it as a total collapse of policing: in his view, if police don’t get tough with criminals, criminals lose respect and fear for the police. This and an overly liberal and administratively creaking criminal justice system means triumph for criminals.
Many of the Durban POP echo such views, looking back wistfully to the “good old days”. Marks highlights the tensions in attitude between the “new” and the “old guard”, as well as the frustration and disillusionment (frequently felt among Altbeker’s “street cops” too) of police who believe that the SAPS has become bureaucratised and led by managers lacking experience on the ground.
White — and to some degree Indian — police also believe that too many new appointments are “political appointees” based solely on affirmative action criteria. Several in both books feel they have reached a “glass ceiling” in the SAPS. Marks, however, proposes that more transformation is needed.
Altbeker’s book is a series of case studies of ethical problems, many of which he admits have no easy solutions. Refreshingly, he engages with non-PC questions: Are bureaucrats blocking police in their work? How far does policing remain unequally distributed between rich and poor in South Africa?
Perhaps the most difficult and disturbing reflections are those on alleged police corruption: in a number of interviews he recounts how police officers have hedged and sought to rationalise cases of fellow police arrested for corruption. In contrast, he also notes, some officers have a clear and uncompromising “zero tolerance” attitude on this matter.
Both these books, though they do not dispel popular myths about the SAPS, go a long way to helping readers understand the police better. Transforming the Robocops, though academic, is not in jargon, and The Dirty Work of Democracy has the gritty style of a police procedural combined with a philosophical sharpness of reflection. Together, these books challenge us to rethink our perceptions of the police.