Marikana massacre, November 2012
Is there still need for a Peace Corps?
When communities are under security threat self protection mechanisms arise in autonomous means for
self-protection. We see this happening, for example, in the waves of protest
movements sweeping through North Africa and the Arab lands in the Mid East.
When protests are peaceful and spontaneous they are vulnerable from two
specific dangers. First, there is the danger that if the state feels threatened
by the unrest they will employ provocateurs in order to entice clashes and
conflict, and thus strike pre-emptively before the protest snowballs out of
control. And the second danger are opportunistic, mostly criminal elements in
the community who will see their chances to loot homes and businesses and even
directly attack community members in robberies, rapes and murder.
It requires a minimum of organization
within the protesting movements to encourage and endorse spontaneous action in
the community street patrols, organize self-protection committees in streets
and set up some form of coordinating mechanism between these. In fact most
revolutionary movements find themselves overtaken in situations where
communities come under stress and fear for their own safety. This happened in
the 1871 Paris Commune where a spontaneous Safety Committee arose, or
in the 1848 revolutions in Europe where such Safety Committees were set up and
became nodal points for the growth of political power to unseat old regimes.
More often than not they failed when restorations occurred and old regimes
re-established themselves.
This cycle is of longer duration and not
visible from one year to the next. In the case of unrest in the townships which
boiled over in the mid eighties causing the Apartheid Regime to send the South
African Defence Force into townships. This merely led to intensification of
self protection mechanisms in the populations. An important point here is that
these more or less spontaneous street and area committees prefigured political
movements such as the United Democratic Front, rather than the other way round.
The township residents were concerned about safety issues, bread and butter issues as well as
social issues such as schooling, safety and security, and “service delivery” of
water, electricity and sewerage systems. The UDF, and later the ANC imposed
political agendas which today have backfired as precisely the same issues which
caused the unrest in the seventies and reaching a peak in the mind nineteen eighties
are back on the radar. All that happened is the old story of first a political
dispensation which was branded “revolutionary”, and then restoration of vested
interests leading to the same economic and maladies boiling up in revolt all
over again. Many have made the point that the intensity of unrest of recent
years that the “revolutionary” A N C government has to deal with, are the same
as was the case with the “old regime”.
So at grassroots level not much has
changed, besides what can be called “macro-cosmetic” measures to rid the
country of over race laws. After a respite of a number of years many townships
were improved, but a steady influx from the rural areas to the urban led to
unrest of some would say equal intensity as in the mid eighties. While “service
delivery”, or the absence of it, lies at the heart growing unrest, one stands out central – the violence
that was masked as political in the pre-transition years has continued unabated
and is the major predicament facing all of South African society, and
especially in the poor communities. Crime has reached record levels when
measured by international standards.
After the first democratic elections of
1994 there was a natural tendency for communities to revert to self protection
mechanisms. In the townships vigilante groups bubbled from the streets while in
the urban, still mainly white areas neighbourhood watches backed by Commando
Units of the old South African Defence Force were reactivated by residents.
Overarching this was the stipulation in the National Peace Corps that
inequalities in the South African society must be reduced as a means to reduced
violence and crime. Marshal units were
trained in community policing by observer missions donor organizations before
1994, and played a very useful role in their traditional area of expertise,
namely ensuring safety and security in their own communities. In this the
marshal units of the previous Border Region excelled themselves in preempting
and quelling rioting following the fall of the Ciskei Bantustan. These marshals also excelled in turning back
a mass march of 100,000 people when the advance was ambushed by soldiers of the
Ciskei Defence Force. Ironically this ambush was provoked by Ronnie Kasrils, a
leading member of the South African Communist Party and later Deputy Minister
of Defence, ostensibly to steal a march on the ANC in demonstrating personal prowess in the national liberation movement hierarchy. Almost one hundred marchers ere killed and
hundreds more seriously injured. Were it not for a well trained marshals
brigade the damages inflicted by the Ciskei soldiers would have been much more
severe.
With these background and overarching
developments, the negotiators between the old Regime and the ANC put policing
on the top of the list of priority. Already in the interim Constitution
promulgated the establishment of community policing forums to “monitor” the
activities of each and every South African Police Station. In fact the
philosophy of policing was changed moving the force away towards a service,
thus the name change from “SAP” to “SAPS”. In many areas the old marshal structures
filled the new space as Community Policing Forums, in some instances vigilante
organizations became predominant and Community Policing as official government
policy came off to a very shaky start.
This new approach to policing was hoped the
have an immediate and significant impact on reducing crime. In the initial
years, however, even though there was a falling off because of the ending of
“black-on-black” violence crime continued to spiral out of control. Soon flaws
showed up in the policy and guidelines for setting up of Community Policing
Forms as these became soccer balls between contending political factions, were
infiltrated by sectional interests such as illegal liquor outlets and dens of
prostitution. Official frustration in
quelling crime led to ever more desperate measures such as a “shoot to kill”
policy with regard to street control of crime, a name change back to South
African Police Force”, from “South African Police Service” and the imposition
of direct control over Community Policing Forums by smothering them with a new
level of police organization called Sector Policing.
The question now is, is a community
volunteer system such as existed with the Marshals Peace Corps still relevant?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, because the system of a properly community
anchored structure to ensure that community’s safety has been proven to be
highly effective. But no because such a structure as used to exist can only
function when it gets direction from its own community, and is free from a
top-down control by official authorities, including principally the
police.
With the adversarial relationship between
communities and the police, service delivery protests as much the order of the
day ass riots and revolts in the townships in the ,mid 1980s, the role of the
police have become not only contentious, but play a positive negative role with
no hope for building community relations as in the post National Peace Accord
period.
So while there is manifestly the need for a
well-run and disciplined community peace corps in the form of a Community
Policing Forum for example, the very idea has landed on the ash heap of very recent history.
Berend Schuitema
March 2013
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