Institutional Violence and the Law in Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

In apartheid South Africa, prisons and psychiatric hospitals played a specific role in the imposition of “law and order” on a society which shared many features with other colonial settings. By examining the different dynamics relating to institutional violence, a process in which one must be wary of the ethical problems that may arise for the researcher, a clearer picture of apartheid violence and its relation to the law emerges. Prisons and psychiatric hospitals were permeable institutions which allowed for the transfer of modalities of violence, subjugation, resistance, collaboration and repression. These institutions actually functioned as magnifying glasses revealing the mechanisms of state control through the dissemination of fear in the South African society.