Unbundled security services and urban fragmentation in post-apartheid Johannesburg

Abstract

The paper questions the pluralization of policing devices and security agents across the Johannesburg metropolitan area, which has been accelerated and actually encouraged by public policies in the post-apartheid period. Are the various security initiatives and networks coordinated in a metropolitan security “system” – the regulation of which would need to be analysed – or does their development lead to urban fragmentation? Based on an analysis of an extensive documentation of security services, as well as a series of interviews with involved (street level) actors, different dimensions of potential urban fragmentation linked to security are examined: spatial fragmentation, with the development of road closures and their contestation; financial fragmentation, emblematised by business improvement districts encouraged by the municipality; and political fragmentation, as reflected by the analysis of the broader security policy framework. The paper argues that although the integrated vision of Johannesburg’s policing creates the basis for redistribution of resources and forms of policing regulation at a metropolitan level (in contrast with the apartheid period), the choice of neo-liberal urban policies, of which security strategies form a part, tends to encourage policing fragmentation, or in other words, the differential and unequal provision of security services according to place, income and race.