Abstract
Although the Farlam Commission of Inquiry is yet to report, it has been widely assumed in the blogosphere, across large sections of the traditional media, and in some preliminary academic analyses too, that the shootings at Marikana on 16 August 2012 are symptomatic of a police force in thrall to a political elite intimately connected to international capital and increasingly corporatised and unrepresentative trade unions. Against this background, this article looks to the notion of ‘relative autonomy’, considered in a classic discussion of ‘the concept of policing in critical theories of criminal justice’ by Otwin Marenin, to suggest that critics of the SAPS should not be surprised if, in moments of crisis, the police act as the agents of ‘specific domination’ rather than as guarantors of a ‘general order’. It will go on to argue that, even if their worst fears are confirmed by Farlam, their conclusion about the nature of the relationship between the SAPS and a political elite may be too sweeping. Using insights from recent studies of everyday policing, it will suggest that the way in which the police respond to strikes, service delivery protests and other politically charged incidents may tell us surprisingly little about what officers actually do, and why they do it, in the course of their everyday interactions with individual citizens and interest groups less politically well-connected than the main protagonists at Marikana. In conclusion it is argued that, in the absence of significant social change to remedy the structural inequalities bequeathed by apartheid, the SAPS has not been able to transcend its colonial inheritance, leaving the business of police reform begun over 20 years ago unfinished.
Highlights
Bill Dixon*The Farlam Commission of Inquiry is yet to report, it has been widely assumed in the blogosphere, across large sections of the traditional media, and in some preliminary academic analyses too, that the shootings at Marikana on 16 August 2012 are symptomatic of a police force in thrall to a political elite intimately connected to international capital and increasingly corporatised and unrepresentative trade unions
For many observers the events at Marikana in August 2012, when 44 people died – 34 of them at the hands of the South African Police Service (SAPS) in a single day – represent a turning point in South African policing
Some five months later, following Ramaphosa’s election as deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC) and the revelation that he had been in touch by email with government ministers and senior executives in Lonmin in the days preceding 16 August, David Bruce was more measured in his criticism.[3]
Summary
The Farlam Commission of Inquiry is yet to report, it has been widely assumed in the blogosphere, across large sections of the traditional media, and in some preliminary academic analyses too, that the shootings at Marikana on 16 August 2012 are symptomatic of a police force in thrall to a political elite intimately connected to international capital and increasingly corporatised and unrepresentative trade unions. Commentators in the traditional and online media have not been alone in following the trail laid by Mpofu and others at the Commission’s hearings In his conclusion to the most substantial piece of academic research published on events at Marikana to date, Peter Alexander has this to say about the network of relationships between the police, Lonmin, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and the government: There is what one might call a triangle of torment linking Lonmin, the police and NUM. What Marikana shows, I will argue, is that, insofar as the deeply entrenched social inequalities evident at the end of the apartheid era have persisted into the second decade of the twenty-first century, they have undermined the basis for police reform, much as John Brewer warned as he reflected on the prospects for democratic policing back in 1994.8
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