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South African Crime Quarterly, No 48

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South African Crime Quarterly, No 48 CQ Cover June 2014 7/10/14 3:27 PM Page 1 Reviewing 20 years of criminal justice in South Africa South A f r i c a n CRIME QUA RT E R LY No. 48 | June 2014 Previous issues Stacy Moreland analyses judgements in rape ISS Pretoria cases in the We s t e r n Cape, finding that Block C, Brooklyn Court p a t r i a rchal notions of gender still inform 361 Veale Street judgements in rape case. Heidi Barnes writes a New Muckleneuk case note on the Constitutional Court case Pretoria, South Africa F v Minister of Safety and Security. Alexander Tel: +27 12 346 9500 Hiropoulos and Jeremy Porter demonstrate how Fax:+27 12 460 0998 Geographic Information Systems can be used, [email protected] along with crime pattern theory, to analyse police crime data. Geoff Harris, Crispin Hemson ISS Addis Ababa & Sylvia Kaye report on a conference held in 5th Floor, Get House Building Durban in mid-2013 about measures to reduce Africa Avenue violence in schools; and Hema Harg o v a n Addis Ababa, Ethiopia reviews the latetest edition of Victimology in Tel: +251 11 515 6320 South Africa by Robert Peacock (ed). Fax: +251 11 515 6449 [email protected] Andrew Faull responds to Herrick and Charman ISS Dakar (SACQ 45), delving into the daily liquor policing 4th Floor, Immeuble Atryum in the Western Cape. He looks beyond policing Route de Ouakam for solutions to alcohol-related harms. Claudia Forester-Towne considers how race and gender Dakar, Senegal influence police reservists' views about their Tel: +221 33 860 3304/42 work. Elrena Van der Spuy assesses the Fax: +221 33 860 3343 contribution of ethnographers and auto- [email protected] biographies to our understanding of policing in South Africa. Megan Govender looks at how ISS Nairobi crime statistics and the national victims of crime Braeside Gardens surveys are used to support opposing views of off Muthangari Road public perception about the levels of crime. The edition concludes with a discussion between Lavington, Nairobi, Kenya Oliver Owen (Nigeria) and Andrew Faull (South Tel: +254 20 266 7208 Africa) about the differences in how police Fax: +254 20 266 7198 performance in the two countries. [email protected] www.issafrica.org > Twenty years of punishment (and democracy) in South Africa > Political policing then and now > Criminal justice policy and remand detention since 1994 > Insider views on the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Serv i c e s > Addressing corruption in South Africa > Responses to organised crime in a democratic South Africa > Upholding children's rights in the criminal justice system The Institute for Security Studies is an African organisation which aims to enhance human security on the continent. It does independent and authoritative research, provides expert policy analysis and advice, and delivers practical training and technical assistance. © 2014, Institute for Security Studies Copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the Institute for Security Studies, and no part may be reproduced in whole or in part without the express permission, in writing, of both the authors and the publishers. The opinions expressed do not reflect those of the Institute, its trustees, members of the Advisory Council or donors. Authors contribute to ISS publications in their personal capacity. ISBN 1991-3877 First published by the Institute for Security Studies, P O Box 1787, Brooklyn Square 0075 Pretoria, South Africa www.issafrica.org SACQ can be freely accessed on-line at http://www.issafrica.org/publications/south-african-crime-quarterly Editor Chandré Gould e-mail [email protected] Editorial board Professor Ann Skelton, Director: Centre for Child Law, University of Pretoria Judge Jody Kollapen, High Court of South Africa Dr Jonny Steinberg, Research Associate, Centre for Criminology, Oxford University Dr Jamil Mujuzi, Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape Associate Professor Catherine Ward, Department of Psychology, University of Cape Town Associate Professor Dee Smythe, Director of the Centre for Law and Society, University of Cape Town Professor William Dixon, Head of School, School of Sociology and Criminology, Keele University, UK Professor Rudolph Zinn, Department of Police Practice, University of South Africa Associate Professor Lukas Muntingh, Project Coordinator, Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative, Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape Sub-editors who worked on this edition Andrew Faull, PhD candidate, Oxford University Khalil Goga, PhD candidate, Stellenbosch University Camilla Pickles, PhD candidate, University of Pretoria Elona Toska, PhD candidate, Oxford University Cover An artist’s impression of criminal justice over the past 20 years © Lize-Marie Dreyer Production Image Design 071 883 9359 Printing Remata Contents SA Crime Quarterly No. 48 | June 2014 Editorial Memory and forgetting: how meta-narratives about the past overshadow the future ..................................... 3 Twenty years of punishment (and democracy) in South Africa ..................................................................... 7 The pitfalls of governing crime through the community Gail Super We need a complicit police! .......................................................................................................................... 17 Political policing then and now Julia Hornberger Unsustainable and unjust ............................................................................................................................. 25 Criminal justice policy and remand detention since 1994 Jean Redpath Looking back ................................................................................................................................................. 39 insider views on the judicial inspectorate for Correctional Services Chloë McGrath & Elrena van der Spuy Control, discipline and punish? .................................................................................................................... 49 Addressing corruption in South Africa David Bruce Taking stock of the last 20 years .................................................................................................................. 63 Responses to organised crime in a democratic South Africa Khalil Goga Court support workers speak out ................................................................................................................. 75 Upholding children’s rights in the criminal justice system Loraine Townsend, Samantha Waterhouse & Christina Nomdo SA Crime QuArterly No. 48 • juNe 2014 A1 Editorial Memory and forgetting: how meta-narratives about the past overshadow the future Two decades on from 1994 seems an appropriate time to take stock of what has been achieved and where we have fallen short of our own expectations, and identify what remains to be done in South Africa. But perhaps it is also an appropriate moment to take stock of how we remember and represent our past and how the meta- narratives, particularly about apartheid and opposition to apartheid, inform and overshadow our present and future. Memory is a curious thing, at both a social and individual level. While we are inclined to think of our memory as a static entity, scientists such as Charles Fernyhough describe it as a constantly changing set of impressions, informed as much by the needs of the present as by the experiences of the past.1 When the memories we have are of traumatic events, the process of remembering is even more fraught, especially when those who are doing the remembering do not share the same perspectives, experiences or social status. For South Africans the construction of a collective memory about the experience of apartheid is thus fraught. While remembering the details of the past was regarded as an essential requirement for moving forward, we as a society did our remembering within a formal process guided by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and within a very narrow time period. After the TRC, arguably, we moved forward very quickly to forget – enabled by the construction of comfortable meta-narratives that do not disturb. This is consistent with trauma psychologist Judith Herman’s theory that ‘the knowledge of horrible events periodically intrudes into public awareness but … is rarely retained for long’. Indeed, she argues that ‘[d]enial, repression, and dissociation operate on a social as well as an individual level’. But, ‘like traumatised people, we need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present and the future’.2 The meta-narratives we have constructed draw very clear lines between ‘perpetrator’ and ‘victim’, ‘hero’ and ‘villain’, establishing these as distinct categories, despite the very real murkiness and fluidity between them, identified even by the TRC.3 I believe it is the untroubled acceptance of these categories of ‘othering’, applied post-apartheid, that creates the basis for justifying state violence. Over the past 18 months the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Global Leadership Academy of the German Development Agency (GIZ) have held a series of international dialogues about transitional justice and ‘memory work’. The driving motivation of these dialogues has been to overcome what practitioners, theorists and activists in the fields of peace-building and transitional justice have come to express as a stagnancy in thinking about, and approaches to dealing with, past injustices and conflict. The dialogues have identified as a crucial element in any transition to democracy ‘respect for, and the provision of space
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