Unbundled Security Services and Urban Fragmentation in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg
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Geoforum 39 (2008) 1933–1950 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Unbundled security services and urban fragmentation in post-apartheid Johannesburg Claire Bénit-Gbaffou * Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Aix-Marseille I, France Associate Researcher at the Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, WITS 2050, South Africa Gecko, Laboratoire de Géographie comparée des Suds et des Nords, EA375, Université Paris X-Nanterre, France article info abstract Article history: The paper questions the pluralization of policing devices and security agents across the Johannesburg Received 19 March 2007 metropolitan area, which has been accelerated and actually encouraged by public policies in the post- Received in revised form 16 September apartheid period. Are the various security initiatives and networks coordinated in a metropolitan security 2007 ‘‘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 ser- ies of interviews with involved (street level) actors, different dimensions of potential urban fragmenta- Keywords: tion linked to security are examined: spatial fragmentation, with the development of road closures Security and their contestation; financial fragmentation, emblematised by business improvement districts Policing Fragmentation encouraged by the municipality; and political fragmentation, as reflected by the analysis of the broader Security network security policy framework. The paper argues that although the integrated vision of Johannesburg’s polic- Road closures ing creates the basis for redistribution of resources and forms of policing regulation at a metropolitan Business improvement districts level (in contrast with the apartheid period), the choice of neo-liberal urban policies, of which security Johannesburg 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. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Graham and Marvin’s splintering urbanism hypothesis goes be- yond the study of material network service provision such as Graham and Marvin’s ‘Splintering Urbanism’ thesis, presented water, electricity and telecommunication. It can be interestingly in a ground breaking and stimulating book (2001), analyses of ur- used to analyse any kind of service involving networks – even ban service provision using a historical perspective. Their thesis those which are partly immaterial such as policing services1 or demonstrates that the recent transformation of service provision more precisely security networks in contemporary cities. Changing paradigm, based on ‘good governance’, public–private partnerships security governance, implying new technologies and more impor- and different forms of privatisation, has led to increasing levels of tantly diversifying sets of stakeholders, raises the question of public inequality in terms of access to services in contemporary cities. coordination and regulation of these multiple security actors. In this Their analysis is part of a broader literature concerned with the regard, should one speak of security ‘‘networks” (Newburn, 2001)or transformation of governance in today’s cities and its implication of security ‘‘partnerships”? The latter involves the idea of the possi- regarding the state’s capacity to govern, rule or regulate urban ble regulation by public authorities, whilst security networks do not societies. Unlike Brenner (2004) and Hibou (2004) who argue that necessarily imply coordination at a broader level, since several net- transformation of state modes of intervention do not prevent it works can coexist in the same city with limited links to one another, from exerting important forms of control over society, Graham thereby forming ‘‘splintered” security systems. and Marvin, in agreement with Jessop (2002), show that privatisa- Similarly to the Graham and Marvin’s mythical ‘‘golden age” of tion and the unbundling of urban services lead to increased social a universal service based on the generalisation of public infra- inequalities and reduced state capacity to regulate the social ef- structures in modern societies, Garland (1996) shows how the fects of such market dynamics. state monopoly of the legitimate use of violence was a myth that founded the modern state. Maybe even more than water and elec- tricity, security provision under an incrementally integrated pub- * Address: Associate Researcher at the Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, WITS 2050, South Africa. 1 As Johnston (1999, p. 192), we define policing as ‘the act of governance (or rule) E-mail address: [email protected]. directed towards the promotion of security’. 0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.10.011 1934 C. Bénit-Gbaffou / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1933–1950 lic army and police force was one of the primary functions of tion, but they also have encouraged the development of highly un- modern states, overcoming the fragmentation of the warlords of equal security systems across the city. It is this juxtaposition of the Ancien Regime (Weber, 1979). The rising privatisation and different security networks4 that we wish to analyse here, question- unbundling of security provision are therefore far reaching, not ing the impact this proliferation of local initiatives has on security only in terms of equal access to security as a basic right for all ur- provision and its public regulation in Johannesburg. ban residents, but also in terms of the capacity of the state to Whilst the thesis of splintering urbanism will be used as a manage and maintain regulatory power on what is still one of leading thread in this paper, I will complement it with another its core functions. body of literature, entrenched in the French urban geographic tra- In post-apartheid South African cities, these two questions are dition that has developed more specifically around the notion of central for the new democratic government. Is the state able to re- ‘‘urban fragmentation” (Jaglin, 2001, 2005a, 2005b; Navez-Bou- dress some of the huge social and spatial inequalities inherited chanine, 2002). Using the same image as Graham and Marvin to from the apartheid past – of which access to security is not the describe contemporary cities, this literature complements the main, but certainly a very large and shared social concern? And, ‘‘splintering urbanism” approach (mainly focused on urban policy is the state able to govern efficiently and legitimately a policing and governance) by drawing a specific attention to urban space system in a very divided urban society, whose residents are di- and spatial practices, which give the idea of splintered and frag- versely affected by crime and using different devices to protect mented cities more of a ‘‘lived”, practised and experienced themselves? dimension. It is all the more relevant for the study of security Before looking at post-apartheid security provision dynamics governance, as security concerns generate specific urban practices and the scope of their regulation by the state, we need to give and forms. Residents’ spatial practices adapt to (real or perceived) important historical and contextual elements that can help place insecurity by, for instance, sidelining feared spaces, imposing spe- South Africa in Graham and Marvin’s general framework. As cific time and spatial patterns to their movements (Koskela, stressed by Jaglin (2005a), the South African case is very particu- 1999), changing their use of public space (Mitchell, 1995; Gra- lar. As a developing country it is faced by the difficulty of gener- ham, 1998). Security concerns also lead to specific urban and alising public services in a society characterized by massive architectural forms, from fortress cities (Davis, 1990) to panopti- poverty. But the South African state has shared and somehow con architecture and planning (Foucault, 1975; Coleman and Sim, implemented the modernist dream, through a state-driven segre- 2000; Lyon, 2003), where diverse security stakeholders (from ur- gationist project that was convenient for the taylorist industriali- ban developers to security providers, CCTV technology specialists sation process, as it provided industries with a mass of workers and urban designers) play a major role. Hence the notion of urban deprived of basic rights and therefore easy to control (Crankshaw, fragmentation is operational as it considers different complemen- 1997). However, again following Jaglin (2005a), the ‘‘golden age” tary ‘‘dimensions” of fragmentation, providing a framework for a of public supremacy on the production of security never really ex- multi-dimensional analysis and measurement of fragmentation isted. As early as the 1970s, the state police focused on its political trends, less developed in the more historical and urban policies- objectives and subcontracted its civilian duties to the private sec- oriented splintering urbanism approaches. Defining fragmenta- tor (Carrier, 1999; Schönteich et al., 2004). The growth of private tion as a de-solidarisation of the city (no longer functioning as security companies (local and international) preceded in