NOTES

Published in Monograph No 120, October 2005

The Future of Rural Policing in South Africa

Jonny Steinberg

1. State of the Nation Address, President of the Republic of South Africa, 14 February 2003, at < www.dwaf.gov.za/Communications/ President%20state%20of%20nation%20address.doc>, accessed June 2005.
   
   

2. H Giliomee, The Afrikaners: Biography of a People, Cape Town, Tafelberg, 2003, p 59.
   
   

3. Ibid, p 59.
   
   

4. See, B Manby, Unequal Protection: The State Response to Violent Crime on South African Farms, Human Rights Watch, August 2001, at < http://www.hrw.org>.
   
   

5. Evidence for this point is anecdotal but pervasive. Since 1999 I have visited about two dozen Commandos across the country; the story of people leaving in 1994 for political reasons is ubiquitous. See, for instance, J Steinberg, An Assessment of the Rural Protection Plan in the Letaba and Mooi River Areas,  Johannesburg, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, 2000.
   
   

6. The government’s early thinking on policing is best expressed in the National Crime Prevention Strategy of 1996 < http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/policy/crime1.html> and its Safety and Security White Paper of 1998 <www.polity.org.za/govdocs/white_papers/s&swp.html>.
   
   

7. South African White Paper on Defence, 1996, chapter 4, paragraph 33, at < http://www.mil.za/Articles&Papers/Frame/Frame.htm>.
   
   

8. South Africa White Paper on Defence, 1996, chapter 5, paragraphs 14 to 16.
   
   

9. In other words, the principles articulated in the White Paper do not require the Commandos to close. Closing the Commandos is one of many available options to implement the principles embodied in the White Paper. After their closure, the Commandos’ non-policing functions – namely, wartime rear area defence and peacetime assistance in “exceptional circumstances” – will become the responsibility of the permanent force. Assessing the SANDF’s capacity to perform these functions after the closure of the Commandos is beyond the remit of this monograph.
   
   

10. Author’s correspondence with Major General J.F. Lusse, Co-Chairman, National Joint Task Team, 2 August 2005.
    
    

11. Author’s correspondence with Major General J.F. Lusse, Co-Chairman, National Joint Task Team, 2 August 2005.
    
    

12. J TAC HQ Free State, briefing to ISS research team, 30 May 2005.
    
    

13. D Coplan and T Thoahlane, Motherless Households, Landless Farms: Employment Patterns among Lesotho Migrants, in J Crush and W James (eds), Crossing Boundaries: Mine Migrancy in a Democratic South Africa, Cape Town, Idasa, 1995, pp 41-62.
    
    

14. N Nattrass, South African Gold Mining: the 1980s and beyond, Migrant Labour Project, University of Cape Town, 1993, p 32.
    
    

15. See J Irish, Illicit trafficking of vehicles across Beit Bridge border post, Institute for Security Studies, Paper 109, June 2005; and J Steinberg, Drug smuggling and border control at Johannesburg International Airport and Durban Harbour, Pretoria, Institute for Security Studies, Paper 104, April 2005.
    
    

16. T Leggett, Rainbow Vice: the drugs and sex industries in the new South Africa, London, Zed, 2001, p 36.
    
    

17. Lesotho Ministry of Labour, National Employment Services Figures, cited in T Ulicki and J Crush, Gender, Farmwork, and Women’s Migration from Lesotho to the New South Africa, in Canadian Journal of African Studies, 34(1) 2000, pp 69-70.
    
    

18. Cited in Ulicki and Crush, op cit, p 69.
    
    

19. See annual station-level crimes stats for the whole of South Africa for the last ten years at < http://www.iss.co.za/CJM/stats0904/index.htm>.
    
    

20. This figure is a little dated. It was calculated in 1999 and based on the last available census figures at that time.
    
    

21. See < http://www.iss.co.za/CJM/stats0904/index.htm>.
    
    

22. Cited in AgriSA, Options for the Replacement of the SANDF Commando, paper presented at the ISS Symposium on options for the replacement of the SANDF Commando system, 25 September 2003.
    
    

23. For a discussion on the policing of shebeens, see J Steinberg, Sector Policing on the West Rand: Three Case Studies, Pretoria, Institute for Security Studies monograph series no 110, 2004, p 30 and pp 38-39.
    
    

24. Briefing at J TAC HQ, Gauteng, 14 June 2005.
    
    

25. For an account of how badly intelligence gathering can go wrong in post-apartheid rural South Africa, see J Steinberg, Midlands, Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 2002, pp 153-174.
    
    

26. L Sherman, The Police, in J.Q. Wilson and J. Petersilia (eds), Crime, San Fransisco: ICS Press, 1995, pp 331-332.
    
    

27. For a discussion on some of the debates around hotspot policing, see L Sherman, P Gartin and M Buerger, Hot Spots of Predatory Crime: Routine Activities and the Criminology of Place, in Criminology 27, 1989, pp 27-55.
    
    

28. The classic and original statement of the idea of POP is H Goldstein “Improving Policing: A Problem-Oriented Approach”, Crime and Delinquency 25, 1979, pp 236-258.
    
    

29. For two fine discussions on the SAPS’s reliance on high visibility, high density policing, see M Shaw, Crime and Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Transforming Under Fire, Cape Town, David Philip, 2002; T Leggett, The State of Crime and Policing, in S Buhlungu, J Daniel, J Lutchman and R Southall (eds) The State of the Nation: South Africa 2004/2005, Pretoria, HSRC Press, 2005.
    
    

30. See, for instance, R Weisheit et al, Rural Crime and Rural Policing, Washington DC, National Institute of Justice, September 1994; K Baird-Olson, Doing what we’ve always done: a case study of rural policing, Washington, National Criminal Justice Reference Service, 2000, at < www.ncjrs.org> (17 June 2005).
    
    

31. Report of the Committee of Inquiry in Farm Attacks, July 2003, p 351, at < http://www.saps.gov.za/statistics/reports/farmattacks/farmattacks_2003.htm> (18 June 2005).
    
    

32. D Mistry, Ploughing in Resources: the investigation of farm attacks, in SA Crime Quarterly No 6, December 2003, pp 7-12.
    
    

33. G Cordner, Police Agency Size and Investigative Effectiveness, in Journal of Criminal Justice, 17(1), 1989, p 153.
    
    

34. See R Weisheit et al, Crime and Policing in Rural and Small-Town America: an overview of the issues, Washington DC, National Institute of Justice research report, 1995.
    
    

35. See J Burger, Phasing in SAPS capability to replace the SANDF commandos, presentation to the ISS symposium on options for the replacement of the SANDF Commando system, 25 September 2003.
    
    

36. In the three provinces we visited – Free State, Eastern Cape and Gauteng – we were informed that a total of eight former members of non-area bound Commando units have joined the reserve.
    
    

37. See, inter alia, Cops to woo 50,000 commando members, Sapa, 6 May 2005.
    
    

38. Author’s communication with SAPS Assistant Commissioner Ben Groenewald, 26 July 2005.
    
    

39. Individual Commando members who are recruited into the police reserve will not, however, gain a 14% increase in income. On the contrary, they will lose income. Currently, an entry-level recruit in the Commandos (the equivalent to a police corporal) who works 120 days per year at R144.00 per day earns R13,680 per year. Under the police reserve dispensation, a middle-ranking inspector, working his maximum of 84 days per year, will earn R10,667.16 per annum. Commando members who join the police reserve, and rely solely on their SAPS work for their livelihoods, will in general experience a steep decline in income.
    
    

40. South African Police Service, Draft National Instruction 1/2002, The South African Reserve Police Service.
    
    

41. Author’s communication with SAPS Assistant Commissioner Ben Groenewald, 26 July 2005.
    
    

42. South African Police Service, Draft National Instruction 1/2002, The South African Reserve Police Service, 2(2).
    
    

43. Draft National Instruction 1/2002, 2(2)(d)(i).
    
    

44. See Steinberg, Sector Policing on the West Rand, op cit.
    
    

45. Cops to woo 50,000 commando members, Sapa, op cit.
    
    

46. See B Johnson, A Golub, and E Dunlap, The Rise and Decline of Hard Drugs, Drug Markets, and Violence in Inner-City New York, in A Blumstein and J Wallman (eds), The Crime Drop in America, Cambridge Mass, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p 173.
    
    

47. For a particularly eloquent statement of this thesis, see J.Q Wilson and G.L Kelling, Broken Windows: The Police and Neighbourhood Safety, in Atlantic Monthly, April 1982, pp 28-39. For an account of policing in New York in the 1990s, see J.E Eck and E. R Maquire, Have Changes in Policing Reduced Violent Crime? An Assessment of the Evidence, in Blumstein and Wallman (eds), The Crime Drop in America, pp 207-265.
    
    

48. See Planning Information for the SA Police Service, 2005-06, at < www.saps.gov.za>.
    
    

49. Planning Information for the SA Police Service, 2005-06, p 29.
    
    

50. Planning Information for the SA Police Service, 2005-06, p 28.
    
    

51. For an argument of this nature in relation to the SAPS, see Shaw, Crime and Policing in Post-Apartheid South Africa, op cit.