By Niki Moore At 4am on Thursday morning I woke up to find a shadowy stranger standing next to my bed, bending over my bedside table. The figure was silhouetted against the streetlight coming in from my window — an unfamiliar male shape with a rucksack in his back — and I sat up in […]
Police
Posted inGeneral
Jacques Ranciére – the philosopher of equality
It was about time that someone restored equality to its rightful place in the constellation of philosophical concepts, after decades of the valorisation of “difference” in various forms. And who better than a citizen of the country that gave us the battle-cry, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” Jacques Ranciére is that person, and refreshingly – in a […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Marikana, the sign of a schizophrenic state
As assault charges are laid against the police in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre, the outrageous reality is that torture is still not criminalised in South Africa. A draft law called the Prevention and Combating of Torture of Persons Bill is before parliament but far from adoption. The relevant parliamentary committee has postponed the […]
Posted inGeneral, News/Politics
Lonmin tragedy exposes the farce of a transformed police force
The killing of more than 30 mineworkers by police on Thursday is a watershed in post-apartheid policing and politics. Whatever the challenges confronting police in the face of an agitated and armed group of workers, the numbers of miners killed seems to reflect an action that seriously transgresses the limits of a reasonable response. The […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Police Minister Mthethwa eyes the Rambo costume
Why is it that every civilian tasked with overseeing of the SA Police Service transmogrifies into Rambo? Successive national commissioners and ministers have within days of appointment perfected gunslinger swaggers and begun laconically promising that cops will ‘shoot first’ and ‘shoot to kill the bastards’. The exception, Nathi Mthethwa, undoubtedly the best police minister that […]