Approximately six months ago, the City of Cape Town began a poster campaign, explicitly aimed at highlighting the prevalence and social consequences of drug use in the city. The posters all feature a stern-looking local celebrity – most often Chester Williams, Patricia de Lille, and Ian Bredenkamp – with the following bold words: I am […]
policing
Posted inNews/Politics
DA should fix the police force, not expand it
The Democratic Alliance, if elected to run the next national government, will make it a top election priority to put “250 000 properly trained police officers on the streets”. DA leader Helen Zille reiterated this statement during the anti-crime march in Mitchells Plain held on April 6 2014. She added that the DA would do this […]
Posted inGeneral
Rethinking the police
From the infamous LAPD to London’s notorious Special Patrol Group and even further back — two centuries ago to the first ever newspaper reports of “police brutality” — all police forces exist along a continuum of violence. Leaving corruption aside South Africa’s police tend towards the direst part. We may not have the death penalty […]
Posted inNews/Politics
Special Assignment drops journalistic integrity, embraces Pagad
On Wednesday September 28 the SABC’s Special Assignment programme aired a documentary on the re-emergence of the organisation People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad). South Africans will remember Pagad as a Cape Town-based vigilante movement established in the mid-1990s that, after a seemingly peaceful start to its activities, turned to violence against drug dealers, gang […]