Paper short abstract:

What are the legal and political effects of official lies about what occurred in cases of police violence? To answer this question, the paper examines the South African police leadership's role in shaping evidence about the 2012 Marikana Massacre.

Paper long abstract:

What are the legal and political effects of official lies about what occurred in cases of police violence? To answer this question, the paper examines the South African police leadership's role in producing evidence that would be available (or not) for a Commission of Inquiry about the 2012 Marikana Massacre, an event where police officers killed 34 striking mine workers and injured dozens more. The paper looks at a contradictory situation where an official Commission of Inquiry produced thousands of pages of evidence and testimony about the event, and yet still found it difficult to assign blame for the violence because officers gave conflicting testimony of the events that transpired and senior police officials allegedly altered or manufactured evidence following the massacre. The result has been no prosecutions of police officers for the events of that day and answers to a variety of legal questions about the nature of the event remain outstanding, including most importantly whether any of the police violence was illegal. Similarly, there has been little political accountability for politicians connected to the events at Marikana. The paper uses this seemingly extreme case to think through the challenges in producing "the truth" about incidents of quotidian police violence in many contexts across the African continent.

Paper short abstract:

The study examines the policing regimes that have emerged in the streets and the various ways that the traders have negotiated and navigated the policing of their trade. I argue, the ban of sex enhancers and the policing thereof, have sustained this illicit trade

Paper long abstract:

Following the ban of the sale of over-the-counter sex enhancers in 2013 by the Zimbabwean government on the grounds that they were dangerous and not authentic, a vibrant illicit street trade in the commodities emerged and was sustained helped by a deteriorating and volatile economy. The sex enhancers were in the form of pills, oils, fluids, tea and coffee, among others. The trade of sex enhancers in the streets also violates city council bylaws. The study examines the policing regimes that have emerged in the streets and the various ways that the traders have negotiated and navigated the policing of their trade. Rather than end or reduce the trade in sex enhancers, I argue, the ban of sex enhancers and the policing thereof, have engendered various layers of fakery while sustaining and entrenching the illicit trade. The various policing regimes have included the Zimbabwe Republic Police and their drug busts (both sanctioned and unsanctioned), policing by municipal police, regimes of self-policing among the traders as well as imposter police. The sanctioned drug busts by the police have themselves become merely performative acts, a catch and release drill which can also be interpreted as ‘fake’ policing. The arena of informal/illicit trade in sex enhancers has become largely a space of economic survival for everyone given the never-ending economic crisis in the country. Using both online and traditional ethnography, this study explores the various ways in which the traders experience policing of their trade in sex enhancers.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the politics of intelligence gathering in South Africa and its reproduction of existing divides and hierarchies within the plural policing landscape.

Paper long abstract:

Across the globe, everyday policing is increasingly defined by digitalization and technologies. This trend can be identified across the plural policing landscape, whereby public, private, and civic policing actors employ a range of technological tools and measures in their everyday policing practices. In South Africa, technologies in policing are primarily geared towards more effective crime prevention and detection. A core objective for numerous policing actors is the acquisition of more intelligence and this primarily entails collecting various forms and sets of data through various technologies, such as Apps and CCTV cameras. In this paper, I analyze the politics of this intelligence gathering process and a recurrent distinction that is made between ‘dirty’ versus ‘clean’ data. By drawing from qualitative research conducted in 2021-2023, I will discuss the ways ‘data’ is framed and discussed, and how these distinctions of ‘dirt’ versus ‘clean’ mirror and reproduce existing divisions and hierarchies within the plural policing landscape.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores everyday abolition in Kenya and South Africa. We argue that everyday abolition is more than just police resistance. It refers to messy, productive practices of dispute resolution and justice, which seek to build new futures in the midst of contemporary injustice.

Paper long abstract:

Police abolition is a dual project: On the one hand, abolitionists argue that the police as an institution cannot be rescued through reform because it is inherently flawed. On the other hand, they believe that another, better world is possible: a world that can be incrementally built as the injustices of the current world are dismantled.

In our paper, we seek to contextualise the idea of police abolition in Africa, focusing on Kenya and South Africa. Our primary interest is not in exploring how the term ‘police abolition’ has travelled across the globe from US activist-academics. Instead, we are interested in the work of ‘everyday abolition’ (Lamble 2021). What might this look like on the ground?

Drawing on examples from Kenya and South Africa, we make three key propositions. First, that ‘everyday abolition’ is a project of positive action. As such, it means more than just police resistance: participants must be seeking to build new alternatives. Second, ‘everyday abolition’ is a messy project because it seeks to create new realities from within the world as it stands. Therefore, participants in everyday abolition may not act in ways that are completely disengaged from the criminal justice system. Practices and projects of everyday abolition may include sporadic recourse to policing services or the strategic repurposing of policing resources. Finally, the futures that are sought by everyday abolitionists must follow a distinct logics from state policing - they cannot simply be projects of mimicry. That said, the futures that are pursued through everyday abolition may be piecemeal, sedimentary, contradictory, and flawed.

Paper short abstract:

The paper questions why, in a time of heightened subjugation of African/Black lives around the globe to death and abjection, scholars have devoted such little attention to coeval and similarly situated struggles. The paper explores grounds for transnational solidarity against police brutality.

Paper long abstract:

The murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020 generated intense scrutiny and solidarity around the globe. And nowhere as critically as from the African continent, which shortly after experienced its own “Floyd moment” in the form of the #EndSARS movement against police brutality. Taking Nigeria and the United States as zones of awkward engagements, this paper explores grounds for transnational solidarity against police brutality. The paper locates police brutality within a field of power that naturalize certain persons as "mere danglers" (Menkiti, 1984) and disposable. By recasting spectacular instances of police brutality in a spectral light, the paper tracks the ghost-like effects of the state across vast and multiple interacting spaces. The invitation is to allow ourselves to be contaminated by our encounters and conditions as they allow for the surfacing of mutual worlds and new directions.

Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses the concept of territoriality, with the emphasis that Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) needs inclusive and strategic policies such as the philosophy of Community-Oriented-Policing (COP), the paper addresses how COP in Kenya adopts inclusive policies.

Paper long abstract:

Since the emergence of al-Shabaab in 2006, radicalization has bought anxiety to communities in the Horn of Africa. Focusing on Kenya, the paper examines and evaluates how governments' security tactics have countered violent extremism, addressing territoriality —control of spaces in the context of organized violence —monopolizing or legitimizing the use of force. With the emphasis that Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) needs inclusive and strategic policies such as the philosophy of Community-Oriented-Policing (COP), the paper addresses how COP in Kenya adopts inclusive policies. It interrogates how the philosophy and strategy of COP help in CVE and strongly points out how government tactical policies contribute to Violent Extremism (VE) rather than countering it. The paper links the sporadic al-Shabaab attacks since 2011, the increasing extrajudicial killings, and community policing tactics. Digging into contextual features of community policing, it interrogates the Nyumba Kumi initiative and Community Policing Authority.

The paper's methodology is enriched by the two authors' experience, having worked closely with the Kenyan police and various communities in Kenya. The article also includes interviews from Nairobi slum areas affected by extrajudicial killings, such as Eastleigh, Mathare, Dandora, and Kayole. The paper concludes that blending cultural traits and governance structure into community policing helps counter violent extremism. The conclusion and recommendation are arrived at after the triangulation of the interviews with the documents from government institutions and academic writings.

Paper short abstract:

Social media is reinforcing the internal networks of police officers and other security organs that instead jeopardise the crime-police relationships. This article seeks to interrogate both the hidden and visible entanglements of social media that negate a futuristic vision of effective policing.

Paper long abstract:

There is growing ambiguity that comes with the role of social media vigilanteism as a crime prevention and control strategy. Social media has built a foreseeable future for crime management, in general. Social media vigilantism has been at the forefront in unearthing the otherwise-impossible-to-access information on crime in societies not only in Uganda but also across borders. For example, several within-boarders-crimes as well as cases of human trafficking and abuses of domestic workers abroad (mainly in the middle eastern countries) have been transmitted to the government and related security organs for legal action through social media (mainly YouTube, Facebook, and WhatsApp). However, on the flip side, social media is reinforcing the internal networks of police officers and other security organs that instead jeopardise crime-police relationships. Also, there has been an upsurge of social media-guided political persecutions where a mere comment insinuating opposition to the regime or an upload of oppositional content has become dangerous in the recent past. This article seeks to interrogate both the hidden (implied) and visible entanglements of social media that negate a futuristic vision of effective policing. The role of social media in expanding the gap between the state and the citizens still demands nuances.

Paper short abstract:

This presentations explores the effects of distrust of the police on policing dynamics in contemporary Nigeria and reflects on the impact that a rapidly changing technological landscape (ICTs, AI etc.) might have on these dynamics.

Paper long abstract:

Building on ethnographic materials collected in Lagos in 2018, this presentation argues that policing according to formal prescriptions—e.g., the Criminal Procedure Act—is virtually impossible in contemporary Nigeria because of pervasive public distrust. At the same time, the informal processes that policing agents resort to further undermine public trust in the criminal justice system, thereby creating a self-defeating spiral that provides justifications among the public and the police to support and/or actively participate in illegal forms of crime control including jungle justice and extra-legal killing. The presentation will contend that new information and communication technologies bring both opportunities and challenges for distrust-driven policing disorder in the country.

Paper short abstract:

Using a case study design that engages the local people in southwest Nigeria, we examine the "Amotekun Security Outfit" as a cultural security and development strategy. The objective of the study is to show the cultural strategies can be used to address poverty and underdevelopment in Africa.

Paper long abstract:

In the light of the failure of mainstream development strategies such as modernization to achieve security, employment and development in Africa, it is imperative that the continent find and follow a development path that is rooted in African culture. Anthologists have argued that the lack of cultural relativism in development strategies explains why "development" does not achieve its objectives in poor countries. The objective of the study is to examine how cultural strategies can be used to address increasing poverty, insecurity, and underdevelopment in Africa. Specifically, this study shall examine the recent launch of Amotekun Security Outfit in South West, Nigeria in response to the failures of the Nigerian police to curb insecurity. Amotekun Security Outfit uses African (Yoruba) cultural values, particularly African communalism and spirituality, to restore the peace that communities need to develop. Despite criticism and debate from some quarters about its constitutionality Amotekun continues to have the endorsement of the governors and people of the Southwest region. The objectives of this study are to examine the perception of the Yoruba people on the appropriateness and effectiveness of Amotekun as a cultural security and development strategy, to discover the cultural principles that promote citizens' acceptability and effectiveness (or otherwise), and to show how these cultural principles can be scaled up to mobilize local support and achieve other development goals in southwest Nigeria and other similar contexts. This study is important because it highlights African traditional knowledge and how applicable it is to resolving problems in modern-day Africa.