ANTI-CORRUPTION MECHANISMS AND STRATEGIES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Philliat Matsheza and Constance Kunaka
Human Rights Trust of Southern Africa, 2000
Corruption is an issue that continues to dominate the South African political landscape both in terms of high-level allegations as well as numerous proposals and initiatives to address it. The drafting of a new Prevention of Corruption Bill, a national strategy to fight corruption in the public sector, an audit commissioned by the Public Service Commission of agencies with an anti-corruption mandate and the signing of the United Nations (UN) Global Programme Against Corruption in South Africa, over the past few months, point to the current concern with corruption locally.
Corruption also has a regional face manifested by the need to address the fundamental impact that it has had on economic, political and social development in the region, resulting in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol Against Corruption.
Anti-Corruption Mechanisms and Strategies in Southern Africa, is a useful booklet published by the Human Rights Trust of Southern Africa (SAHRIT) at the request of political leaders in the region. It seeks to identify tangible ways to realise the vision of regional and international declarations to fight corruption. The findings, compiled from over 120 key informant interviews undertaken in 12 of the 14 SADC states during 1999, provide encouraging insights into regional efforts to address corruption.
There is no doubt that in recent years Southern Africa has undertaken a number of important anti-corruption initiatives with governments enacting legislation, codes of conduct, establishing anti-corruption commissions, reforming processes of governance to minimise opportunities for corruption and undertaking national consultative processes to design anti-corruption strategies.
“It is no exaggeration”, the authors assure us, “to argue that countries in the region have collectively done more at attempting to combat corruption than any other region in the world”. Through several chapters including chapters on conceptualising corruption – the corruption triangle, or three Ps, namely: prevention, punishment and public education – and regional as well as international anti-corruption mechanisms, the book attempts to substantiate this claim although there is no scope for any real comparative commentary in the book.
To discuss corruption meaningfully one needs to establish a common understanding of the concept. There appears to be no confusion among key decision makers interviewed in the region as to what constitutes bribery or a corrupt act. Two definitions which appear to find common currency include United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and World Bank definitions where corruption is largely the abuse of public power for private gain. In terms of the underlying causes of corruption, respondents throughout the region unequivocally identify greed as the primary cause of corruption (rather than poor economic conditions or low salaries – although these too have played their part). This confronts policy makers with the challenge of how to curb greed.
Having established both conceptual understandings and manifest causes of corruption regionally, the authors identify strategies and initiatives undertaken in countries that could provide “best practice” pointers to feed into regional anti-corruption initiatives. A range of anti-corruption strategies based on three main principles – punishment, prevention and public education – are critically discussed. The obvious limitations of a purely punishment/criminal justice response (undermined by perceptions of corrupt policing agencies in many countries) are outlined, and the authors conclude that while corruption is a crime which requires a multidisciplinary approach, prevention is the most effective way to combat it: “… it is better to kill the crocodile while it is still small, before its teeth can devour you.”
Essentially the book provides a useful matrix comparing the nature and type of mechanisms that countries in the region have established to fight corruption, which include Office of the Attorney General; parliament and parliamentary committees; the judiciary; the police; financial disclosures and codes of conduct; public procurement and tender procedures; Office of the Ombudsperson; Controller and the Auditor General; anti-corruption bureaus; and ad hoc presidential commissions.
The most interesting part of the book deals with evaluating the effectiveness of these mechanisms and identifies a number of general limitations which include lack of adequate human, technical and financial resources; questionable political will indicated by the need for “more heads of top government officials and politicians to roll”; and concerns around the independence of institutions with an anti-corruption mandate.
A useful distinction is drawn by the authors between primary anti-corruption institutions – those set up specifically to combat corruption – and secondary institutions dealing with corruption as one of their many functions. In South Africa, the audit of institutions with an anti-corruption mandate found that only two of the various agencies had corruption as an exclusive mandate, providing support for the argument that a single dedicated agency to fight corruption may be well be required in South Africa. According to the authors, the general trend in Southern Africa has been to establish new separate agencies or co-ordinated approaches to combating corruption. In reality, anti-corruption institutions require the support of other structures to implement their tasks effectively.
Despite the establishment of anti-corruption bureaus and commissions in several Southern African countries, “most respondents did not regard the anti-corruption bureaus as effective mechanisms for preventing corruption in their respective countries”. This is because of what the authors term a general “crisis of expectations” on the effectiveness of such anti-corruption institutions. They often have neither the capacity nor the political clout initially to take effective steps in terms of prosecuting corrupt officials. As a result the public becomes frustrated by the slow pace of the new institutions. This has been the case in Swaziland and Malawi where apparently there have been no successful prosecutions completed by the anti-corruption institution since inception.
Creating an independent anti-corruption agency – something being proposed in policy circles in South Africa – is seen to create a false sense of problem solving since other agencies which might previously have dealt with cases now abrogate their responsibility and role in fighting corruption in favour of the specific bureau. The authors highlight that the fundamental attribute for the success of such agencies, should they be established, is independence. While the legal frameworks generally establish their independence explicitly, their organisational structures sometimes undermine that independence. It is suggested that the independence of these institutions might be enhanced if the legislature were to play a more prominent role in both the selection or confirmation of the officials, as well as in reporting arrangements to the legislature rather than to the head of state. The authors, however, recognise that the present inability of most legislatures in the region to hold the executive accountable, makes this proposed solution equally problematic.
What I found particularly useful in terms of placing the current crisis of parliamentary oversight and monitoring of parliamentary committees in South Africa – which has erupted with the side-lining of the Public Accounts Committee in dealing with the multibillion rand arms deal – in some perspective, was the similar experience of other countries in the region. According to most respondents, legislatures and legislative committees are currently perceived to be “ineffective at monitoring or combating corruption in the region”; the reason given being the relationship between the executive branch and the legislature, where legislative bodies are perceived to be overwhelmed by a dominant executive branch.
In particular, members of public accounts committees felt disempowered in that where they uncover corruption or mismanagement, their findings and recommendations were largely ignored. Public accounts committees in Zambia, Mauritius, Zimbabwe and Lesotho cited their lack of investigative powers and enforcement mechanisms as rendering them ineffective at holding the executive accountable. That these committees should be empowered with the necessary functions to assist in investigating and enforcing their findings was widely shared. In addition, the nature of the legislature where members do not possess the necessary skills to be an effective deterrent against corruption, is another weakness. Stronger opposition representation in parliament, it is suggested, could provide an effective check against a dominant executive.
Clearly, political will is the critical foundation of successful efforts to combat corruption. The recognition of corruption through public statements and the prioritisation of its elimination is arguably indicative of tangible political will. South Africa, Tanzania, Mozambique and Namibia are cited as examples in this regard, but it is noted that public pronouncements must be supported by concrete action if they are to be meaningful. The book documents the broad consensus within the region on the need for concerted efforts to combat corruption in Southern Africa. Since its publication these efforts have been partly realised with the adoption of the SADC Protocol Against Corruption and the establishment of the Southern African Forum Against Corruption (SAFAC).
Unfortunately, no interview schedule is provided in the book, although the list of key informants interviewed in various countries is useful for researchers working in the anti-corruption field. Although not made explicit in the publication it seems likely that SAHRIT would allow researchers access to their regional anti-corruption material.
While one of the main victories highlighted by the authors is the public acknowledgement of the prevalence of corruption in the region and the willingness to talk about it, the fact that Angolan respondents wished to remain anonymous is indicative that not all is well in the region and that the victory claimed in the openness of acknowledging and talking about corruption is not universal. There is, however, a sense of urgency on the continent, which the New African Initiative highlights, to address democracy and governance issues of which anti-corruption efforts are a key part.
Lala Camerer
Institute for Security Studies
THE INVENTION OF PEACE
Reflections on war and international order
Michael Howard
With the end of the Cold War many proclaimed the dawn of a New World Order in which war was to be ever more infrequent. Fukuyama went as far as to proclaim the “end of history”, yet the unfortunate reality of the past decade has been a great deal more bloody. The all-out destruction of nuclear warfare that loomed during the Cold War may now be a less immediate threat but the burgeoning of bloody, protracted intra-state conflict that has characterised the turn of the millennium, is certainly not the peaceful world envisaged by some as the Berlin Wall collapsed.
There is, however, now an unprecedented and generally unchallenged acceptance that the kind of international order that is desired is one of peace, positively conceived as “a social and political ordering of society that is generally conceived as just”. This view of world order as espoused by Immanuel Kant – based on the existence of a universal moral law and the establishment of a global order founded on republican states which, in rejecting the destruction and expense of war, abandon the anarchical condition and form a league of nations to insure their collective security – may be a long way from being realised. However, such a peaceful order is now accepted as desirable, not just by a few enlightened thinkers, but by those holding the reins of power. This is the contention of Michael Howard in his insightful and thought-provoking book, The invention of peace: Reflections on war and international order.
Howard charts the evolution of international order, and the role of war and peace in defining that order, from the time of Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire to today’s world of globalisation and complex interdependence. He argues that “war ... has been the universal norm of human history”, while peace defined as “the visualisation of a social order from which war has been abolished”, is the relatively recent invention of the rational minds of the Enlightenment. It is a tribute to Howard’s skill as a historian and writer that he manages to condense such a broad topic and to articulate many complex arguments so simply in the space of only 113 (small) pages of clear, accessible text.
The book begins with a short introduction and is then organised chronologically into four sections, each documenting a discernible stage in the evolution of international order. The first section entitled ‘Princes and priests’, covers the period from the creation of the first international order in the guise of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 to the French Revolution. In this period, order was initially based on the mutually supporting and legitimising partnership of nobility – and later monarchy – and church that upheld a secular order through the conduct of war. However, the combination of the religious dissent of the reformation and the growing intercourse between ruler and ruled necessitated by an increasing reliance on taxation to finance war, led to the formation of states and a new order based upon the balance of power between these new entities. War remained a defining characteristic of this order – based around the ancient regime of monarchy, church and aristocracy – as the means by which the balance was adjusted.
It is in this period, as war became ever more expensive – and often protracted and inconclusive – and as an educated laity emerged in the guise of the burgeoning bourgeoisie, that war itself came to be rationalised. This rationalisation took many forms, but the most enduringly influential ideas emerged from the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement, that in its embrace of individual reason and rejection of the traditional structures of secular and temporal authority, sought to discard a social system of which war had been an integral element. As Howard goes on to demonstrate, the liberal ideas of Kant and other enlightenment thinkers were to be challenged by many competing concepts of international order before gaining pre-eminence today.
The second section (Chapter 3) deals with the period from the French Revolution to the end of the First World War in which we are guided through the ultimately unsuccessful attempts of Napoleon to impose an order based upon continuous warfare and the establishment of military hegemony, the growth of nation-states, national self-determination and nationalism and the continuation of an international order based upon the balance of power. Liberal, conservative and nationalist views of order competed for acceptance, but once again the close interrelationship between societal changes and the nature and conduct of warfare – a recurrent theme of the book – is the decisive factor in challenging the existing international order. This occurs first through the process of industrialisation and modernisation by which success in war becomes dependent not just on the ability of one’s army (now constituted of increasingly mobile infantry and artillery) but also on the efficiency of the machinery of state. Then through the impact of the nature of the First World War on the societies that fought it.
Chapter Four, ‘Idealists and idealogues’, describes the short-lived triumph of the enlightenment liberals as the League of Nations falters and dies in the face of economic collapse and the rise of the alternative competing concepts of communist and fascist orders. In Hitler’s view of order, war was not only desirable in itself and the tool for establishing a new order; “it was the new order”. By 1945, with the defeat of fascism and the emergence of the competing American and Soviet conceptions of order, which both entailed the destruction of the other, it was apparent that military power was necessary for the attainment of peace. Here Howard notes that with the ensuing process of decolonisation Europe is no longer the only region in which to establish peace. Ultimately, the Cold War came to an end as the cost of continuing the struggle became too great for the Soviet Union to bare, and with the failure of both fascism and communism to create alternative world orders, the Kantian model eventually emerged unchallenged.
In the final chapter of the book, Howard argues that although there are currently no obvious challenges to the Kantian model, others will likely emerge to challenge it, and its realisation remains a distant goal. In concluding he addresses the failure of the post-Cold War world to establish a new peaceful order. Some of the foundations for its creation are being formed: a genuine global community, with a common language and common values, does exist he argues. However, many obstacles both within and without the ‘western societies’ that have assumed the liberal economic worldview, yet remain to be surmounted. Exposure to free trade does not necessarily promote liberal democracy, as the emergence in some African states of kleptocratic regimes bears witness. In addition, the values of a liberal world order are also not embraced by all, but rather, are deemed culturally alien and a threat to traditional values.
In The invention of peace Howard reflects on the changing nature of war and society, its political and economic organisation, and on the interconnectivity and interdependence of these phenomena. He also highlights the importance of legitimacy in the maintenance of order, be it domestic or global, the legacy of promoting national self-determination during the 19th century, the nature of state formation, the on-going process of the erosion of state sovereignty and the necessary foundations of democracy, among other pertinent issues. Ultimately he gives a brilliant and thought-provoking account of the evolution of international relations, throwing light on how and why the world looks the way it does today.
Angus Urquhart
Saferworld
REGIONAL INTEGRATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Comparative international perspectives
Christopher Clapham, Greg Mills, Anna Morner, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos (eds.),
South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 2000
“If they [South Africa’s neighbours] don’t eat, we won’t sleep.” This famous quote of the South African industrialist Anton Rupert more than 30 years ago brings to the fore the two main aspects of regional integration: developing economic strength and growth in the region as well as addressing constructively the security challenges the region inherits.
Clapham, Mills, Morner and Sidiropoulos address in their edition of conference papers those two challenges regional integration encounters. The book, a result of a conference organised in June 2000 on ‘Reviewing regional integration in Southern Africa: Comparative international experiences’, presents an interesting mixture of papers from policy makers, academic scholars as well as civil servants from regional organisations. Nevertheless, Christina Jutterström’s contribution on ‘The role of the media’ found its way into the book although it neither elaborates the importance of the topic for the regional integration process in Southern Africa, nor does it provide enough profoundness to make the article outstanding on its own.
As the conference was a joint endeavour of the Nordic Council of Ministers, the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, it encompasses two papers referring to the experiences of the European Nordic states. Svend Erik Hovmand, a Danish Parliamentarian, provides an interesting insight into the bottom-up approach by the Nordic countries towards regional integration. Obviously, an informal approach towards political co-operation particularly in foreign affairs (excluding defence and security policies) and a subsequent slow institutionalisation proved to be efficient in its outcome. As Hovmand outlines, “it is a co-operation for citizens rather than for the states concerned”.
Already in the 1950s the Nordic countries managed to establish a citizens’ union. After 40 years now, Nordic citizens have the right to travel without passport, to settle where they want and to enjoy the same social rights as the local population. Although this bottom-up approach is a challenging alternative as to what is possible with regard to regional integration, any transfer, however, to Africa seems slight. This is because of the different structure of the African state, where in the majority of cases the well-established link between state and citizen is lacking and the accountability of the state towards its subjects – found in the welfare-orientated Scandinavian states – is hard to detect. Unfortunately, neither Hovmand nor Harald Rensvik – whose contribution is entitle ‘Nordic co-operation on the environment’ – try to make any analytical reference as to whether best practices could be learned from the example of Nordic co-operation for the Southern African context.
It is solely the detailed and well elaborated chapter of Claudia Mutschler on the Latin American experience that provides a comparative approach and an outlook to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region without becoming superficial or too general. Mutschler emphasises that every regional integration project has to be seen as unique and must be an on-going process. She places the historical developments of regional integration initiatives (Andean Pact, Mercosul) into the respective academic discourse that not only followed the processes but also impacted on them. Analytically, she distinguishes between prerequisites, supportive conditions and catalytic events for regional integration. As a distinct feature of the new regionalism she identifies its multidimensional character. Shown by the Latin American experiences “it is imperative that regions offer conditions of democratic stability along with sustained macro-economic reform […]”.
Also the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) example presented by Mya Than and Daljit Singh of the Institute for South East Asian Studies in Singapore, stresses that regional integration cannot be captured in economic models only. The primary motivation for the establishment of ASEAN in 1967 was political. It constituted an attempt to contain the communist threat in the region and to maintain peace and stability by providing a forum for the discussion and resolution of regional security issues. ASEAN can be attributed mainly to the operational mechanisms (“the Asean way”) that emphasised informal approaches, stuck to non-interference in internal affairs and counted on personal relationships between political and governmental elites. It is mainly the political function that made ASEAN into the regional body it constitutes today. With regard to economic integration – which, however, was never a primary objective – ASEAN seems rather ineffective. For example, it took ASEAN about 25 year to establish a free trade area.
In his presentation on the challenges and dilemmas raised by European Union (EU) enlargement, Ron Ton of the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands, elaborates on the processes within the EU towards further integration and enlargement. In this regard, he refers to criteria set up for new members (stable democracy, human rights, a viable market economy and compliance with the acquis communautaire, the EU’s common rules and regulations) as well as to the difficulty to find new voting mechanisms as consensus finding becomes difficult with a growing number of member states. Ton brings attention to the challenge of integration regarding how “a community can still advance without, […], the slowest member determining the speed of the whole convoy”.
‘Europe à la carte’ or ‘two-tier Europe’ turned into buzzwords in the context of European integration. The integrational paradigm of ‘variable geometry’ and the setting up of membership conditionalities is further elaborated by Marise Cremona. The Professor of European Commercial Law from the University of London presents a thoroughly structured academic paper that gives a good overview of the historical processes and mechanisms of European integration. In his paper, Sean Cleary also takes up the issue of ‘variable geometry’ and ‘varying speed’ as an operational paradigm for SADC. According to Cleary “SADC merits can be unlocked only if the region is opened, albeit asymmetrically to global trade […]”. He further states “that SADC itself cannot be permitted to be a barrier to the successful integration of individual countries, or groups of countries, into the global economy”. It becomes obvious that Cleary hardly sees much benefit for South Africa in the current SADC structure and even forecasts that SADC “will only survive if it is able to advance the sensible purposes of its more enlightened members”. As a solution, Cleary presents the list of common recipes for an integration of SADC members into a competitive global economy: investment in physical infrastructure, improvement of human capital, government transparency, and the granting of debt relief by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as their support of infrastructure- and capacity-building.
Christopher Clapham’s chapter on the changing world of regional integration in Africa continues with a sombre status quo analysis of Southern African regional integration. Pointing out that “no regional economic ‘community’ in Africa, based on the familiar principles of creating a single internal market, protected by a common external tariff, and geared to import-substituting industrialisation, has ever got anywhere, and none is likely to”, he highlights the impediment of economic development as being the inability of African states to maintain their domestic and regional security structures. According to Clapham, security has to be the key goal of regional integration sustained by the political will of leaders who resolve their own national problems in a way that meets the standards set for the regional security system as a whole.
However, as Rocky Williams of the Institute for Security Studies notes in his paper on collective security: the process of securing consensus on what the content and ends of security should be, will not only require time but also astute management. All roleplayers have to be involved from the beginning in setting-up the security agenda.
This implies that conceptual parameters of security have to be defined, current SADC policies have to be assessed on the bases of those parameters, and most of all, processes have to be instituted to ensure that those issues of regional security will be addressed effectively.
In his paper on ‘Organised crime and state response in Southern Africa’, Mark Shaw of SAIIA takes up a concrete topic of regional security and clearly demonstrates the negative side-effects of regional integration. Referring to car hijacking syndicates operating in the region, he shows the spillover of crime in the context of weak states and violent conflicts tearing apart the region. But he also provides a positive example of regional co-operation embodied in the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-operation Organisation (SARPCCO), which by remaining a body of technocrats and staying out of the regional political processes regarding security, ensured their effective collaboration.
Nevertheless, as the contributions by policy makers show, Southern Africa’s challenges and weaknesses of regional integration also derive from the numerous weak entities of regional organisations. Outstanding from the contributions of policy makers is the contribution of Justin Malewezi, Vice-President of Malawi.
In his critical approach he refers to the fact that the existing regional institutions with their overlapping mandates impose heavy financial and administrative burdens on governments which are hardly able to manage co-ordination. His main argument therefore refers to rationalisation of the plethora of organisations.
In his chapter on ‘The state of regional integration: The intra- and inter-regional dimensions’, Richard Gibb of the University of Plymouth again takes up the challenge of a variety of existing regional organisations and puts it into an academic framework of analyses. At the heart of regional integration dynamics, he places the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), which already has a functioning customs union with redistributive mechanisms.
Resembling the paradigm of variable geometry, SADC, committed to a free trade area, forms a second tier in this integration scheme, whereas the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) – lacking any redistributive mechanisms – constitutes a more peripheral component of Southern African regionalism. Gibb stresses in his chapter the argument that, “Southern Africa can no longer afford the luxury of competing trading blocs”.
For the reader interested into gaining deeper insight into regional integration efforts and their challenges, this compilation of conference papers provides various perspectives from policy makers and academics as well as from different regions of the world.
Unfortunately, the book contains a futile glossary of acronyms where common abbreviations like NGOs, UK and UN are listed but the patience of the reader becomes tested when he has to look up technical abbreviations like ISI, CET and ISDSC, in the text.
Despite of the formalities, however, the book provides a valuable contribution in the discourse about regionalism in the age of globalisation. The majority of contributions again highlight that any organisation is only as strong as the constituent members want it to be. However, besides political will, also the capacity to implement common goals is decisive and needs to get the necessary attention. Its realistic approach shows that regional integration in Southern Africa can neither be a substitute for integration into the global economy, nor can it in its current form be a stepping stone.
Andrea E Ostheimer
ISS Reseacher
CRIME WAVE
The South African underworld and its foes
Jonny Steinberg, (ed)
Witwatersrand University Press, 2001
Crime wave is a bold and daring little book. Beyond the alarmist title and the kitsch jacket lies a collection of essays that probe into the heart of South Africa’s own uncertain future. The blurb on the back does a good job in preparing the reader for the collage of local crime scenes. These are certainly captured through “gritty” and “colourful” writing, “vivid” but “eclectic commentaries”, “cutting appraisals” and “shocking” investigations. The blurb is far from bluff. Despite the surrealism of some of the subject matter there is, thankfully, a lot of realism in the appraisal of crime, its causative roots, debilitating effects and the prospects for its containment.
This square-headed realism comprises much of the appeal of Crime Wave. Here at last is a homegrown text compiled by local authors from the belly of the post-colonial (and decidedly pre-modern) beast itself. The beastly features of our co-existence are touched upon here and there. The country has been “stitched together with violence”. Part of our historical disposition is a “preoccupation with revenge”. There is too much “moral ambiguity” in the way we live our lives; and through crime we confront not only the deficiencies in state capacity but the absence of a consensual “morality” amongst ourselves. The “law” itself, writes Steinberg, has not yet “arrived in this country”.
Against this structural background Crime Wave engages with crime, not as moral panic, but rather as a tactile, sensual and reprehensible reality. As a political commentary it does a good job in transcending the conventional juxtapositions of law and order versus social crime prevention strategies (Steinberg’s introduction); of the pursuit of effective law enforcement versus the protection of human rights (Shubane); of romanticising or demonising troublesome youth (Simpson). Reading between the lines the state too is depicted in Janus-faced terms. It both threatens and protects our rights as citizens and our access to security.
Crime Wave is organised in four parts. Part 1 contains a number of excursions into the politics and logistics of the post-apartheid strategy to contain crime. Included is a perceptive commentary on recent shifts in crime control strategies; a close-up view of the fault lines running through the state’s own specialist task forces; and an examination of the challenges facing the intelligence community. Finally, the state-centered emphasis of this section is redressed by the inclusion of two experiments in civil policing (Neighbourhood Watch and Seawatch) operatives in the Western Cape.
In Part 2 the spotlight shifts to the criminal underworld. Here we confront the burial of a Soweto gangster, the seductiveness of crime and violence as lived by members of the Amagents and, in the absence of state regulation, warlordism within the taxi industry. In the third section of the book the trials and tribulations besetting the Prosecution Service are exposed, through anecdote at first and then through more detached analysis. Potenza’s brief journey from the Jeppe police station to the magistrate’s court is dotted with real people. There is Sergeant Visser who has the “confidence and charisma of being big and beautiful in an Afrikaans kind of way”, the accused in the dock who looks “like a hungry wild creature” and the prosecutor who clumsily pursues pleasure while on duty. Against this personalised encounter with a fractious system of justice is pitted the more clinical description and thoughtful analysis by Schönteich and De Vries of the current woes besetting the prosecution service.
Many of the pieces compiled in this collection represent slices of much more substantive research available elsewhere. Schönteich’s analysis of the prosecution service is a truncated rendition of a more substantial monograph on the topic. Dugard’s dense commentary on the forces that feed into the taxi wars is culled from a recently completed PhD thesis. Louw and Schönteich’s reflections on the use and abuse of crime statistics too represent a theme central to the work of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). Finally, Altbeker’s portrayal of the hijacking unit is an extension of earlier ethnographic work on the troublesome fortunes of the detective division.
But what can be said about the contribution of this publication to local analysis? Steinberg’s Crime Wave is destined to make waves in local criminological circles even if it did not consciously set out to do so. In South Africa the discipline of criminology remains woefully underdeveloped. Substantive scholarly analyses of crime and the criminal justice system are few and far between. Criminological capacity within tertiary institutions remains strangely bewitched by the ideological divisions of the past and a resulting crude juxtaposition of pro-state positivism (in Afrikaner intellectual circles) and anti-state critique (in liberal institutions such as the University of Cape Town). If academe has been slow in responding to issues of crime and justice, others have been much more entrepreneurial. In recent years, the momentum for policy-orientated output in the field of crime and criminal justice has largely come from outside the academic enclave. In this regard two institutions in particular deserve mention: the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and the ISS. Both are situated in the north, in close proximity to the administrative engines of government. Both have established themselves as skillful entrepreneurs setting the agenda for criminal justice research and practical interventions, attracting foreign funding and for living up to their promises. A competitive edge between these outfits has upped the stakes for output and delivery. It is in this civil contest of sorts that Crime Wave can be described as another important contribution.
Three aspects of this contribution deserve particular mention: first, there is use to which ethnographic-type descriptions (albeit amateurish at times) are put in capturing the heart of the crime matter. Criminologists would do well in taking up the methodological challenge to capture personal biographies and “life histories” of cowboys and crooks in the South African crime drama. Second, Crime Wave is also a useful addition to the genre of comparative analysis. What it represents is the raw material for a case study of the kind of challenges that face post-transitional societies as they negotiate the grip of a decayed authoritarian rule and the spectre of soaring crime.
The third contribution lies in the subtlety of its political commentary. On this score Jonny Steinberg’s ‘Introduction’ to the book deserves particular praise. It is a very persuasive piece. After a long overdue dig at simplistic liberal analyses (the particular one here is from Nadime Gordimer), it presents a masterly overview of competing theories of crime. Steinberg gives due emphasis to the exigencies of deep structural inequality, but insists that we also have to come to grips with crime as rational choice and as a deeply disturbing lifestyle. As a commentary on crime in the new South Africa it ranks as one of the best produced in recent years, short as it is.
Finally, in a chapter provocatively titled ‘Shock troops and bandits: Youth, crime and politics’, Graeme Simpson too delivers a thoughtful piece on youth crime and its transfiguration in the aftermath of apartheid. Here he takes issue with the conceptual and political parameters (youth as social bandits, counter-revolutionary thugs and/or the shock troops of liberation?) within which local debates on the topic have been constructed. One is left with the omnipotence of the threat and the enormity of the challenge which a youth constituency – as marginalised and emasculated as ours – will pose to the future of our constitutional democracy.
On this sombre note it remains to be said that those interested in the fortunes of our future would do well to engage with the fruits of Steinberg and his associates’ labour – even at the exorbitant price of R180 for this locally produced little book.
Elrena van der Spuy
Institute of Criminology, UCT
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