Autobiographies of a special kind - Recent writings by and on the police in South Africa

• Date: 01 December 2013
• DOI: 10.10520/EJC147887
• Pages: 13-22
• Published date: 01 December 2013
• Author: Elrena Van der Spuy

SA Crime Quarterly No 46 •December 2013 13

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

OF A SPECIAL KIND

Elrena van der Spuy*

Elrena.VanDerSpuy@uct.ac.za

The occupational culture of police organisations has long fascinated policing scholars. In the Anglo-

American world ethnographic enquiries have contributed much to our understanding of police perceptions,

beliefs and actions. This article takes a closer look at efforts to describe and analyse police culture in South

Africa. Three genres of writings are considered. Structural accounts of police culture and ethnographic

accounts of the police are briefly discussed before turning to a more detailed consideration of a third and

emerging genre: police autobiographies. Two recent autobiographies written by former policemen are

explored in some detail with the view to considering the contribution of the autobiography to our

understanding of the complex occupational dynamics of police and policing in South Africa.

POLICE CULTURE AND

ETHNOGRAPHIC ENQUIRIES

The quest for understanding the occupational

culture of police organisations has been one of the

defining features of the field of police studies.

Here the tradition of ethnographic research has

been particularly important. In fact, it is difficult

to imagine policing studies without a body of

ethnographic work. In a recent comprehensive

overview of the ethnographic tradition of the

police as occupation and organisation, Peter

Manning takes the reader through 60 years of

ethnographic research.2He demonstrates how

critical it has been for our understanding of how

police organisations function and how the

occupation of policing takes shape through a

complex interaction between perceptions, beliefs

and actions. Police organisations are complex and

the social constructions of that world vary among

those situated at different points. Organisational

specialisation means that functionaries attached to

different divisions such as the uniform, detective

or intelligence branches, for example, may

engender distinct sub-cultural characteristics.

Given this diversity, Manning suggests that it is

best to think of the organisation ‘as peopled by

segments’ each confronting its own set of

‘contingencies’.3Police culture, it turns out, is best

conceptualised in plural terms.

Well established in Anglo-American research

circles, the ethnographic tradition has a limited

presence in the developing world. Take the case of

African police. There is almost no body (except in

the case of South Africa) of ethnographic

enquiries into the organisational dynamics and

subcultural tendencies of police in Africa. One

recent exception is the work of Bruce Baker.4His

ethnographic explorations of policing in Uganda,

Rwanda and Sierra Leone bring home, if not in

great depth, the impact of civil strife on police

culture and how it ends up shaping post-conflict

reconstructi on of the organisation.

Recent writings by and on

the police in South Africa1

* Elrena van der Spuy is attached to the Centre of

Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Cape

Tow n