Criminal obsessions: Imagining order in the South African postcolony

John Comaroff, Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is co-author of the book “Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, colonialism and consciousness in South Africa” 
(1997).

Citizens of the "new" South Africa seem uncommonly preoccupied with public order, crime, and policing. Their obsession is far from groundless. True, accurate crime statistics may be difficult to compute at the moment. True, the media may over-estimate the threat of attack on persons and property. True, too, the mass panic making itself felt across the subcontinent may be incommensurable with the real risk to life and limb. Still, it is indisputably the case that the violence endemic to the lives of most urban black South Africans during the apartheid years has spilled out of formerly segregated townships and invaded the society as a whole. At the same time, there is more to the public preoccupation with crime and disorder than the mere fact of its reality. South Africans, both white and black, are also captivated by images of crime and policing. Whatever dangers they may dodge on the streets by day, at night, behind their heavily secured doors, the vast proportion of them indulge in vicarious experiences of violence by way of the media. Why should this be so? And how, in this environment, does the South African Police Service represent themselves and their efforts to fight crime? Why do they go to extraordinary lengths both to enact, in highly dramatic forms, the dangers of criminal violence and the difficulties of dealing with them? This lecture explores the metaphysics of disorder, the fascination with crime, and the melodrama of policing in the South African postcolony.