Please visit the original article at Think Africa Press to follow the hyperlinks in the original version

http://thinkafricapress.com/south-africa/police-service-and-public-order-war-saps-marikana-lonmin

The South African Police Service and the Public Order War

by Chris McMichael

In early 2010, the South African Police Service (SAPS) began a formal process of remilitarisation. At the time this was depicted as a necessary project of reasserting ‘command and control’ and ‘discipline’ within the service to better enable the police to fight violent criminals.

http://www.mahala.co.za/reality/umshini-wam/

Umshini Wam

by Chris McMichael

“There’ll be civil war, said Johnny. Civil fucking war, that’s what there’ll be. I said, What you think we got now? Not a fucking picture is it?”- GB84, David Peace’s harrowing novel of the 1984-1985 UK Miners’ Strike depicts how the Thatcher government threw the weight of the security state (millions of pounds spent on riot police, intimidation and illegal surveillance) against the National Union of Coal Miners. But as violent as at the Iron Lady’s yearlong campaign against organised labor was, this pales in comparison with the massacre of Marikana on Thursday. In one week the Lonmin strike went from an (admittedly violent) industrial dispute to one of the worst recorded mass killings in South African history with at least 34 miners dead and scores injured. 34…. In the next few days, weeks, months there will be much discussion about the ‘complexities’ of the situation and on whom or what to appropriate blame, but it can’t change the brute fact of that number. In ostensibly peacetime, ostensibly democratic South Africa, the state attempted to ‘disperse’ a volatile gathering by killing 34 of its citizens. This is a figure which wouldn’t be out of place in Syria, a number that would make the old apartheid ministers smile nostalgically.

There are also articles by Chris McMichael here, Jared Sacks here and Benjamin Fogel here and video footage here and here.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/christopher-mcmichael/cape-town-model-state-violence-and-military-urbanism

The Cape Town model, state violence and military urbanism

Christopher McMichael, Open Democracy, 5 January 2012

Lead by the pugnacious Helen Zille, the Democratic Alliance is South Africa’s official opposition party and the governing party of the Western Cape, the only one of nine national provinces not under the control of the ruling ANC. Despite recent successes the party has failed to win substantial support among South Africa’s black majority, due to a widespread perception that, notwithstanding its meretricious rhetoric of an ‘ Open Society’, the party remains a bastion of white privilege. Further scepticism has been created by the parties’ aggressively neoliberal policies which propose to reduce the country’s already partial post-apartheid social welfare system . However, the DA is hoping that the increasingly overt internecine fighting with the ANC will alter South Africa’s political landscape to give it a credible chance of becoming the ruling party by the end of the decade. With the ANC beset by corruption scandals, a growing intolerance for political dissent and the seeming inability to robustly tackle growing levels of social inequality, the DA is attempting to position itself as a pragmatic and efficient government in waiting.

http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/armoured-cities/

Armoured Cities

by Chris McMichael

The last few weeks have shown how quickly a global police state can be mobilized when people stop listening to rulers and attempt to reclaim public space. Hundreds of protesters In Tahir Square demanding an end to the military generals’ highjacking of the Egyptian revolution were shot dead with US-manufactured weapons and dosed with chemical agents. Meanwhile, in a clampdown co-ordinated through the Department of Homeland Security, police departments in 18 US cities attempted to shut down the Occupations with pepper spray and sonic weapons. In the UK, the government announced a blanket ban on protests during the Olympics next year and have proposed a massive increase in their power of ‘pre-emptive arrest’; an attempt to institute legal clampdowns on dissent under the guise of securing the sporting spectacle.

http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4004309

Querying the benefits of 'corporate theme parks' to locals
Will the legacy of the 2010 World Cup make South Africa a safer place once the tourists and the cameras have gone, asks Christopher McMichael?

June 10, 2010 Edition 1

Christopher McMichael

SOUTH Africa is using the safety and security preparations for the World Cup to attempt a massive rebranding of the country.

The four weeks of football, fun and heavy drinking will be augmented by the largest mobilisation in the history of South African policing.