The Spectacle of Crime in the ‘New’ South Africa

摘要

This article is concerned with the spectacle of crime in the ‘new’ South Africa. I offer a sociological explanation for why crime plays such an important role in governance in South Africa. I identify both continuities and shifts between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ techniques of rule, showing how the very construction of crime and controversies about measuring it are constituted by and constitutive of power relations within society. The interconnected themes that I address are the changing relationship between crime and politics as the African National Congress went from being a resistance organization to governing party and the changing relationship between crime and race. The period that my research covers is from 1976 to 2004.