British TV presenter Louis Theroux (son of Paul) parachuted into South Africa again, this time for the BBC, to look at the policing of crime in Johannesburg.
This version on Youtube has been chopped into parts. This is Part 1 below. Here is Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6. If you’re in Britain, you can also watch the entire program on BBC iPlayer.
WATCH:
If you can get past Theroux’s annoying style, the program is worth viewing. He feigns ignorance when asking questions (“I have been surprised by the brutality of the private police”) and has a knack for putting his life into danger, but with a cameraman and producer always around of course.
The film focuses on the private security business, mainly the controversial Mapogo a Mathamaga, who mete out violence on the spot to suspected criminals (“an African solution to an African problem,” says a farmer who has Mapogo on retainer). It also covers the clearly criminally compromised Bad Boyz, who “reclaims and secures buildings that have been taken over, or hijacked, by criminal gangs who illegally take rent from tenants,” the notorious Red Ants who evict residents on behalf of the local municipality and by private owners, and residents who execute criminals in a poor neighborhood (“people are killed like chickens,” says a local). Some of the criminals who like the camera.
Of course Theroux has no time for history, context or analysis, its all him bungling his way through and it’s all a mess. And the private security are the good guys. We never see the police. But perhaps that’s the point. You get a good sense of ineffective policing in South Africa. And of postapartheid inner-city “housing” and in parts of Soweto. Academics call this “the political economy of policing.” [Before you think he only singled Johannesburg out, Philadelphia got the same treatment from Theroux.]
