Policing Africa: Internal security and the limits of liberalization

Abstract

Much has changed since the 1960s, but the institutional pillars of the post-colonial state remain recognizable. This is particularly noticeable in internal security, where there is evidence of both change and continuity. There was a shift in regime understanding of security after independence, but styles of policing in the intervening years suggest a significant degree of continuity. Based on the premise that police development mirrors state development, this paper suggests that the simplest models provide the clearest insight into the linkage between policing, political order, and institutional capacity. For they show that wars, liberalization, and international aid have left most police systems fundamentally unchanged; the nature and purpose of policing remains the same. The first major milestone in African policing was passed when politics moved from the colonial to the post-colonial state, but the second, marking a liberalization of institutional capacity, has yet to be reached.

Keywords:

• Africa
• internal security
• limits

Notes

Robert Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, Industrial Relations and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 195. He also wrote that ‘Once institutional arrangements become set they are difficult to change’ (201).

Africa Research Bulletin 29, no. 5 (1992): 10575. Unsurprisingly, there were about 9000 paramilitary mobile emergency police, plus border guards, available to the government in 1996. Police were present, often with a Kalashnikov and a side-arm, in every street and public building in Addis Ababa in 1998. Petty theft was common but opportunistic, while major crime tended to concern extortion and fraud. There were 30 identified murders in Addis Ababa in May 1998. Police Review, 15 Jan. (1999): 22–24.

Laurie Nathan, Marching to a Different Drum: A Description and Assessment of the Formation of the Namibian Police and Defence Force (Bellville, SA: University of the Western Cape), 23. In some respects, the Eritrean force had more in common with Namibia than with Ethiopia. In an interview in 1994, Dr. Bereket Habte Selassie, chairman of the Constitutional Commission of Eritrea, said ‘We can learn a lot from our neighbour Ethiopia, and from Namibia which has a similar history to that of Eritrea, in terms of colonisation, struggle and so on.’ See Eritrean Development and Information Network (15 Aug. 1994), Dehai website.

J.M. Lee, African Armies and Civil Order (London: Chatto & Windus for the Institute of Strategic Studies, 1969), 81.

Ahmed Yusuf Farrah with I.M. Lewis, Somalia: The Roots of Reconciliation. Peace Making Endeavours of Contemporary Lineage Leaders: A Survey of Grassroots Peace Conferences in ‘Somaliland’ (London: ACTIONAID, 1993), 61.

Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclos, ‘Faut-il supprimer les polices en Afrique?’, Le Monde Diplomatique, August (1997).