Shooting blanks?: South Africa's confidence in police

Abstract

The recent killing of Andries Tatane by police during protest action in Ficksburg, together with a high incidence of police deaths this year, has begun to raise questions about excessive force and the current policing approach and, by extension, the nature and extent of confidence in the police. Yet, at the same time, a large majority of South Africans believe that the police generally have the 'same sense of right and wrong' as them. In this article, BEN ROBERTS and JARE STRUWIG present initial findings from an ongoing collaborative project exploring perceptions about the police.