A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana
Fifty-two years separate the fatal shootings by police of 69 anti-apartheid protestors at Sharpeville on 21st March 1960 and of 34 striking miners at Marikana on 16th August 2012. The parallels between the two ‘massacres’ are easy to overstate; but both involved the use of lethal violence by the po...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2015
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31635/ |
| _version_ | 1848794241615003648 |
|---|---|
| author | Dixon, Bill |
| author_facet | Dixon, Bill |
| author_sort | Dixon, Bill |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Fifty-two years separate the fatal shootings by police of 69 anti-apartheid protestors at Sharpeville on 21st March 1960 and of 34 striking miners at Marikana on 16th August 2012. The parallels between the two ‘massacres’ are easy to overstate; but both involved the use of lethal violence by the police against people taking part in insurrectionary action. Drawing on Marenin’s (1982) work on the relative autonomy of the police, this paper argues that events at Marikana have to be seen in the context of South Africa’s failure to tackle the structural violence of apartheid and the use of direct, personal violence by the police before and since the country became a constitutional democracy in 1994. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:13:04Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-31635 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:13:04Z |
| publishDate | 2015 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-316352020-05-04T20:06:21Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31635/ A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana Dixon, Bill Fifty-two years separate the fatal shootings by police of 69 anti-apartheid protestors at Sharpeville on 21st March 1960 and of 34 striking miners at Marikana on 16th August 2012. The parallels between the two ‘massacres’ are easy to overstate; but both involved the use of lethal violence by the police against people taking part in insurrectionary action. Drawing on Marenin’s (1982) work on the relative autonomy of the police, this paper argues that events at Marikana have to be seen in the context of South Africa’s failure to tackle the structural violence of apartheid and the use of direct, personal violence by the police before and since the country became a constitutional democracy in 1994. Oxford University Press 2015-11 Article PeerReviewed Dixon, Bill (2015) A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana. British Journal of Criminology, 55 (6). pp. 1131-1148. ISSN 0007-0955 South Africa Violence Police Marikana http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/6/1131.full doi:10.1093/bjc/azv056 doi:10.1093/bjc/azv056 |
| spellingShingle | South Africa Violence Police Marikana Dixon, Bill A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana |
| title | A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana |
| title_full | A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana |
| title_fullStr | A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana |
| title_full_unstemmed | A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana |
| title_short | A violent legacy: policing insurrection in South Africa from Sharpeville to Marikana |
| title_sort | violent legacy: policing insurrection in south africa from sharpeville to marikana |
| topic | South Africa Violence Police Marikana |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31635/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31635/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31635/ |