Today on the podcast I’m talking with Ziyanda Stuurman.
Ziyanda is a social policy, political science, and international relations graduate who currently works as a social science researcher based in Cape Town.
She’s a recipient of both the Chevening and Fulbright scholarships and hold advanced degrees in Conflict, Security and Development Studies from Sussex University, and in International Development from Brandeis University. Her undergraduate degrees in international relations and political science are both from the University of Stellenbosch.
Ziyanda has worked in various roles related to political and social science research over the past decade, and each of these professional experiences have informed her research and writing on policing and police militarisation in South Africa.
Today I’m speaking to Ziyanda about her new book – Can We Be Safe: The Future of Policing in South Africa. In the book Ziyanda explores the distant and recent history of policing in South Africa as well as some of the contemporary realities. It touches on colonial history, police brutality, inequality, the problem with public perceptions about crime and the misuse of this for political rhetoric, gangsterism and social order, the criminal justice system, and the ordinary lives of those who are affected by our crisis of policing.
The book suggests that things have not been working and will not work to make us feel safe and live safely, unless we imagine a new system entirely.
In the book Ziyanda says:
Inequality in South Africa is evident not only in who is policed and how, but also in the allocation of police resources. As it has always been in the past, the allocation of police resources does not always follow need … If we want to create a society that cares equally about the protection and safety of all communities, and a police system that responds with equal urgency and empathy for people regardless of their social status, then the horribly unequal state of affairs that we have right now in terms of resource allocation must be completely altered.
So today I’ll be talking to Ziyanda about her vision for policing in South Africa, her studies abroad, and her feminism. Welcome Ziyanda.
