Hosting the World

by Chris McMichael, 2012

Using the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa as a case study, this paper will explore how security measures for sports mega-events have been steadily militarized with policing operations comparable to war planning. It will be argued that this is representative of the ‘new military urbanism’ in which everyday urban life is rendered as a site of ubiquitous risk leading to the increased diffusion of military tactics and doctrines in policing and policy.

While the interpenetration between urbanism and militarism has often been studied

against the context of the War on Terror, the paper will argue that in the case of South Africa this has primarily been accelerated by a pervasive social fear of violent crime, which has resulted in the securitization of cities, the remilitarization of policing and the intensification of a historical legacy of socio-spatial inequalities. The South African government used the World Cup to ‘rebrand’ the country’s violent international image, while promising that security measures would leave a legacy of safer cities for ordinary South Africans. However, using military urbanism as a conceptual backdrop, the case studies presented in the second part of the paper argue that policing measures were primarily cosmetic and designed to allay the fears of foreign tourists and the national middle class. In practice, security measures pivoted around the enforcement of social control and urban marginalization while serving as a training ground for an increasingly repressive state security apparatus. The paper will conclude with a discussion of how the global crossover between militarism and urbanism threatens to stimulate and rehabilitate deeply entrenched authoritarian tendencies in South Africa.

The shock-and-awe of mega sports events

Christopher McMichael, Open Democracy

The overlap between the security measures for major sporting events and contemporary war zones are a striking and increasingly globalised phenomenon. Lest we forget that the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup are ostensibly about sport and not security, London 2012 chairman Lord Coe was recently moved to offer his assurance that the British capital will not be a “siege city” come August. However the presence of warships, surface to air missiles, thousands of military personal and pre-emptive bans on protest suggests otherwise.

State of emergency 2.0

by Christopher McMichael, Thought Leader

Last week, a fully armed contingent of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers were enrolled to perform guard duties at the new Khayelitsha district hospital. The reason for the deployment of combat-ready troops in a civilian environment? To patrol a silent protest by 50 members of the Khayelitsha Development Forum. As constitutional law expert Pierre De Vos has pointed out, such an action may violate constitutional restrictions which reserve the internal usage of the SANDF for exceptional circumstances.

Humanitarianism and its Pitfalls

by Suren Pillay, Africa is a Country, September 2010

The World Cup had just ended, and there were stories in the newspapers, telling us that foreign nationals were going to be killed  as soon as the event was over. These stories immediately mobilized many of us in civil society, and it even mobilized the state into action. The army was deployed as a visible deterrent to prevent future attacks.

'Apostrophizing Algeria: The Ghost In Derrida'

by Grant Farred 

This essay is a version of the lecture that Grant Farred gave at the Teach-In at Rhodes University in 2010. It is a draft of a chapter of new book to be titled 'Conciliation'.)

. . . this interminable task, the ghost remains that which gives one the most to think about – and to do.

 Specters of Marx. 

Everywhere one turns in Specters of Marx there are, as we well know, ghosts. Revenant King Hamlet, Hamlet, troubled prince of Denmark, and the King as visor effect. Then there is Karl Marx of The Communist Manifesto, Max Stirner and, the opening ghost and the subject of a memorable Jacques Derrida dedication, the slain South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani.