Abstract

VAN DER SPUY, Elrena. Anneliese Burgess: Heist! South Africa's Cash in Transit epidemic uncovered. SA crime q. [online]. 2018, n.65, pp.55-57. ISSN 2413-3108.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2413-3108/2018/i65a5615.

More than 50 years ago, Howard Becker asked the question Whose side are we on? in our conversations about crime and criminals.¹ Becker intended the question to force us to reconsider our assumptions about the value-free nature of research, the neutrality of the 'law', and the pathology of the criminal 'other'. Becker's argument was that, in our studies of the social world, we cannot avoid taking sides. Becker's question has long plagued South African criminology. How else, in a political context where law and enforcement agencies served minority interests and where processes of criminalisation for contravening a plethora of apartheid laws so cruelly impacted on the racial underclass? Twenty-five years into the new democracy, Becker's question is still with us. The connection between crime and politics has not been disrupted. Social inequality continues to feed social discontent and moral ambivalence about the law and its enforcers. Furthermore, over the past two decades criminal enterprises and illicit networks have flourished. The destinies of the licit and illicit have become intertwined, and the question Whose side are we on? remains without a definitive answer.

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