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Community policing in post-war
MozambiqueHelene Maria Kyed
a
a Danish Institute for International Studies , Copenhagen,Denmark
Published online: 09 Dec 2009.
To cite this article: Helene Maria Kyed (2009) Community policing in post-war Mozambique,
Policing and Society: An International Journal of Research and Policy, 19:4, 354-371, DOI:
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Community policing in post-war Mozambique
Helene Maria Kyed*
Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, Denmark
(Received 15 August 2008; final version received 1 February 2009)
Central to the post-conflict democratic transition in Mozambique, there havebeen attempts to reform the national police in accordance with the rule of law andhuman rights. From 2000, failures to democratise the police during the 1990s ledto the introduction of community policing, which, it was promised, could
engender ‘a new culture of security’ of police
community partnerships, citizeninclusion and accountable state policing. This article explores how state-initiatedcommunity policing was implemented in a rural former war-zone. Based onethnographic fieldwork it asks what local versions of community policing meansfor everyday policing practices and where this is taking police citizen relations. Itshows that community policing was principally used by the local police to expandstate police outreach and reassert sovereign authority by outsourcing extra-legaltasks to young men. The result is reconfigured forms of physical and symbolicpolice violence, which reproduce significant elements of past paramilitary policingcultures.
Keywords: community policing; Mozambique; sovereignty; state; police violence;youth
Introduction
Mozambique has officially undergone a liberal-style democratic transition since the
end of the 16 years civil war in 1992. Central are attempts to democratise and
demilitarise the national police in accordance with the rule of law and human rights.
This has been no easy task. Transforming a partisan, ineffective, under-resourced
and violent police force, deeply embedded in colonial and post-colonial paramilitary
policing cultures, proved difficult in the 1990s (Baker 2002). From 2000 community
policing ( policiamento comunitario PolCom) became one of the official responses to
this impasse. The Ministry of Interior (MINT), supported by international donors,launched PolCom as a ‘philosophy of policing’ that through police community
partnerships could engender a ‘new culture of security’, adhering to liberal-
democratic values of active citizen inclusion in security provisions and citizen-
accountable state policing (MINT 2005a, p. 4).
Overall PolCom in Mozambique draws on the community policing philosophy
applied in the west since 1980s, and subsequently expanded globally (Brogden and
Nijhar 2005). The particular model introduced resembles the South African one from
mid-1990s (Buur 2005). It covers councils of community members who debate local
crime problems and solutions with the police, provide civic education and solve
*Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1043-9463 print/ISSN 1477-2728 online
# 2009 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10439460903375190
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Policing & Society
Vol. 19, No. 4, December 2009, 354 371
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non-criminal conflicts. The councils should support the national police, not substitute
its functions. Along with PolCom, the Mozambican state has recognised around 4000
‘community authorities’ from the ranks of traditional leaders and village secretaries
to assist the state in law and order enforcement. They should be obligatory members
of the community policing councils (CPCs).1 Such initiatives, it is hoped, will help
solve numerous problems facing post-war security provisions: rising crime rates and
self-redress; police violence and corruption; citizen mistrust in the police; and low
police capacity (MINT 2005a). While there is still no law on community policing,
there has been a massive expansion of CPCs since 2001.
The question is how community policing has been translated into practice and
what it has implied for everyday policing on the margins of the state? To date there
are few studies, outside of MINT itself, which address this question empirically, and
the focus has only been on urban CPCs. This article addresses this knowledge gap by
drawing on fieldwork from 2005 in the rural former war-zones of Sussundenga
District. My aim is not to quantitatively measure PolCom’s effects on crime levels,
but explore how local police officers implemented the new PolCom concept,illustrate how this was played out in everyday policing practices and tentatively
suggest where this is taking police citizen relations.2
This article shows that the local police’s version of PolCom was primarily
concerned with expanding the state police’s outreach and tackling its problems of
contested authority. The way this was done was far removed from the official CPC
model and the ‘new culture of security’. Rather, the result was reconfigured forms of
police violence and control. Police officers used PolCom to outsource physically
rough tasks to young men, including use of force and tight control of the movements
of people and their goods. These extra-legal methods heavily drew on a mixture of
colonial, one-party state and wartime policing histories. Conversely, selectionof PolCom members relied on traditional leaders’ modes of organising policing
groups. This underscores how community policing is mediated by localised cultural
and historical repertoires (Pratten and Sen 2007, p. 19), as well as by particular
conditions facing state policing in post-conflict societies (Dixon 2007, p. 176).
However, concerns for enhanced state police control were not straightforward.
Outsourcing was intricate. Some PolCom members used their new position to insult
the elders, use excessive violence and extract illegal subsidies. At least partly, this was
ambiguously nurtured by local police officers themselves.
The article first outlines post-war police reform and what this aimed to change,
particularly in the rural former war-zones. It then addresses local manifestations of
PolCom in Sussundenga District, which is part of Manica Province in central
Mozambique and shares border with Zimbabwe to the west and Sofala province to
the east. The district was one of the areas affected most strongly by the civil war,
which began here as early as 1978, when Renamo troops began incursions from
Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). During the 1980s, Frelimo-state control was confined to
urban and semi-urban areas surrounding the administrative capitals. The rest of the
territory consisted of zones of combat or were controlled by Renamo. The war had
devastating effects on the district, including massive destruction of infrastructure
and the local economy, and it led to the displacement of huge numbers of people. It
also meant that state administrative and police presence was either sparse or fully
absent in the rural hinterlands after the war and that the legitimacy of the state, andthe ruling party, Frelimo, was highly contested. This was reflected in continuing
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pockets of resistance to the state in the mid-1990s and in the huge electoral victory of
the opposition party Renamo in the first 1994 general elections. In the past two
elections (1999 and 2004), the district remained a Renamo stronghold.
Post-war police reform
The principles for post-war police reform were already laid down in the 1990
Constitution, which predated the 1992 General Peace Accord, ending the war
between Frelimo and Renamo. The constitution marked a shift from a one-party,
Marxist Leninist socialist state, to a multi-party democracy, including a plethora of
individual rights, separation of powers and a definition of the state as based on the
rule of law. New laws and programmes on internal security, launched during the mid-
1990s, also had to tackle the crisis of state police legitimacy, capacity and territorial
outreach caused by the war. Reform was heavily supported by international donors.
Initially reform went in the opposite direction of community policing. It focused
on ‘getting right’ formal state institutions through professionalising and demilitaris-ing the national police in accordance with the rule of law and human rights (Baker
2002). This implied major legal changes of the police (Polıcia de Republica de
Moc ¸ambique PRM): a shift from predominant emphasis on defence of national
unity (including repression of tribalism and regionalism) to protection of individual
rights and liberties; police impartiality; prohibition on torture; stricter regulations
for detention; and legal prosecution of law-offending police officers (Republica de
Mocambique 1992). Simultaneously, donors supported new human rights institu-
tions that could serve as check and balance mechanisms (Tollenaere 2006).3 Reform
also aimed to ensure that security provisions were handled alone by professionally
trained and state employed law-enforcers (Baker 2002). This implied abolishment of the popular vigilantes/militias that were established by the socialist regime and, in
the name of ‘popular power’, comprised citizens who assisted Frelimo’s party-state
structures in local crime control and, during the war, in defending state security
against Renamo (MINT 2005a). Emphasis on state police monopoly also meant that
reform overlooked those non-state actors such as traditional leaders or chiefs who,
outside state regulation, played a role in policing rural areas a role supported by
Portuguese colonialism, but officially banned by Frelimo at independence (1975).
Reform faced major challenges. The police was understaffed and under-resourced
after the war and had ceased to exist over large areas of the country. Where it did
exist, such as in Frelimo-state controlled urban centres, its operations had been
paramilitary and authoritarian (Wisler and Bonvin 2004). Police officers worked in
collaboration with the Frelimo military force, and largely adhered to an enemy
versus friends ethos, which legitimised acts of brutality against enemies of the state
and the use of torture to secure information that would preserve state security (Baker
2002, p. 108). The police was inherently politicised, serving the interest of Frelimo
rather than the wider public an aspect not nurtured by war alone, but also by
legislation until 1992. A law on flogging had also been routinely applied as a licence
to use corporal punishment in everyday policing.
After the war, the police also faced a crisis of sovereignty and legitimacy
particularly in Renamo controlled rural areas such as Sussundenga. Here a plurality
of non-state policing persons acted as informal sovereigns, making ‘decisions on life,death, punishments, rewards, taxation and territorial control’ (Hansen and
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Stepputat 2005, p. 31). They included: chiefs; Renamo soldiers now acting as local
administrators; remnants of the mujhibas, Renamo’s local police during the war; and
healers (wadzi-nyanga). Although these did not form an integrated system of
governance, they did share a history of collaboration and opposition to the Frelimo
state: during the war Renamo reinserted chiefs in governance and used healers, both
banned by Frelimo.4 The rural population also mistrusted the state police after the
war. It was associated with militarised state governance, such as forced removal of
people into government controlled areas since the war began in 1978 (Alexander
1997). In 1995 popular mistrust led to overt opposition by local residents and chiefs
to the reestablishment of state policing in Dombe in the southern part of
Sussundenga. Police officers were chased out three times before settling permanently,
after heavy political bargaining and interventions by the rapid reaction police
(Notıcias 1995a, 1995b, 1995c).
The challenges facing post-war police reform were largely reproduced throughout
the 1990s. Everyday state policing remained partisan and paramilitary. The media
and human rights organisations reported human rights violations, irregulardetentions, extrajudicial killings, infiltration in criminal activity and corruption
(Baker 2002, pp. 112 118). Politicisation of policing was exemplified by the police
employing excessively violent measures against Renamo demonstrators. Very few
officers were legally prosecuted (Baker 2002, pp. 113 115). Simultaneously, the police
proved incapable of handling the rising crime from the mid-1990s, which also
bolstered self-policing and ‘lynchings’ in poor urban areas (Seleti 2000, p. 356). In
rural areas reform was incapable of substituting non-state with state policing. For
example, in Sussundenga the police’s fear of creating antagonism in areas dominated
by Renamo and chiefs meant that police posts were only set up in 2001.5 Moreover,
the police remained understaffed with the ratio of police to citizens being 1:1089 in2003, which is considerably below the internationally accepted ratio of 1:350 (Dava
et al . 2007, p. 119).
One official response to failed police reform was a ‘return’ to citizen participation
in security provisions, referred to as Police Community partnerships. From 2000 this
took two forms: community policing and state recognition of community authorities
(i.e. traditional leaders and village secretaries), who were, amongst other tasks, to
assist the police. Here I focus on the former.
Community policing
the ‘new’ panacea for police reform
Community policing means the direct involvement of citizens in the security system andpolicing, giving them responsibility to take part in making the community a secure,ordered and harmonious place. Together with the police authorities, communities willfind solutions to the security situation that affects citizens [and] the police will obey [ . . .]the values of liberty, equality, respect for human dignity and guarantee the fundamentalrights and freedoms as established in the Constitution of the Republic of Mozambique.(MINT 2005a, p. 5)
The adoption of PolCom by MINT from 2000 was cast as responding to a ‘situation
of anarchism in society’, manifested by rising crime, self-redress, rights violations
and mistrust between police and citizens (MINT 2005a, p. 3). But the choice to do
so and the ideas informing it were strongly influenced by changes in internationaldonor support to police reform and developments in South Africa, both drawing on
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experiences from the west.6 In 1997 1999, MINT representatives participated in
international conferences on community policing; and South African NGOs helped
develop the Mozambican model (MINT 2005b, p. 10). The German bilateral donor,
GTZ, gave financial and technical support to the first pilot projects (MINT 2005a,
p. 11).
The ‘philosophy’ behind adopting PolCom in Mozambique was that ‘public order,
security and peace should not alone be the function of police authorities’, but require
‘active citizen participation in and responsibility for local community security’
(MINT 2005b, p. 5). Concept papers on PolCom combine the liberal-democratic
language of rights and liberties with communitarian ideas of community solidarity
and unity (MINT 2005b, p. 6). Security is defined as preservation of the liberty and
fundamental rights of individual citizens, but envisioned as achieved through
collective efforts in ‘a spirit of solidarity’ (MINT 2005b, p. 5). PolCom is seen to
facilitate this by building community police partnerships, which, it is promised, fulfil
a threefold objective: reduce crime by involving citizens in identifying security
problems and solutions and by bringing the police closer to local communities;democratise policing by diminishing human rights violations and by fostering a
transparent and publicly accountable police service; and strengthen the internal
coherence of local communities and their trust in the police through collective
resolution of problems and law/rights education (GTZ 2002, MINT 2005a, 2005b).
PolCom, it is hoped, will not only create functional changes of policing, but a ‘new
culture of security’ that simultaneously transforms the police and citizens (MINT
2005a, p. 9).
The PolCom model adopted in Mozambique covers CPCs (Conselhos de
Policiamento Comunitario), whose members should be voluntary and selected by
populations of smaller administrative areas. Members should include communityleaders and representatives of different sectors in society: economic agents, religious
associations, NGOs, schools, private and public institutions and ‘other important
social actors’ (MINT 2005a, p. 10). The state recognised community authorities,
such as chiefs, should be compulsory CPC members, because these have knowledge
of community affairs and are seen as locally legitimate (MINT 2005a, p. 8). Thus
CPC members should not be seen as freely elected by community members, but as
legitimised on the basis of their position as important social actors in a given
community.7 Emphasis is placed on senior CPC members: elders are viewed as
most competent in settling problems and guarding community interests (MINT
2005b, p. 17).
The CPCs should not substitute the PRM at local level, but be forums to discuss
and gather information on security problems and solutions affecting the community
(MINT 2005b, p. 10). They can mediate minor conflicts, such as quarrels over land
plots, disagreements between neighbours and family disputes, as well as facilitate
patrols in public spaces, but cannot settle criminal cases. CPC members are
prohibited from carrying any instruments of force, and may only arrest people
caught in the act of committing a crime under the ordinary powers of ‘citizens’
arrest’ (Amnesty International 2008) i.e. demobilise persons caught in acts of crime
and take them directly to the police. The main function of CPCs is to debate and
disseminate knowledge on community crime problems, not to physically handle
them. This includes citizen-educative campaigns on laws and the constitution(MINT 2005a, p. 10). The latter, according to a key MINT official, not only helps
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prevent crime in the long-term, but also nurtures citizenship, by making ‘citizens
acknowledge the bad from the good’ (PolCom responsible, MINT October 2005).
CPCs also have the responsibility to forward information about criminals to the
police, as well as put pressure on the police to be more transparent and responsive to
community crime problems by recording unacceptable behaviour of police officers
(MINT 2005b, pp. 11
16). Thus the CPCs are envisioned as ‘mediators’ between
citizens and the police. This role, it is hoped, will, through increased collaboration,
simultaneously transform the police to service local communities and nurture law-
abiding citizens.
PolCom was implemented from late 2001 with a poor, crime-inflicted Maputo
suburb as pilot project. A year later another Maputo suburb and three municipal
towns in Manica Province were used to test CPCs. These were closely supervised by
MINT representatives, who held public information meetings on the PolCom
concept, as well as authorising the CPCs after their local approval. GTZ provided
financial and technical assistance for awareness raising meetings, exchange visits to
South Africa, Malawi and Germany, training of police officers in human rights andPolCom, formation of a MINT PolCom unit and materials to CPCs (bicycles,
mopeds, whistles, writing materials) and local police stations (office equipment,
transportation, communication) (GTZ 2002, MINT 2005b).
Apart from delays in implementation, due to bureaucracy within MINT, the pilot
projects were deemed successful at a GTZ-financed national seminar in late 2002
(MINT 2005b). Crime had diminished, active community participation was reported
and trust between the police and communities had increased (MINT 2005b, p. 15).
Subsequently, MINT decided, with renewed GTZ-funding, to expand CPCs to other
provinces. PolCom was also included in the 2003 2012 Strategic Plan for the Police
(MINT 2003). Despite pressures from MINT officials, PolCom’s legal basis isconfined to the Constitutional right of citizens to participate in civil defence
(Republica de Mocambique 1990, art. 61). The 1113 CPCs that had been formed by
late-2004 across the 10 provinces were thus pursued without any legislation, only
with guiding principles from concept papers and seminar notes provided to local
police commanders, who were now made responsible for implementation (MINT
2005b, p. 14). The massive expansion of CPCs in 2004 only covered urban and semi-
urban areas (MINT 2005b, p. 14).8 In rural areas state recognised traditional leaders
were the only official non-state collaborators of the police (Kyed 2007a). This
changed with the new Government’s five-year plan (2005 2010), which aims to
expand PolCom to the whole country. By early 2008 registered CPCs totalled 2710,
but legislation is still lacking.
Aside from MINT and GTZ’s assessments of pilot projects, there is to date only
one study of PolCom, conducted in 2006 by the Mozambican Police Academy
(ACIPOL) in selected urban and semi-urban areas.9 On the positive side, the
assessments conclude that CPCs are in general functioning and that most people felt
that police community partnerships could more effectively fight crime. Crime
statistics that did exist before and after the implementation of PolCom (i.e. Maputo)
also show a reduction of crime by an average of 54% (ACIPOL 2006, p. 16). On the
negative side, misconceptions of the PolCom concept are seen as a key reason for a
number of errors in implementation, which is worsened by inadequate resources for
training (MINT 2005b). For example, in some areas MINT records that PolCom wasunderstood as a re-activation of the old popular militias, exemplified by recruitment
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of young men and the use of handcuffs, arms and violence (MINT 2005b, p. 16).
MINT nonetheless sees these as ‘false’ PolCom units that were spontaneously
formed by citizens, particularly by male teenagers, based on rumours about CPCs in
other areas and without having received training from police officers (MINT 2005b,
p. 17). The ACIPOL study concludes that lack of legislation is the main reason for
challenges facing PolCom. This includes unclear lines of accountability (some see
CPCs as accountable to the police, rather than the communities), CPC members
being accused of criminal activity and conflicts over jurisdictions between local
police officers and CPC’s (ACIPOL 2006, p. 12). Consultations made by
FOMICRES add that CPC members were becoming disillusioned due to lack of
knowledge, capacity and state police assistance to tackle criminals (FOMICRES
2008, p. 15). Finally, the voluntarism of PolCom membership had created discontent
about lack of state remuneration, and in some areas to creative ways of economically
sustaining the CPCs i.e. fixed monthly community fees, contributions from
businesses and/or illegal fining of community residents (MINT 2005b, p. 14,
ACIPOL 2006, pp. 14
15).Some of these urban-based experiences resemble local versions of PolCom in
Sussundenga, but there are also significant differences and additional insights about
the formation and everyday practices of PolCom. As addressed next, it was less local
residents and more local state police officers who creatively translated PolCom into
practices that diverged from the official model.
Local versions of community policing
the case of Sussundenga
‘Policiamento comunitario’? Well I don’t really know what it means, no one told us that.
But I think that ‘comunitaria’ means like . . .
I think it is ‘militaria’ because they have towork for the police and receive their orders. (Male resident, Mushambonha, September2005)
The comunitarios [local word for the new community policing persons] work for thepolice to help control the zones . . . to patrol and arrest people who are thieves and beatup people, because the police cannot be in all of the territory [ . . .] They are with thepolice, because the police give them instructions. And sometimes they work for the chief,who chose them together with the police. (Female resident, Matica, August 2005)
These local citizen’s perceptions of PolCom reflect how the local PRM in
Sussundenga’s hinterlands formed and gave tasks to PolCom units from late-2004,
and indicate how far removed this was from the official model. The local word for
PolCom members, comunitarios, does give the impression of persons that serve,
represent and are legitimised by ‘the community’. However, the concept of
community can be invested with multiple meanings (Delanty 2003), and in rural
Mozambique it carries specific historical trajectories. Community is associated with
the party-state ordered and forced removal of people into community villages during
the 1980s and the more recent recognition of ‘community authorities’ based on
selection by powerful elders and Frelimo party-state representatives. In the latter case
‘the community’, legitimising a given community authority, was not enacted as the
whole population within a designated area, but constituted by a small exclusive group
of people from the (mainly elderly male) ranks of chiefly lineages and their assistants
(Buur and Kyed 2007). Similarly, implementation of PolCom at sub-district levels didnot begin with the police informing a designated population about PolCom and by
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asking them to elect CPC members. Rather, the police called chiefs and village
secretaries to a meeting where they were ordered to each chose eight ‘clever,
trustworthy and physically strong persons’ (Chief of police, Dombe, August 2005).
While chiefs saw PolCom as a ‘state order’, the selection of comunitarios followed
historically embedded modes of appointing their own police (known as ma-policia do
mambo or ma-auxiliares; akin to native police) who for a long time have assisted the
chiefs’ courts in notifying and taking contenders to the court and healers (Kyed
2007a).10 These police persons are chosen by, and are commonly close relatives of,
chiefs and their councillors, which supports the lineage-based system of authority.
Similarly, when selecting PolCom members chiefs used the advice of their council of
elders, the madoda (literally male elders). While choosing already existing police
assistants, the majority also chose men who were seen as having useful experiences
for state policing tasks. For example, in Gudza chieftaincy four PolCom members
were already working as police for the chief, while the rest were former Renamo
mujhibas or had served the Frelimo-state military. Other chieftaincies also had
members with military experience. This pattern reflects how chiefs understood thepolice’s new PolCom concept and state policing more generally. If not as an explicit
reactivation of the socialist era’s popular militias or of the colonial auxiliares (native
police), then chiefs at least saw PolCom as the mobilisation of young men capable of
performing physical policing tasks (arrests, patrols, and so forth) for the state
police.11 Simultaneously, the chosen members, who were 20 35 years old, matched
local age categories of youth, who perform the physical work of community security,
and are distinguished from the category of madoda, who have maturity to provide
counselling and settle problems. The latter matches MINT’s definition of CPC
membership, but in Sussundenga these actors were those authorising PolCom
members, not the members themselves.Consequently, the formation of PolCom groups drew on a mixture of local
systems of chiefly police assistants and chiefs’ ideas about state police requirements
and past colonial and post-colonial engagements with non-state actors. The
divergence from MINT’s model that this created, it should be recalled, was
supported by the local PRM itself. Many chiefs and rural residents also understood
PolCom as not only a PRM, but also a Frelimo-state project. This was reflected in
resistance towards joining PolCom in areas most strongly influenced by Renamo.
For example in Bunga, Renamo’s provincial headquarters during the war, all but two
of the chosen comunitarios refused to ‘work for the Frelimo police’ (PolCom
member, Bunga, August 2005). The local police officer intervened and obligated six
new persons to be members, including two Renamo supporters, while trying to
convince people that ‘PolCom is not a Frelimo police’ (Police officer, Bunga,
September 2005). In two other places the PRM also intervened because PolCom
candidates refused recruitment, due to ‘fear of working with the police’ (PolCom
member, Gudza, September 2005). While the PRM’s interventions question the
voluntarism of PolCom membership, the fear and politically based resistance reflect
the paramilitary history and the ‘politics of policing’ in Sussundenga’s hinterlands,
where the state police is associated with, often violently, serving Frelimo interests
against Renamo.
Local police officers did try to convince people that the PRM is impartial today,
and accepted Renamo members as comunitarios, but they also reproduced aspects of the past.12 During the formation process this was reflected in how the police
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instructed the new members. In a tone of command and order, all the new groups
were told at a meeting with the District Commander that they should now work for
the PRM, and that:
You community police are like soldiers that control the people. Like in the chieftaincy,
the chief has persons who are his eyes, who observe the zone. If something bad happensthe chief sends the community police to take action and then inform the police. So youhave to work with the state, not only with the chief.
A one-day training of the PolCom members by police sub-commanders (chefe de
posto policial ) underpinned divergence from the CPC model. Rather than being
trained in awareness of the law, human rights and how to hold the police accountable
and transparent, the comunitarios were trained as a local police force:
We were shown how to study people’s behaviour . . . whether they would do somethingbad . . . and to collect information by hanging around and listening. And then we weretold how we should behave ourselves in front of criminals or drunks . . . not to be
aggressive and approach them calmly. The chief of police also showed us how to arrestpeople and how to tie their hands. Then we were shown how to do a search, like look fordrugs and weapons, by putting the person up against a wall. We were also shown how tochambockear [beat with a baton or cane] misbehaving persons [showing that beating isonly allowed below the knees]. (PolCom member, Gudza, September 2005)
These instructions unsurprisingly underpinned the common understanding of
comunitarios as ‘members of the [state] police’. While 87% of my interviewees held
that PolCom members were employed by the PRM, and the rest that they were under
chiefs’ command, no one expressed the view that they were authorised by and served
the ‘community’ or the wider population. This was supported by the actions of chiefs
of police. It was only after the training-sessions that they travelled to the chieftaincies
to present the comunitarios and explain their functions to the public. In some cases,
the participants were asked to (dis)approve the members by clapping hands or
expressing dissatisfaction. However, as asserted by one participant: ‘we did not say
anything against that, because the comunitarios were chosen by the chief and the
government agreed’ (Male resident, Gudza, September 2005). Another indicated that
ordinary people had no authority to interfere with state decisions: ‘I don’t have any
opinion. Who decides is the state and we cannot go against the ideas of the state’
(Male resident, Matica, August 2005). Others felt completely excluded, as asserted
by a businessman in Dombe: ‘I heard somewhere that the comunitarios should be
elected by the people, but this did not happen. I discovered them when they started
to patrol and said they were the police’ (Male resident, Dombe, July 2005).Nonetheless, chiefs of police held that ‘community legitimacy’ was ensured with the
public meetings in the chieftaincies. The District Commander was more explicit on
the divergence from MINT’s model. He explained that in the hinterlands the first
PolCom groups were so-called nucleos de policiamento comunitario (PolCom units),
not CPCs, because councils ‘will take time to form and need long-term planning’
(District Commander, Sussundenga, July 2005). The result, nevertheless, was a
massive recruitment of youth, amounting for example in Dombe to 18 units (144
members) within an estimated population of 46,000 (and with eight PRM officers in
2005).
The formation of PolCom groups in Sussundenga certainly represented localisedversions of MINT’s model, but this went beyond planning constraints and selection
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procedures. Rather than community-based discussion forums, PolCom was appro-
priated by the sub-district level police to reassert the ground that the state police had
lost during the war. This was particularly apparent in everyday policing.
Everyday practices of community policing
year one
In 2005 the police post in the Dombe administrative post had changed markedly. The
previous year three PRM officers inhabited the post and 2 3 times a week a chief or a
village secretary came by with cases. Now the police post staff had expanded. Four
young men sat outside the PRM building, awaiting orders from the officer on duty.
Two wore batons in their string belts, but otherwise they were dressed in second-
hand T-shirts and jeans, common among the Dombe youth. They were the
comunitarios. Those with batons were from Dombe administrative capital nucleo.
The others were on duty from one of the chieftaincies. This reflected the general
organisation of PolCom. The police had ordered each chief to provide two PolCom
members for 24-hour weekly shifts at the police post together with members residingclose to the police post. At the three police posts at locality level, equipped with one
PRM officer, a similar arrangement was made with surrounding chiefs. The idea was
that comunitarios should share work between assisting the PRM directly and serving
the chiefs in forwarding crimes to the police and helping the chiefs’ courts. When on
shifts at the police post, the comunitarios were given batons and handcuffs. This
differed from the work for chiefs, but according to the chief of police it was due to
unavailable instruments. A deliberate difference was that PolCom members, when
working for the police, were strictly prohibited from receiving payments from
contenders, otherwise a common practice for chiefs’ police assistants. The
comunitarios only received food from the PRM when on duty. This was despitethe heavy workload they were given.
On my first morning back, after a year of absence, at the police post in 2005 the
comunitarios were quickly ordered to take action. It was soon clear that they were
used as the extended arm of the PRM. A middle-aged man, with an injured arm,
came to inform the PRM that he had received murder threats from the person who
had injured him, but who had been released a few days earlier. The accused was
presumably armed with a machete. The chief of police established that ‘this is a very
serious crime’ and that the accused be arrested immediately. Rather than sending a
uniformed officer, he called two comunitarios, gave them handcuffs and checked that
each had a baton. He then stopped a passing-by truck and sent the comunitarios with
it together with the injured man, to show the way to the accused some 25 km away.
Late at night the comunitarios returned on foot with a successful arrest.
When cases appeared outside the immediate vicinity of the police posts, the
comunitarios were sent out to perform arrests. Given the PRM’s lack of vehicles, and
that distances are long, this considerably eased the work of police officers.
Oftentimes lifts were unavailable, and the comunitarios had to walk. Arrests covered
crimes ranging from domestic violence, rape, knife stabbings, fights, drugs, arson and
theft, to minor disputes.13 Sometimes the comunitarios brought a document from the
PRM to show the accused or the local chief, if the latter’s assistance was needed to
locate the accused. However, the comunitarios were not obliged to inform chiefs when
on duty at the police post. Here they were under the PRM’s command, just like thenucleos in Dombe were. This differed from arrests performed when working for
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chiefs. For example, in a theft case where the chief, not the PRM, was informed first,
the chief sent a comunitario to arrest the accused with cords, bring him to the chief’s
home and then, after verifying the theft, sent the comunitario to the PRM with the
thief.
The comunitarios did not always use handcuffs or tie persons with cords. They
were only authorised to do so if persons refused to be voluntarily escorted. Similarly,
the use of batons was only allowed if the accused was aggressive. For instance, a man
who had been in a fight and refused to be handcuffed was ‘beaten a little bit so he
could calm down’ (PolCom member, Dombe, August 2005). The PRM authorised
this practice, but also imposed limits: a maximum of five strokes below the knees
(Police officer, Dombe, September 2005).
At the police post, the comunitarios were also in charge of raising the national
flag, bringing people in the cell to the interrogation room, cleaning the premises of
the building and cooking food for officers. While these tasks were hardly
controversial areas of easing the daily work of PRM officers, comunitarios also
performed more intricate, extra-legal duties. On several occasions, PolCom memberswere ordered to chambockear persons under interrogation within the police post,
because, as one member recalled, ‘the chief of police said that I should beat him so
that he could speak up and tell where he hid the stolen goods’ (PolCom member,
Dombe, August 2005). There were also situations where PRM officers ordered
comunitarios to apply corporal punishment. In a case where a young man had raped
a girl, the comunitario was ordered by a police officer to punish the rapist with 15
strokes on the back. The comunitarios claim ‘they beat until the police say it is
enough’ (PolCom member, Mushambonha, September 2005). The strict supervision
by police officers was also confirmed by a case I witnessed in Bunga.
While post-war police legislation strictly prohibits torture and corporal punish-ment, they were regularly used by local PRM officers prior to PolCom (Kyed 2007a).
This suggests that the PRM used PolCom as a way of outsourcing to non-state
actors, not simply the physical hard work of policing, but also those measures that
were now illegal for PRM officers. PolCom members did the ‘dirty work’ of the
police, but the extra-legal practices were, it should be noted, delegated to them and
regulated by the PRM. Much the same applied to patrols.
While patrols are not illegal, the ones the PRM ordered the comunitarios to
enforce covered the so-called lei fora da hora, which can be likened to an extra-legal
curfew imposed between midnight and four o’clock in the morning. Anyone caught
walking outdoors at night, around the marketplace, the smaller shops or the
neighbourhoods were inspected for ID and tax receipts and, except with family
emergencies (death, illness or birth), were arrested by the comunitarios and brought
to the police post. Here they spent the night, and in the morning did ‘public’ work
for the police, such as cook food or sweep the courtyard, while being watched over by
a comunitario. When arrestees were suspected of crimes or made complaints they
were ‘educated’ with a chamboco. Although the lei (law) fora da hora is not statutory
law (it is actually unconstitutional because it restricts freedom of movement), it was
enforced as if it were and led to numerous arrests. For example, one night in Dombe
four people were arrested (two without tax receipts for bicycles, one without ID and
one drunk). Three spent the night in the cell and one was released because of a family
emergency. ‘The punishment’, according to a comunitario, ‘is a way to educate thepeople, so they know the law . . . that it is illegal to walk out at night and not to have
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papers’ (PolCom member, Gudza, September 2005). Besides these practices the
comunitarios also secured peace around bars at night and at times inspected passing
vehicles for stolen or smuggled goods (such as sugar from Zimbabwe). In Bunga the
police officer also made PolCom members check receipts for goods when people
passed by or when awaiting transportation. If they had no receipts, the goods were
seized in the officer’s house.
While the latter functions are beyond the official mandate of PolCom, the
enforcement of the lei fora da hora is overtly extra-legal, comparably to the outsourcing
of physical violence. Nonetheless, police officers always spoke of the practices they
authorised as ‘law and order’ enforcement. This indicates how the local police’s rules
for PolCom continuously bordered on an intricate line between the legal and the illegal.
The question is why this was the case. I suggest two partly interrelated answers.
First, the strong resemblance between patrolling practices and the 1970 1980s
party-state social control measures, suggest that local versions of PolCom were
informed by historically embedded policing cultures and past central-state directives.
Second, police officers’ statements indicate that outsourcing of extra-legal tasks wereshaped by what the police perceived as effective measures for installing ‘law and
order’ in the former war-zones. This was not simply a state police capacity problem.
State police authority was also at stake. Police officers repeatedly explained that
PolCom not only helped reduce crime, but enabled the PRM to (re)assert control of
crime and (dis)order. PolCom can be seen as part of a process where the local PRM
attempts to assert the sovereign authority to regulate order-making activities and
authorise the use of force, principally by outsourcing tasks. This process began a
couple of years earlier with the recognition of chiefs. It was characterised by
measures to bring those non-state actors who competed with state sovereignty under
state regulation. For example chiefs, who were accustomed to settle crimes during thewar, are now strictly prohibited from doing so, and treated as criminals if they
authorise the use of force (Kyed 2007a). Similarly, the police’s strict regulation of the
comunitarios’ use of force illustrates how state police authority is at stake. The
physical act is outsourced, not the monopoly to authorise the use of force.
Conversely, the extra-legal patrol arrests and punishments served, police officers
explained, to ‘show the people that the police are now effective’ and ‘to make people
again respect the police and the law’ (Chief of police, Dombe, August 2005). As
discussed elsewhere, these statements are informed by local police officers’
conceptualisation of former Renamo controlled societies as ‘zones of confusion’,
i.e. areas where people have lost their sense of what is good and bad because of long-
term exposure to wartime governance. They therefore require special policing
measures (Kyed 2007a, 2007b). If this conceptualisation was used by the police to
legitimise police violence, it also seemed to underpin the illegality of PolCom
practices instigated by the PRM. However, as addressed next, local citizens were not
as ignorant as the police held, and outsourcing of violence to comunitarios was
litigious.
Reducing crime, enhancing fear and police violence
the citizen perspective
Rural citizens generally shared the PRM’s view that PolCom helped the police to better
control the zones, reduce incidences of crime and diminish troublemakers around bars,marketplaces and transport hubs. But enhanced control implied trade-offs. People
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increasingly feared to move freely in the semi-urban villages. They also held that police
violence had increased.
Referring to the nocturnal patrols, a woman in Dombe with personal experience
(arrested for being outdoors at 21:00 hours!) asserted: ‘It helps, yes. I am now afraid
to go out at night, because I fear the comunitarios will arrest me again. So also the
thieves or bandits will be afraid. This helps because then there can be no theft’
(Female resident, Dombe, September 2005). A man from Matica supported the
effectiveness of lei fora da hora ‘because it is at night that the troublemakers
circulate’, but admitted that ‘people in general now stay indoors at night’ (Male
resident, Matica, August 2005). Others were explicitly critical. Drawing comparison
with the war years when he lived in a Frelimo-state area, a man in Dombe asserted:
I don’t understand how this can be a law [lei fora da hora], because during the war it waslike that, but now the war has ended and the people are free. And if you go to fetchwater, and you are delayed, or you are having a drink at the bar, and it closes after darkand you need to go home then what do you do? You can be caught . . . told that you are
outside the law. And then you have to sleep at the police post? (Male resident, Dombe,August 2005)
The shopkeepers in Bunga were furious about the new PolCom practices. During the
day people from the rural hinterlands feared to do their shopping, because many did
not have IDs and tax receipts. Moreover, after dark there were problems. Usually
shops close around 22:00 hours, but now there was no business after 19:00 hours,
because that was when the patrols began. This perspective reflects how enforcing the
lei fora da hora was often expanded to earlier hours. More importantly, it severely
violated rural citizens’ right to freedom of movement. The wider implication is a
restriction of citizenship. In areas close to police posts only persons holding the right
documents (ID, tax papers and receipts for goods) were treated as citizens, and could
avoid police punishments. These persons were a minority. Due to the war and
massive floods in 2000, few poor rural dwellers have ID cards, and acquiring them is
very costly and bureaucratically cumbersome. If MINT’s PolCom model was
intended as an aspect of nurturing law-abiding citizens through modalities of
inclusion and collaboration with the state police, then this had acquired a rather
different expression in Sussundenga.
Another repercussion of local versions of PolCom was, according to rural
citizens, that police violence had increased, also in spatial terms. It was now applied
beyond the buildings and courtyards of the PRM. Importantly, people complained
that the comunitarios beat-up persons before being heard by the police or the chiefs’courts. This was seen as illegitimate. Corporal punishment of persons proven guilty
of severe crimes, youth breaking marriage rules, repeated witchcraft inflictions or
insults of elders is locally legitimate, but prior to trial it is not. Disapproval of
PolCom violence applied to incidences authorised by the PRM such as during arrests
and interrogations. However, people were particularly dissatisfied with those PolCom
groups that had begun to excessively use their ‘license’ to physical force, and that
seemed uncontrollable for, at least, the District Commander and sub-commanders.
In Matica locality one of the PolCom groups was criticised, because ‘the first
thing the comunitarios do when they arrive is to beat the accused person or if they see
some people fighting. They don’t even bother to ask what has happened’ (Maleresident, Boupua, August 2005). One man recalled:
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The comunitarios came to my house. They had a document saying that I should go tothe police, because I was accused of the fight. I didn’t struggle with them, but beforeI could say anything, I got beaten three or four times. And then I was tied up. At thepolice I tried to complain, but it didn’t help. After the hearing I was chambockeadofifteen times by a comunitario and then I had to run twenty times around the police post.(Male resident, Matica, July 2005)
Several people complained to the local police officer about this PolCom group, but
he seemed to have little control of the group or simply authorised their excessive use
of force. It was only when a man, who after being severely injured by a comunitario,
complained to the District police, that the District Commander dismissed two
members of the group. They were not put on trial.
In Dombe things also got out of hand with one of the first PolCom units. Not
only did its members ‘beat people without them resisting arrest’, according to the
police, they were also accused of insulting the elders and failing to pay the chiefs due
respect. One elder recalled: ‘they just come and say ‘‘we are the police’’. With those
instruments they think they can do anything . . .
that they now have power. This isnot good for the community and it is not good for the government’ (Male resident,
Dombe, September 2005). Insulting elders, particularly by youth, is a severe norm
violation in the chieftaincies, comparable with crime, and punishable in the chiefs’
courts with fines or even corporal punishment. Elders play a central role as family
heads and as living custodians of societal well-being in the lineage-based system.
Failing to respect elders is disrespect of the ancestral spirits that guard the land and
the living. Other comunitarios were aware of this, and said they always informed the
elders and chiefs about their policing tasks. Furthermore, the chief of police in
Dombe firmly condemned such insults. However, it was not on this ground that the
PolCom unit was dismissed. Rather, it was because the District Commander was toldby two prisoners that the comunitarios forced them to pay excessive sums of money
when being arrested. This was confirmed at a public meeting in Dombe, held by the
Commander. The comunitarios were asked to repay everyone and punished with
days in the cell, before being dismissed. While payment to the comunitarios by
persons being arrested could be inspired by the chiefs’ policing system, the amounts
extracted were 200 400% higher than usual. During patrols, the comunitarios also
threatened to take people to the police or beat them if they did not pay. This ability,
people thought, was because they had authority from the state police and carried
their instruments. The chief of police was, according to the Commander, ‘strictly told
off for not being able to control the comunitarios’.
These cases highlight the problems of outsourcing. It shows the ease with which
PolCom can run out of control of police officers. Their sovereign authority to define
the ‘legitimate’ use of force can easily be relinquished. The distinction between
criminals and law-enforcers easily becomes unclear. Paradoxically, acts of reducing
crime produce new forms of symbolic and physical violence that are locally
illegitimate and/or outright criminal. As Abrahams asserts about vigilante groups,
PolCom in Sussundenga also ‘exists in an awkward borderland between the law and
illegality’ and ‘is capable of slipping and sliding in one direction or the other’
(Abrahams 1996, pp. 43 44). In Sussundenga, however, this does not appear external
to state regulation, as is the case for the vigilante groups Abrahams writes about. The
illegitimacy and illegality of PolCom practices is, at least partly, nurtured by the localstate police’s own extra-legal measures of outsourcing tasks to community policing
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persons. This may also explain why the errant PolCom units were never taken to
court, but punished outside codified law.
Conclusion
There is something insufferably attractive about the margin of law where the statere-creates the very terror it is meant to combat. (Taussig 2005, p. 14)
This article argues for a cautious view of community policing as a much celebrated
security sector reform solution for tackling paramilitary policing cultures, violent
crime and societal disorder in post-conflict societies. PolCom in Mozambique has
reduced crime, in statistical or perceived terms, but the price is reconfigured forms of
symbolic and physical violence. Effects on crime seem to depend on how criminality
is defined and its perpetrators and victims are labelled (Abrahams 2007). In
Sussundenga’s hinterlands the victims are ordinary citizens, moving around without
the right papers, and the perpetrators are frequently official law-enforcers or ratherthose young men they now authorise to do the physical work. One could argue, as
government officials in Mozambique, that the ‘errors’ of local versions of PolCom
are due to ignorance of the ‘real’ meanings of concepts and lack of legal instruments
for proper regulation. It is a problem of implementation. PolCom fails when the state
police lose control of PolCom groups. It fails when it becomes too absorbed by
unruly (usually young male) forces in society. While these explanations are not
dismissed in this article, they fail to capture essential aspects. The Sussundenga case
points to the need to pay attention to the central role played by the local state police
in perpetuating, or even (re)expanding police violence and restrictions on citizenship.
This is partly nurtured by historically embedded paramilitary policing cultures,
including former popular or citizen policing. But it is also conditioned by the specific
challenges facing the state police in former war-inflicted areas, and zones that used to
be controlled by old enemies (i.e. Renamo and chiefs). Like Dixon (2007) shows for
South Africa, implementation of community policing policies is shaped by individual
initiatives and local political and socio-economic conditions.
In Sussundenga, the state police faced a crisis of state sovereignty, matched by
the de-monopolisation of coercive force, a pluralism of non-state policing actors and
lack of capacity to expand their outreach. Along with state recognition of chiefs,
community policing was appropriated to deal with this crisis. MINT’s CPC model
fared uneasily with the local state police’s challenges. The capacity problem was
handled by outsourcing tasks to PolCom members, and attempts to assert the
monopoly of coercive force was done through control and regulation of non-state
actors. Paradoxically, recuperating state police authority and control of crime relied,
largely, on illegal measures when compared with post-war police legislation.
Consequently, the state police, now in a partly outsourced form, remained largely
paramilitary, rather than a service enhancing human rights, the rule of law and
community participation. The question is where this is taking state police citizen
relations in the future. The Sussundenga case suggests a certain reproduction of the
socialist surveillance state, exemplified by more patrols, random arrests, public
punishments, extra-legal prosecutions of Renamo members and overall tightened
police control of people. Conversely, the incidences of uncontrollable comunitariosand the growing dissatisfaction amongst rural residents may lay the ground for
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future conflicts. Recent events in the provincial capital, where organised local citizens
in the name of ‘people’s power’ lynched several criminals, stormed the police station
and stoned a number of officers, suggest one potential critical result of the limited
impact of post-conflict police reform.
The question is how and to what extent it is possible in the future to ensure
improved convergence between the intentions behind community policing policies
and their implementation in local arenas? In Mozambique, improved training of
local police officers and the public in general on MINT’s intentions behind PolCom
could potentially have reduced the large scope for creative translation of policy into
practice. As discussed in this article, it was only in the few pilot project cases that
training was provided directly by MINT experts. In other areas implementation was
based on sporadic information from the District Commander, and then left in the
hands of local police officers who had a great deal of discretionary power. The fact
that there is no existing law, lack of independent organs and inadequate resources to
regulate and monitor the conduct of PolCom members and of state police
engagements with them also reduces the probability of adherence to policyintentions. That said, improved training, resources and legal-organisational proce-
dures for PolCom, while certainly important, cannot be expected to do away with
processes of local mediation. As argued by Moore (1978/2000), the implementation
of law is always matched by acts of manipulation, unmaking and remaking of rules
as law meets social reality and is mediated by historically positioned actors (Moore
1978/2000, p. 1). The challenge to police reform in post-conflict Mozambique goes
beyond ‘getting right’ community policing. To realise the constitutional commit-
ments to human rights and publicly accountable state officials, there is a need to
address much more profound and historically embedded cultures of policing and
state
citizen relations.
Notes
1. On the recognition of community authorities see Buur and Kyed (2007) and on the role of traditional leaders in policing see Kyed (2007a, 2007b, 2007c).
2. Conclusions about the longer-term impacts of PolCom in Sussundenga are tentative,because it only had a lifetime of one year when I ended fieldwork in late-2005.
3. On security sector reform at large, see Lala (2003) and on the justice sector see Kyed(2007a).
4. On rural governance in Renamo controlled areas during the war see Alexander (1997) andKyed (2007a).
5. On reasons for the failure to democratise policing in the 1990s, see Lala (2003) and Wislerand Bonvin (2004).
6. On the global export of Anglo-American models of community policing to developingcountries, see Brogden and Nijhar (2005)
7. There are no gendered or other kinds of identity-based criteria for CPC membership.8. By June 2005 CPCs were distributed as follows: Maputo city (34), Maputo province (45),
Gaza (63), Inhambane (56), Sofala (68), Manica (57), Tete (62), Niassa (183), Zambezia(59), Nampula (43) and Cabo Delgado (483).
9. The ‘Mozambican Force for Crime Investigation and Social Reinsertion’ (FOMICRES),an NGO formed to assist the reintegration of ex-combatants, but which now engages withcommunity security, also made a minor assessment of PolCom in urban-based suburbs of eight provinces in 2007 (FOMICRES 2008).
10. In the semi-urban areas of locality and administrative posts, where village secretaries arerecognised as community authorities, it was PRM officers and secretaries who selected thecomunitarios.
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11. There was only one female PolCom member, a 38-year-old, tall and very strong, unmarriedwoman, who was chosen by the PRM in Dombe administrative capital.
12. See Kyed (2007b) on the continued politics of policing in Sussundenga, including randomarrests of Renamo members and public meetings where the PRM discursively producesRenamo as the criminal ‘Other’ of the good citizen.
13. I did not encounter any arrests by PolCom members of homicide suspects, which wassupported by the Chief of Police’s statement that such cases were confined to PRMofficers.
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