Louis is back, prying under the dirty fingernails of society. In the final part of his Law & Disorder series, he travels to Johannesburg; a South African city full of slums, where an ineffective police force have given rise to "private security firms", who operate above the law to protect its citizens from criminals. But are they part of the problem?It's another interesting episode, as Louis meets William Mayangoni, boss of a security firm known as "Mapogo" who patrol the squatter camp of Diepsloot on Joburg's outskirts. Mapogo's methods to maintain order are brutal; capturing suspects and beating them with a "syambok" (leather whip) as a means of administering "medicine". It's corporal punishment as a means of deterrent -- an "African solution to an African problem" -- but the citizens of Diepsloot aren't too happy with Mapogo, and an angry mob forces William to call the real police for protection.
In Johannesburg itself, Louis goes on patrol with a security firm called "Bad Boyz" in the poor suburb of Hillbrow. Hendrik De Klerk shows Louis a bizarre practice called "hijacking", where criminal gangs takeover entire buildings and extort rent from the residents. Bad Boyz are regularly called to flush out a hijacked building, restore order and place the residents under their protection. Louis gets to go inside a building that's been supposedly hijacked, finding destitute families living with no electricity, water or heating inside.
Unlike last week's Philadelphia special (where it was shocking to see a major western city consumed by so much crime), it was less of a surprise to see Johannesburg's lawless streets. This is Africa, after all --a continent divided into safari Heaven and tribal Hell in most westerners' eyes. The situation was worse here than in Philly, but less incongruous.
Louis was his usual self; asking questions like an inquisitive eight-year-old. I'm still unconvinced his presenting style suits his grittier documentaries of late. He's a faintly comic presence whose unbiased, gentle simpleton act seems too laidback in this context. It's a great persona to adopt when trying to endear yourself to has-been celebrities, but the way he tries to make people reflect on their own actions doesn't cut it with hardened gangsters, thieves, killers and deprived people caught in the melee.
Instead, Louis sometimes comes across as a naïve, idealistic foreigner with no real understanding of the situation. It might have been more insightful if Louis had also investigated why the Joburg police are so apparently inept -- underfunding, poor training, a lack of manpower? And what did the government have to say? If they got the cops up to scratch, it might lessen the need for private security firms, and that can only be a good thing. After that, maybe faith can be restored in the police and the crime rate will slowly go down. But I suspect the government officials are either totally disenfranchised, or turn a blind eye to the chaos because it doesn't affect them --but it would have been nice to know for sure.
Admittedly, there are no easy answers here -- it's a complicated, rotten mess, because it's a problem that's been allowed to spiral out of control. Maybe Johannesburg can be pulled back from the brink of total anarchy, but it won't be a quick or easy process, and Louis certainly didn't leave us with any rays of hope.
7 December 2008
BBC2, 9pm
