ABSTRACT
The crime writer James McClure, in a series of low-key South African crime novels, has fictionalized the symbiotic relationship between white and indigenous policing in South Africa. This chapter illustrates the "detribalisation" process by which both indigenous groups and legal structures have been incorporated within the dominant white structures. The major manifestation of black incorporation into the structure of social control was through a process of "retribalisation". There have always been black police within the South African Police (SAP) and its predecessor organizations, despite their primary role as agents of white supremacy. The development of the Chiefs and Commissioners Courts and the institutionalization of Native law in 1927, by the Native Administration Act, was the logical outcome of the process of retribalisation. The state police affirmative action programme was initiated by a major SAP conference at the police Staff College at Graaff Reinet in October 1991.
