ABSTRACT
This chapter explores everyday policing in a crime-ridden, poorer area of Maputo and discusses the various security blurs that occur in the overlaps, entanglements and cooperation between state police officers and civilian policing actors. In this context, security blurs are not alone expressive of various forms of complementarity and overlap between public and private policing but are also deeply political. In everyday performances and interactions between state and civilian policing actors this politics is evident in subtle competition over power, benefits and legitimacy. At a structural level, security blurs in Maputo are conditioned by a general situation of disputed or uncertain sovereignty as well as by the insecurities that characterise life in poor neighbourhoods. The chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2009–2010.
