ABSTRACT
Keeping the peace in foreign countries is not a role that has come easily to police officers in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent. Prior to the end of apartheid, for example, the South African Police (the SAP, now the SAPS) were heavily involved in counter-insurgency operations on the Zambezi border between 1967 and 1975. Special units with a clandestine police status were regularly involved in cross-border incidents of assassination and the like. One break in this pattern which was significant was the policing of the 1989 Namibian elections, with Pretoria at least strongly in the background of ostensibly local forces. Since 1994, and the formal end of the apartheid state, hostility has made way for at least a superficial amity and a professed role for the SAPS (in conjunction with elements of the South African army) in supporting peace initiatives in African areas of open conflict.
