Poor leadership in crime intelligence and a struggling detective service are affecting the ability of South Africa - where a murder happens every 28 minutes - to bring down crime.
While many South African police officers, who were born into poverty, grew to appreciate the job, they want more for their children - careers requiring degrees - and work to provide them.
Five years on, no-one has been held to account for the Marikana massacre where 34 miners were shot dead by members of the South African Police Service in a single day.
If South Africa’s argument in court is that marijuana causes harm, it deserves to lose. The real question it should ask is whether criminal prohibition is the effective way forward.
Protests in South Africa are about more than just service delivery of basic services such as water and electricity. They reflect a wider crisis about the failure to build a more equitable society.
South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa’s apology for his role in the 2012 Marikana massacre has no credibility, as there wasn’t full disclosure.
Vigilantism challenges the formal boundary between crime and punishment, between law and justice. But its largely been overlooked as a legal topic worthy of in-depth consideration.
A tone of bitter disillusionment dominates the book, which combines self-deprecating anecdotes with reflections on the unique strangeness of policing a post-apartheid South African city.
South Africa has stubbornly high rates of violent crime. More concerning, though, is that the latest crime stats suggest the recent increase in murders is not slowing - it may even continue.
The main criticism leveled at the body that oversees the work of South Africa’s elite police unit, the Hawks, is that it lacks the power to initiate investigations, making it ineffective.
The widely-held assumption that murder rates have been increasing in South Africa in the past two decades is incorrect – and it may divert attention from a new problem that needs attention.
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State
Jan Smuts Professor of International Relations and Director of the African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), University of the Witwatersrand