Thugs, spies and vigilantes: community policing and street politics in inner city Addis Ababa

Di Nunzio, Marco

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Title:	Thugs, spies and vigilantes: community policing and street politics in inner city Addis Ababa
Author:	Di Nunzio, Marco
Year:	2014
Periodical:	Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (ISSN 0001-9720)
Volume:	84
Issue:	3
Pages:	444-465
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ethiopia
Subjects:	police community participation neighbourhoods crime prevention
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972014000357
Abstract:	The implementation of community policing schemes and development programmes targeting street youth in inner city Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, intended to prevent crime and unrest, has resulted in an expansion of structures of political mobilization and surveillance of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the party that has ruled the country since 1991. Yet the fact that the government managed to implement its programmes does not imply that the ruling party was entirely successful in tackling ordinary crime as well as political dissent. As neighbourhoods continued to be insecure, especially at night, the efficacy of the ruling party's politicized narratives on community policing and crime prevention was questioned. An appreciation of the shortcomings of government action on the streets of the inner city raises questions about the extent of the reach of the EPRDF State into the grass roots of urban society as well as about the ways in which dissent is voiced in a context where forms of political surveillance and control are expanding. This paper, which is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2009 and 2013, on the street economy in inner city Addis Ababa, investigates these issues in order to contribute to the study of the Ethiopian State and to the broader debate on community policing and crime prevention on the African continent. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]