This past weekend on December 1st, I spent an hour at an Academic event, a conference on “Societies Under Stress: Welfare and Penal Policies amid Rising Insecurity,” at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. There, I attended a talk led by Sarah Brooks and Marianne Ulriksen on their paper titled: “Why do people support redistribution in high-crime settings?” More specifically, they spoke to redistribution in South Africa and their high-crime setting. This topic definitely changed my perspective on apartheid and its effect on the people of South Africa as well as their thoughts on apartheid retrospectively. It was very interesting to see the responses of citizens reflecting on apartheid in hindsight and hearing their different opinions and feelings on it in relation to redistribution.
This event directly relates to the topic of International Affairs in its analysis of redistribution and its relation to rising insecurity across the globe and more specifically in South Africa. The insight provided by citizens in different focus groups and surveys was very informative and gave such unique perspectives in regards to redistribution and apartheid. This topic does not necessarily relate to any other topics I have learned in my coursework, but I did gain a lot from the event academically.
While the critiques on the paper and its methods from the panel were warranted and no-doubt useful for the authors, I was most interested in the content and analysis of the paper presented. I was not surprised by the fact that people were in general agreement that the government should do something to reduce inequality. Brooks and Ulriksen noted that people supported redistribution but disagreed with what they wanted to be taxed on to improve services. The tax burden fell on the wealthy, and the poorer people were in strong support of redistribution due to fear of crime and the reasons behind this crime, something I had never thought of.
This is where I was most intrigued by the relation between crime and support for redistribution, much of which stems from apartheid. What with South Africa’s work towards equality now, people think that criminals have more rights than they did because there is too much freedom. This is a very odd-sounding take on freedom to have and something I never would have thought to be an issue. But back in the days of apartheid, there was more order, and people had this sense that things were better, or at least more controlled, with the existence of violent retribution. Now, police are afraid of gangsters, and some people think they should bring back the death penalty because it would control the gangsters.
This take on redistribution and apartheid seemed so foreign and extreme to me that the people would want to reinstate something like the death penalty. Other thoughts like the citizens’ idea that criminals have it even better in prison with too many rights and KFC chicken is almost laughable. But at the same time, these different perspectives are very eye-opening and shocking in a good way. The authors’ relation of this current situation to that of post-communist Eastern European countries where the same people who hated communism became nostalgic of the days when there was no crime on the streets was also incredibly insightful.
After attending this event, I would love to learn more about South African citizens’ experience with apartheid and its influence on their thoughts about redistribution. I would definitely like to better understand their individual thought processes and the analysis of the responses from the different socioeconomic groups, as well. Overall, I very much enjoyed the conference, and I am glad to have had my eyes opened to such an authentic perspective and concept.