Magister Artium - MA / In 1987 Ntombikayise Priscilla Kubheka was abducted, tortured, killed and her body dumped by apartheid security police. She was an uMkhonto WeSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), commander based in Durban and was in charge of weaponry storage and organised safe houses for those returning from exile. Amnesty applications and perpetrator testimony given at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) amnesty hearings alleged that Kubheka had died, while being interrogated, from a heart attack. The perpetrators claimed the heart attack was possibly as a result of Kubheka being overweight. In 1997 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) exhumed skeletal remains and items of clothing, including a floral dress, from a pauper grave in Charlottedale cemetery, Groutville. The exhumed skull indicated a bullet wound. The post-mortem and numerous forensic examinations confirmed the identification of the skeletal remains to be those of Kubheka. The forensic examinations of the items of clothing confirmed the findings of the skeletal examinations in establishing identification. These forensic examinations and its findings contested testimony given by the perpetrators. Through the TRC investigations and its findings, a question of what it may mean to re-humanise the once missing emerges. This mini-thesis underscores a notion of re-humanisation through the work of the TRC in its investigation into the enforced disappearance of Kubheka. It suggests that figuring Kubheka through a notion of re-humanisation in the context of the TRC requires one to understand both de-humanisation and re-humanisation and the ways in which gender complicates these understandings. It does so by examining testimonies, t he exhumation, the forensic examinations, the emergence of a forensic aesthetic and the productions of biographies and forensic memory to understand how these might be processes and strategies of re-humanisation. This mini-thesis then is a forensic history that navigates a politics of the dead by examining the figuring of Kubheka through various fields and in various forums. In so doing, the argument presented in what follows is that the notion of re-humanisation is an inherently unstable one but at its core is a politics of the dead that misses gender it its figuring of the human. / 2023-12-01

The goal of this research was to describe the nature, occurrence and extent to which integration preceded normative and institutional transformation in the SANDF and therefore in its Military Police, thereby demonstrating how in its aftermath, integration has become a recipe for disaster, casting a spell on further transformation within the military. The research also aimed at bringing the reader face-to-face with the daily struggles of Africans in the SANDF, by focusing on one of the smallest divisions of the military, the Military Police Agency (MPA). The research project was limited to all reported interviews and questionnaire responses of eighty five participants of the Southern Military Police Region (S MPR), excluding the S MPR HQ as well as the MPA HQ. A total of eighty five respondents out of a total strength of 172 S MPR composition, took part in the sample. Seventy nine participated in the questionnaire, fifty one in the interview and a total of forty five participated in both. Interviews were used as follow-up sessions to respondents' questionnaire answers. While the questionnaire was structured, the interview was semi-structured, allowing members to comment, object, affirm or question the process of transformation both in the SANDF and in the MPA. In keeping with the qualitative research method, the semi-structured interview enabled the mapping of categories, trends and patterns in the responses. It was found that MK and APLA cadres who integrated into the ex-Naval MPs surpassed their counterparts in the ex-Army MPs, by far. The two groups are incomparable, in rank level, experience, training, attitude and knowledge of the organisation. It was further discovered that most practices that had taken place before 1999 at W CSC and still continued within the MPA, negate SANDF policy and are criminal. Prejudice, racism, obscene language and gender insensitivity were rife, forming part of institutional culture. It is recommended that Weitzer's proposed solution for the transformation of coercive institutions be considered. It is a thoroughgoing transformation of the security apparatus through a legal framework because civil control is not enough to guarantee the pre-eminence of the democratic forces. / Criminology / M.A (Criminology)

The goal of this research was to describe the nature, occurrence and extent to which integration preceded normative and institutional transformation in the SANDF and therefore in its Military Police, thereby demonstrating how in its aftermath, integration has become a recipe for disaster, casting a spell on further transformation within the military. The research also aimed at bringing the reader face-to-face with the daily struggles of Africans in the SANDF, by focusing on one of the smallest divisions of the military, the Military Police Agency (MPA). The research project was limited to all reported interviews and questionnaire responses of eighty five participants of the Southern Military Police Region (S MPR), excluding the S MPR HQ as well as the MPA HQ. A total of eighty five respondents out of a total strength of 172 S MPR composition, took part in the sample. Seventy nine participated in the questionnaire, fifty one in the interview and a total of forty five participated in both. Interviews were used as follow-up sessions to respondents' questionnaire answers. While the questionnaire was structured, the interview was semi-structured, allowing members to comment, object, affirm or question the process of transformation both in the SANDF and in the MPA. In keeping with the qualitative research method, the semi-structured interview enabled the mapping of categories, trends and patterns in the responses. It was found that MK and APLA cadres who integrated into the ex-Naval MPs surpassed their counterparts in the ex-Army MPs, by far. The two groups are incomparable, in rank level, experience, training, attitude and knowledge of the organisation. It was further discovered that most practices that had taken place before 1999 at W CSC and still continued within the MPA, negate SANDF policy and are criminal. Prejudice, racism, obscene language and gender insensitivity were rife, forming part of institutional culture. It is recommended that Weitzer's proposed solution for the transformation of coercive institutions be considered. It is a thoroughgoing transformation of the security apparatus through a legal framework because civil control is not enough to guarantee the pre-eminence of the democratic forces. / Criminology and Security Science / M.A (Criminology)