As outlined within the first section of the opening chapter, this thesis adopts an interpretative epistemological approach towards security. Using the concept of securitisation (Buzan, Waever and de Wilde, 1998) as a methodological base, the thesis aims to explore how security is constructed by political, economic and social processes. In particular, this contrasts with the ‘realist’ approach of previous literature on the governance of the 2010 World Cup, which focused on security as ‘a political and ontological given, an objective fact and/or desire of all human beings and states’ (Neocleous, 2007: 133).
As an emergent, inter-disciplinary field of research, there has yet to be a specific study of the methodological challenges of collecting primary material on mega-event security. Generally, critical research has used a two-pronged methodological strategy. Firstly, (Klauser, 2011:4) this has entailed the critical analysis of official reports, such as parliamentary minutes and police documents, and the collection of archival material from local, national and international media. Secondly, some
researchers have been able to conduct interviews with a broad range of security ‘stakeholders’, such as high ranking police officials and ‘on the ground’ personal (ibid).
While this thesis has adopted this methodological approach, it has overwhelmingly focused on the first aspect of compiling an archive of reports, statements and media information. This was a matter of necessity due to the persistent difficulty in gaining access to ‘stakeholders’ in government and the private sector. From August 2009, I attempted to secure a series of interviews and site visits to the then uncompleted stadiums. In most cases, my efforts to organise interviews with SAPS and government representatives were unsuccessful. Although my initial requests for interviews met positive responses, in all cases agreed upon dates and times for interviews were cancelled and indefinitely postponed. As this fieldwork was conducted during the preparations for the tournament, respondents also claimed that various operational details could not be discussed. However, while unsuccessful in obtaining face-to-face interviews, I was able to conduct several interviews via email.
Within this time period I was also able to secure a copy of the confidential OA/NATJOINTS security concept document from one of the coordinators of the Durban security preparations. Through a personal contact with a Sony subcontractor, I was allowed to conduct a walk-about of the main public area of the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium but this access did not extend to the operational rooms within the complex.
Similar problems were experienced in attempting to conduct interviews with members of sporting associations and the private security industry. FIFA and SAFA declined interview requests and only one private security contractor replied to my initial questions. After the 2010 World Cup had ended, I
79 filed unsuccessful interview requests with the Minister of Police as well as attempting to use informal channels to interview the Commissioner General of Police. However, I was more successful in gaining an in-depth interview with a POPCRU steward. Finally, I was also provided with the phone number details for one of the stewards hired by Stallion Security for the 2010 World Cup, but after multiple attempts was unable to contact her.
However, according to a researcher from the investigative television programme Carte Blanche who I consulted with, getting interviews with police officials is generally difficult, even for well-established media production companies (personal correspondence with Leila Dougan, 22 September 2011).
Furthermore, this may also be indicative of increased restrictions on academic and media access to the security services and government documentation (Duncan, 2011). This also created the practical problem of verifying police acronyms and titles, which are sometimes used in a flexible way within official documents, and the difficulty is further compounded by the change in ranking system. For example, from early 2010 some police media statements began referring to the SAPS by its former apartheid name the ‘South African Police Force’ (SAPF). However, this seemed to be only used in some reports and as of early 2012 appears to have been abandoned. As a result, this thesis refers to the
‘SAPS’ throughout.
As van der Spuy (2011: 6-7) suggests, the research methodology of policing and security studies in South Africa is often contingent on gaining ethnographic access to government institutions. This has focused on ‘constructive engagement’ with policy and attempts to create ‘intellectual partnerships’
between the police and researchers (6). In recent years, this has seen the growth of ‘on the ground’
research, which details the ‘raw, actual experiences’ of policing (7). However, while greater access to the police and military would have been desirable, this thesis focuses on the overall securitisation of the 2010 World Cup rather than exclusively on the South African state. Depicting the security governance of the 2010 World Cup requires a study of how this was planned and operationalised at national, provincial and urban scales, which is further complicated by the extent to which security measures are not just confined to a national setting but entail overlapping and multiple spatialities and levels of securitisation. For the duration of the tournament, South Africa’s national security measures were linked up with a ‘global security edifice’ (Cornelissen, 2011:3229), which involved the
participation of transnational policing networks and the use of benchmarks applied at prior mega- events. This ‘research terrain’ (O’Reilly, 2010:183) is made even more ‘fuzzy’ by the security interfaces which occur between state security and high-level corporate actors from transnational sporting bodies and their advertising sponsors. Due to the secrecy which accompanies security measures, it may not be possible to identify all the involved parties and institutions.
80 This in turn, places restrictions on efforts to create a comprehensive survey of the governance process and of the institutional forces and security actors which undergird it. On the one hand, attempting to capture the multi-scalar and transient features of World Cup security may promote a focus on the national scale of tournament mobilisation. However, this may force researchers to rely on
generalisations and to downplay the importance of regional and urban contexts. In addition, the secrecy associated with national security results in a situation in which much of the information about operations and deployment is not publically accessible. With regards to the 2010 World Cup, this is somewhat mitigated by the combination of security with state branding , which entailed that many aspects of security preparations, such as police numbers, expenditure and equipment procurement, were not only made public but actively promoted by the government. However, this presents its own problems as the rhetoric of security used by officials and disseminated through the media and academia may entail futher generalisations. In turn, it may simplify complex institutional ecologies, local specificities internal power struggles and underestimate the role of accident and chance, active official dissemination and exaggeration.
While the SAPS were the primary security agency for the tournament, security measures were both internationally ordered (Graham, 2010) and temporary. In order to capture the different nodes of this
‘complex’, the thesis adopted an investigative methodology (Hughes, 2007. Turse, 2008.), which used primary research to highlight the exchanges, collaborations and ‘revolving doors’ between the state, private sector and transnational institutions. This approach was used to identify the political
economies which undergird security operations at the 2010 World Cup and to signpost the interactions between public policy and security technology and strategies.
As a result, the lack of access to official contacts was an advantage in certain respects. The positioning of researchers as ‘partners’ to government institutions may encourage an uncritical approach towards ‘national security’ and identification with the dictates of power (Chomsky, 1969).
This thesis is thus intended as a critical analysis of security politics, rather than an in-depth record of the practical experience of policing the 2010 World Cup or as a series of policy prescriptions.
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