Policing under apartheid was designed for control and suppression. Thus the transformation of the police has been an essential requirement of the post-democratic order in South Africa. Initially, the challenge to policymakers, who at the time did not fully trust the police, was to acquire greater legitimacy among the public for the erstwhile policing agencies of authoritarianism who now also policed the democracy. Those initiatives have been overtaken by a need to respond to increasing levels of crime in the country, which is now seen as a key threat to the democratic order. The police, in the absence of a range of skills taken for granted in most democracies, and with the urging of politicians, are assuming a much greater law and order stance in an attempt to deal with crime. Now the police struggle to achieve legitimacy not through political assurances that they support the new order but by reducing lawlessness. The article concludes that it will take perhaps another decade to adopt necessary changes and recruit and train another generation of police officers who had no experience of apartheid. The article cautions that the danger until then is that the fight against crime will lead to ongoing paramilitary responses, which may damage the concept of democratic policing in South Africa. Notes