Security?

Security, what the word can mean

In 2008 I sent a report to a new colleague in UK about there being a problem with security where I happened to be at the time. Something about what I wrote was not clear and in the following exchange of messages I became aware of the assumptions that I had built into the word security. 

My assumption was that she thought of security, like I did, either as a problem, as in ‘we have security problems’ or as a group of people as in ‘we were stopped at the airport by Security’.

In fact, since she was new to the support post she was in, she had been puzzled by the way I had used the word.  For her the word security referred to something good, nice and warm, as in ‘the security of a mother’s love’ or the ‘in the security of his home’. This is security meaning ‘safeness’.

For many in the countries where I work, the lack of security, insecurity, is something real and palpable whether it is physical (danger of death, injury, imprisonment, robbery or rape), economic, as in the term ‘food security’ or in some way related to ones lack of certainty about the future. This could be simply being unsure that you will ever finish your education, or that it will be worth anything when you finally get through your years of schooling in the face of closures, poor teaching and unreliable exams. [1]

We also have Security with a capital letter.  Most people working in Africa or the Middle East need no explanation of ‘Security’. At best it means your house-guards but often it means those men with menacing dark glasses who cause everyone trouble, will never identify themselves, and can prevent you from going about your legitimate business or even ‘disappear you’..

In Congo Security can abruptly summon you to their office where you will be kept waiting, not allowed to be accompanied in the interview, not go in with your mobile phone. They may be doing it for National Security, but most often they (or your enemy) are doing it so you will pay them to stop harassing you. 

In Sudan they were people who would never show any identity card who were as often as not carrying out a personal agenda or enforcing a parallel regime which had little to do with the government officially in power. That was in the time of democracy. Later the regime and Security somehow merged. And the security services, as so often, became multiple, with overlapping functions and loyalties to different factions.

Often ‘security’ is invoked to prevent free speech and to ‘get round’ inconvenient laws.  And always, Security is the employer of young men, partly educated who could just as well have been members of gangs in the streets, or to be more optimistic, small business men.

My first houseboy in Uganda worked, he thought, for Uganda security in Nairobi and smuggled a gun for them. He was shot by the police and no one knows even where he is buried.  

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[1] FOOTNOTE In English, secure, sure, certain, peaceful and safe have subtly different meanings but in many languages the same word can cover many of these aspects. So, in Swahili usalama is safety and security and can therefore mean peace.