Smart CCTV Networks Are Driving an AI-Powered Apartheid in South Africa

In one of the world’s most racially divided countries, a company called Vumacam is building a nationwide surveillance network that scrutinizes peoples' movements for “unusual behavior.”

Share: Share on X (Opens in new window) X Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share using Native tools Share Copied to clipboard Michael Kwet is a Visiting Fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. He is the author of Digital Colonialism: US Empire and the New Imperialism in the Global South , and hosts the Tech Empire podcast. “Beggars” and “vagrants” are not welcome in Parkhurst, South Africa, a mostly white, middle-class suburb of about 5,000 on the outskirts of Johannesburg’s inner city. Criminals are on the prowl, residents warn, and they threaten their ne

related reading

• South Africa's private surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid | MIT Technology Reviewtechnologyreview.com
• The Transparent Society | WIREDwired.com
• Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exitnewyorker.com
• Community Privacy Residency (2026)community-privacy.github.io
• A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong? | WIREDwired.com
• What Police Can Do With Social Media Spy Tool ShadowDragontheintercept.com
• The Ideas Lettertheideasletter.org
• Netherlands: We sense trouble: Automated discrimination and mass surveillance in predictive policing in the Netherlands - Amnesty Internationalamnesty.org
• AI and Leviathan: Part I - by Samuel Hammond - Second Bestsecondbest.ca
• A cop's case for Flock  - Works in Progress Magazineworksinprogress.co
• AI & The Real Price of Free - by Kobby Ankomah Grahamkobbyankomah.substack.com
• S.T.O.P. - The Surveillance Technology Oversight Projectstopspying.org