PENGUINPOST29 - Flipbook - Page 34
ON MY MIND
On my mind
VIGILANTE JUSTICE
IS A SYMPTOM OF
SYSTEMIC FAILURES
Dive into the heart of the nation’s escalating
vigilante conflicts, from township turmoil to the
middle-class response, as chronicled in Why We
Kill, a compelling exposé by Karl Kemp on the
complexities and consequences of mob justice.
“O
peration Dudula, trying to evict
old women from their homes in
Alexandra township, unleashing
a vigilante conflict by pushing one community
too far. Would-be muti murderers, racing along
the chaotic Nzhelele Valley freeway in rural
Limpopo, chased down by taxis and set alight in
their own vehicles. Cable thieves, tortured and
necklaced for crashing the power system in the
rural village of Chavani just one too many times.
These accounts of vigilantism and mob justice
are ten times more complex than that summary
can be. But they are decidedly violent, make no
mistake. And they augur our future.
It’s getting darker out there. South Africa
murder’s rate has reached record territory in
the past two years. The authorities ate more
than 27 000 bodies in 2022, up by around
10 000 over the past decade.
Traditionally, the middle class has been able
to batten down the hatches and shut out the
maelstrom somewhat, but with the tangible
expansion of brazen, organised crime – hitmen
and extortionists leading the charge – we now
fear not just carjackings and home invasions,
but a new type of lawlessness, one that chokes
even private-sector enterprise and eviscerates
the already-poor service delivery we have left.
It feels like the country is turning into
a dog-eat-dog land where the strong devour the
weak – where liquidators and whistleblowers
are assassinated, where armed gangs can shut
down construction sites or hold Eskom to
ransom. The fire rises; lawlessness becomes
a way of life, a necessity to get ahead.
The middle-class may be feeling it, but
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THE PENGUIN POST MARCH/APRIL 2024
The fire
rises;
lawlessness
becomes
a way of life,
a necessity
to get
ahead.
Why We Kill
is out now.
the purest expression of this notion remains
the campaign waged against crime in the
impoverished townships of the nation. The
pushback has now reached a bloody zenith.
Mob justice and vigilante murders accounted for
almost 1 900 of the total murders in 2022 – or
7 per cent – and the first nine months of 2023
served up a further 1 472, meaning that last
year was well on track to break the record. News
of vigilante killings is beamed to our screens on
a weekly basis, piles of charred bodies at a time,
always accompanied by the taglines of ‘a surge
in’ or a ‘a rise of’.
We cannot definitively say that the mob
justice situation has never been worse; the
stats weren’t available in the early nineties.
But certainly, the volume has been turned up.
Certainly, the picture has been brought into
sharper focus.
When I started Why We Kill, I thought that
I would find more excuses for the violence, that
what we believe is right: ordinary people cannot
be blamed for acting how they do, because the
state has abandoned them.
But it is not so simple.
Could we remain the innocents, the
victims, if we condoned this intensification of
vigilantism based on false premises?
When the line between predator and prey
becomes impossible to see clearly, where does
the average South African stand among the
record number of bodies? Why We Kill is an
attempt to unravel this web; of why we kill in the
name of justice. What this growing extrajudicial
justice system might mean for the future, and
the rule of law, and the heart of the country.”