When The People Bay For Blood

SOUTH AFRICAN communities are increasingly taking justice into their own hands despite the fact that this often leads to innocents being hurt.

- Warren Robertson

IN the early hours of one morning in July 2011, in New Brighton, just outside Port Elizabeth, two men broke into an elderly woman’s home, stole her television, and then stabbed her tenant to death when he tried to protect her. In South Africa these are the stories we have come to see in our papers and become accustomed to, but this time the story ended differently. Usually the news reports indicate that police are still following up, that clues are being examined, or results waited on. This time there was no such message, because the next morning, neighbours tracked down the thieves, put tyres around their necks, doused them with petrol and set them ablaze.

“These boys had been causing problems in the community for a long time. They terrorised us,” said one resident of the township, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“People were shouting; emotions were high. Everything happened all at once. I just saw tyres being put around their necks, petrol was poured and they were set alight. When they were burning people were shouting all sorts of insults and then it was done... The whole thing was so fast, like in a movie,” he finishes, sounding almost proud. There are inherent contradictions in how we respond towards vigilantism in South Africa. We recognise that what the crowd in New Brighton did was wrong, and recognise that strictly the vigilantes are themselves criminals who deserve to be punished, but they are also sometimes portrayed as being proactive citizens fighting crime.