Mob justice: Desperation or anarchic lawlessness?

With The Honourable Nhlanhla Musa Nene’s struggles with gravity occupying much of the public consciousness late last week, (does that moment NOT justify this year’s licence fee all of its own?), you most likely missed the following story in the news on the same day: A man was killed by an angry mob in uMlazi’s notorious F-section (last year a man in this area killed his own son after allegedly mistaking him for an animal) after robbing a woman in the street.

This was, however, not before he killed a bystander while spraying bullets all around trying to scatter the mob as they came for him (to have been there when he ran out of bullets and the mob had only grown larger and more ferocious, he must have had a facial expression to rival The Honourable Nene’s when his chair gave way under his significantly empowered posterior).

Now there’s always two ways to look at instances of mob justice. It’s always either “Concerned citizens dispense immediate justice” or “Baying mob butchers man to death”. Certainly, as the French aristocracy found out to their cost, an unhappy populace disgruntled with the system is nothing to be ignored, whatever baked treats you may have to placate them with.

This incident had me thinking about your average township dweller’s attitude to street justice. While the idea of living in a society where retribution by committee is the order of the day is as abhorrent an idea as any, most would tell you it is preferable to living under the thumb of savage Mandrax addicts barely out of their teens and with moral values that would shock Vlad The Impaler, as is the case in most townships.

(A note here: I am not suggesting that townships are engulfed in a ceaseless orgy of violence, just that crime is, well, rather prevalent. Of course when this prevalence is met with perceived indifference from authorities, people will do what they feel is appropriate, rightly or wrongly.)

I remember that back in the 80s when the system really didn’t care about helping folk out, the so-called kangaroo courts were a rather more common sight around the way. They even had proper formal names, Disciplinary Courts, or more popularly DC’s, inkundla, isigcawu (the latter deriving from the traditional courts of yore where matters would be brought before a council of elders for deliberation) and so on. These always made for grisly if curiously fascinating (for a seven- or eight-year-old who didn’t get out enough) viewing. Nothing quite like the sight of flesh beaten to the consistency of badly made jelly and blood flowing, as if springing from deep wells inside to awake one to the brutality humans are capable of.

And of course, these “courts” had their famous masters, the go-to guys when a vagabond needed some vigorous re-education; brutes of men these were, capable of inflicting the worst cruelties on a man at the drop of a hat and with only the hearsay evidence of another as reason. I’d list a few I knew but I’d still like to walk freely in my neighbourhood, thank you very much. These were men who’d achieved such a high level of esteem/respect that they were only referred to by their clan names, the Gatshenis (Ndlovu), Qwabes (Gumede) and Ndongas (Mkhwanazi), for example. Ask any darkie from ekasi what kind of man achieves such.

The victims would be stood at one side, usually female (men generally tended to take care of their own grievances their own way), almost always blubbering in tears on the shoulder of some massively girthed senior female figure; the general assembly/jury would be looking on with a mixture of hatred and downright insane mob hysteria just itching for the bloodletting to begin.

Then it would begin, the victim would state her case, always with the comforting figure adding on and repeating (loudly mind) the worst aspects of the alleged offence to sway the assembled “jurors”. Every now and then she’d burst into a fresh round of tears while her support would glare at the perpetrator — this would incite the mob to start agitating for the immediate dispensing of justice. If you are wondering about the accused’s chance to speak, erm it kind of almost never occurred; people seemed to have figured that if you were brought before the assembled public, then you must have done something, even if not quite the offence you were answering for. Having inswebu (the look) of a lowlife thug about you was offence enough at times.

Then the court marshalls, the aforementioned local strongmen who curiously always seemed to be around when these things happened (I was never sure if they actually did street justice full-time), would start questioning the accused. Except that the questions were more like exhortations to confess guilt and be spared severe punishment, always choosing words and tones that would incite the crowd even further. Not that this was much necessary; nobody took time out of their day to watch and hope for an acquittal.

When they sensed the crowd’s mood was just about on boiling point, the retribution would begin. And it was brutal, seeing a man’s skull crack open is enough to put any right-thinking person off needless violence for a good while.

Seeing people set on him with even greater fury after this happens was quite a shock for the nerves. Of course it got worse, witness the now infamous but previously ubiquitous necklacing, a once favoured “liberation” tool. I imagine the whole thing would have made for a pretty interesting social study.

With the law failing citizens on a daily basis and the enforcers seemingly growing ever more apathetic and aloof, it is not surprising, though it certainly is concerning, that people are resorting to street justice with increasing frequency and increasingly grisly violence. I have a friend who stays in an East Rand township where the residents have employed men — whose names, Yster and Gejasi being examples, induce instant sphincter-tightening, and with reputations to match — to patrol the streets clad in trench coats hiding all manner of unsubtle alternatives to truth serum. And this is a relatively affluent township not known for a particularly high-crime rate.

You know you can talk on freely on your expensive cellphone on the street when Gejasi is around in his pseudo-Matrix Reloaded garb, but what happens when Gejasi just happens to have a personal dislike of you? Remember Mapogo A Mathamaga in the late 90s? They strode that saviour/nemesis tightrope to a huge outcry from their detractors, and even some amongst the communities they protected complained of their heavy-handed ways, yet their supporters always stood by one thing: crime dropped when they came around.

Effective as they seem to always have been for the purposes of reducing criminal activity (for they made not a jot on politically motivated crimes — in fact they were often hijacked for this end) communal courts were, by virtue of their working on majority consensus rather than factual evidence, always susceptible to being used to meet ends other than the maintenance of order in a community. Humans remain fallible no matter the mutual cause that may, at face value, bind them. This is why we have laws and structures to enforce them fairly and consistently so we don’t have to resort to mob justice and be susceptible to its attendant risks.

How, though, do you tell that to a mother whose daughter has been gang-raped by the guys down the street who then walked off because the docket went “missing”?