Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Nicholas Rush Smith
Abstract
Despite being one of the world’s most vibrant democracies, vigilantism is regularly practiced in South Africa. In any given year, police estimate between 5 percent and 10 percent of the country’s murders result from vigilante violence—four to five times the percentage from gang violence. Vigilantism is also frequent in other democracies across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. High rates of vigilantism are particularly puzzling in South Africa, though, given that it underwent a celebrated transition to democracy, has a lauded constitution, and enacted massive reforms of the state’s legal instit ... More
Despite being one of the world’s most vibrant democracies, vigilantism is regularly practiced in South Africa. In any given year, police estimate between 5 percent and 10 percent of the country’s murders result from vigilante violence—four to five times the percentage from gang violence. Vigilantism is also frequent in other democracies across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. High rates of vigilantism are particularly puzzling in South Africa, though, given that it underwent a celebrated transition to democracy, has a lauded constitution, and enacted massive reforms of the state’s legal institutions following democratization. Contradictions of Democracy asks why vigilantism is prevalent in South Africa, asks what South Africa reveals about vigilantism in other emerging democracies, and uses vigilantism to explore contradictions of democratic state formation generally. Where most scholars explain vigilantism as the result of state or civic failure, the book argues the opposite. Based on nearly twenty months of ethnographic and archival research, it shows vigilantism is a response to processes of democratic state formation—specifically the extension of rights—and thrives in dense civic networks.
Keywords:
vigilantism,
rights,
state formation,
democracy,
South Africa
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190847180 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: February 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190847180.001.0001 |
