Vigilantes claim close to 300 lives in three months

Nearly 300 people were killed in the first three months of the year in incidents of mob justice across the country.

Speaking during a webinar on vigilantism and human rights on Thursday, SA Police Service head of social crime prevention Maj-Gen Thokozani Mathonsi said this was a serious issue and that they were working with communities to curb the crime. 

“During the fourth quarter of the last financial year, which will be January to March this year, we recorded 298 murders emanating from mob justice, 69 attempted murders, 403 assault GBH [with intent to cause grievous bodily harm], which is serious assault. That is a total of 770 cases in just three months,” said Mathonsi.

The webinar took place less than two months after the deaths of eight men during a gruesome mob justice attack in Zandspruit, north of Johannesburg, in May.

The group of nine men were accused of a string of robberies over the past few years.

They were hauled into the streets of the township where they were brutally assaulted before being necklaced. Only one survived.

Community members said they were spurred into attacking the victims because they were responsible for a spate of robberies in the township. They blamed police for ignoring them when they report criminal activities.

Kenneth Lekalakala, Zandspruit community policing forum chair, told Sowetan at the time that some of the men had previously been arrested but were released without any explanation.

Mathonsi said no other people or parties outside the police can enforce the law.

“Citizens arrest is allowed, especially if members of the community see a crime being committed, but the rest should be done within the prescript of the law and officers should be allowed to do their job,” he said.  

Five men and a woman were arrested for the gruesome murders. They are expected to apply for bail on August 3. 

Annah Moyo-Kupeta from the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation said violence does not occur in a vacuum and that in most instances communities would have tried more peaceful ways of addressing the problems prevalent in their communities. 

“It is when the police and those in authority do nothing to address the community grievances that communities resort to violence, taking the law into their own hands to deal with their own problems.”

She said the centre was working with various community bodies to prevent incidents of mob justice. 

“We have also been working with faith-based organisations and traditional organisations because we often find elderly people being attacked because they are accused of witchcraft.” 

In March, Josyina Sangweni was burnt by community members in Phiri, Soweto, after they accused her of being a witch.

Sangweni, who suffered from a mental illness, had wandered off into a stranger's yard where she was assaulted and set alight. She died in a hospital a week after the attack. 

Taelo Dipholo and Collen Sello were arrested for Sangweni’s murder and have been behind bars since their apprehension in April. 

“There is a need to address the normalisation of violence and SA’s collective trauma stemming from its violent past, through addressing the unresolved legacies of the past and how this has affected individuals, community members and society at large,” said Moyo-Kupeta.

She said according to research conducted by the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, factors driving mob include:

• The psyche of collective violence, where mob psychology, safety in numbers of community members and peer anger emboldens law-abiding citizens who would normally not resort to committing crime as individuals;
• Normalisation of violence in our society that constitutes a fault line in SA’s democracy. Violence is a language that communities resort to, the default setting when more peaceful ways to resolve issues fail;
• Perceived failures of the criminal justice system; and
• Lack of trust and confidence in the police and those in authority by community members.

Cases of mob justice reported this year:

Other cases of mob justice that have been reported include:

• Tuesday’s incident in which residents of Xawela Block 23 village, outside Giyani in Limpopo, burnt to death a suspected criminal after he was allegedly caught with stolen property. The man was also accused of being part of a syndicate that is terrorising villagers. In a short video clip of the incident, which was posted on social media, a human body engulfed by flames can be seen while community members are heard warning each other not to record anyone’s face to avoid arrests;
• ● In May, two men were killed while three others were severely injured in a mob attack in Mashishing, Mpumalanga.
• ● In April, two men were stoned to death after they were caught allegedly breaking into shacks in Qalabusha informal settlement in Daveyton, on the East Rand.
• In a separate Incident days later, a man was attacked and ended up in intensive care at a local hospital after he was accused of stealing home appliances in one of the shacks; and●
• In February, a man was killed and another assaulted in Segwaelane village, North West, where a community has complained about a spate of housebreakings and robberies.