I WAS late for work as usual, sitting in the back seat waiting for those last two people to to fill up the taxi so it could finally get going. Hearing a loud shout I tore my eyes away from my Twitter feed to see a tall young man scamper across the taxi rank, a CD or a DVD gleaming in his hand, screaming “This is my movie!” at someone beyond my line of vision. He was in quite a state, this guy, with a violent look in his eye. Sure enough, seconds later I watched as Angry Man brought down a flurry of open-hand strikes on the object of his displeasure, another young man who’d been selling what I assume were pirated DVDs. Pretty soon it turned into a free-for-all, with a couple of bystanders taking the opportunity to land a few cheap shots. The whole thing was over in less than three minutes. A fellow commuter claimed he recognised the instigator, a local actor who’d starred in some local low budget films. Apparently his victim had been selling pirated copies of one of his films. I wasn’t shocked by the violence of the incident. I’d seen this kind of casual vigilantism at taxi ranks before from as early as childhood. I searched the faces of the other passengers for an appropriate reaction. There were one or two looks of mild concern, but the rest were stoney masks of indifference. There were even a few nods of approval. Five minutes later it was as if the attack had never happened.
Social scientists have traced the roots of vigilantism in South Africa to the political violence which plagued townships across the country during the 1970s and 1980s where township residents took the law into their own hands against police informants and political opponents.
After the 1994 elections, with the slow decline in overtly political violence much of the vigilante action began to be directed at criminal elements and gangs. Many of the incidents that occurred have been where criminals were caught in the act and either beaten up, stoned or killed outright by angry citizens. These actions are not only an expression of people’s anger and frustration but also of their fear.
Nevertheless, vigilantism remains a crime, and it survives today because we allow it to.
Very often vigilante action involves a conspiracy of silence by the whole community. I realised while sitting in that taxi, surrounded by a sea of apathy, that I was part of that conspiracy. I watched that man get attacked and did and said nothing. I was your typical apathetic bystander. Paralysed by my own fears that I might become a victim, I was too frightened to intervene. And so all of us, vigilantes, victims and bystanders alike share responsibility for such things happening in our communities by allowing this cycle of fear to continue.
