What’s in a name and why it matters: A historical analysis of the relationship between state authority, vigilantism and penal power in South Africa
| Published date | 01 November 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617724830 |
| Date | 01 November 2017 |
| Author | Gail Super |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617724830
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(4) 512 –531
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480617724830
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What’s in a name and why it
matters: A historical analysis
of the relationship between
state authority, vigilantism and
penal power in South Africa
Gail Super
University of Toronto—Mississauga, Canada
Abstract
This article aims to clarify the relationship between state authority, vigilantism and
penal power. I ask how shifting political contexts shape the construction of the
‘vigilante’ and the legitimation (or not) of vigilante violence. Based on a historical
analysis of how the terms ‘vigilante’, ‘vigilantism’ and ‘mob justice’ are used in
mainstream discourse in South Africa the article tracks the political transformations
that took place in the South African state in the late 1970s, the mid-1980s and post-
1994. I use the term ‘precarious penality’ to describe penality on the periphery—both
geographically, in marginalized poor black townships—and symbolically, to denote
spaces where the boundaries between what is ‘state’ and what is not are blurred.
Spaces of ‘precarious penality’ pose specific problems for the liberal principles of due
process and human rights that are enshrined in the South African Constitution but
often distorted in practice.
Keywords
Historical perspectives, illegality, penality, state, vigilantism
Corresponding author:
Gail Super, University of Toronto—Mississauga, William G Davis Building, Room DV3217, Mississauga, ON
L5L 1C6, Canada.
Email: gail.super@utoronto.ca
724830TCR0010.1177/1362480617724830Theoretical CriminologySuper
research-article2017
Article
Super 513
The deceased was suspected of being a police informer and the lover of a police sergeant.
[…] In the course of a sustained and savage assault at the hands of a [violent and
bloodthirsty mob], during which she was set alight, the deceased was battered to death.
(S v Motaung and others)
Introduction: Vigilantism and state authority
Although the spectre of the ‘bloodthirsty and violent black mob’ is almost as old as South
Africa itself, its targets have shifted over the years. Whereas in 1977 an ‘East London
mob stone[d] two policemen to death’ (Rand Daily Mail, 1977) 37 years later the mob’s
anger is no longer directed towards the state, but towards criminality.1 Thus, in 2016, a
‘Philippi man [accused of robbery] burns alive’—the incident having reportedly been
carried out by a ‘vigilante mob in broad daylight’ (Africa News Agency, 2016). And, as
the opening quotation highlights, in the mid-1980s, a woman suspected of being a police
informer is murdered by a ‘violent and bloodthirsty mob’.
Vigilantism is a ‘historically recurring’ (Abrahams, 2010: x) phenomenon that is at
the forefront of contests over the state’s authority. The term itself lacks conceptual clar-
ity, often reflecting the political leanings of those who use it (Buur and Jensen, 2004;
Harris, 2001; Johnson, 1996). As such it is better explored as a ‘relational phenomenon’
(Abrahams, 1998: 7) than a static object of analysis. This article asks how shifting politi-
cal contexts shape the construction of the ‘vigilante’ and the legitimation (or not) of vigi-
lante violence. It aims to clarify the relationship between state authority, vigilantism and
penal power. Vigilantes call on the state to enforce the law while at same time preferring
local punitive justice to that offered by the law—as such vigilantism represents both an
embrace and a rejection of official order (Garland, 2005; Goldstein, 2003). Instead of
viewing vigilantism as outside of the state or as perpetrated by ‘autonomous citizens’
(Johnson, 1996), this article proceeds from the departure point that the state shapes and
produces vigilante violence, and that this violence is part of the ‘historical and ongoing
formation of the state’ (Abrahams, 1998; Fourchard, 2008: 34; Goldstein, 2003; Jarman,
2008; Lund, 2006; Pratten, 2008; Pratten and Sen, 2008).
My case studies—on the complex relationship(s) between the state and formally ille-
gal coercive forms of crime control in poor black townships—are based on an historical
analysis of how the terms ‘vigilante’, ‘vigilantism’ and ‘mob justice’ are used in main-
stream (popular) discourse in South Africa and how they are constructed as different to
ordinary criminality. I examine the various conditions under which alternative sites of
penal order are sometimes divorced from state authority and embedded in local social
relations. One of the key claims I make is that penal order does not go hand in hand with
the state and that statehood is practised by a combination of state and non-state actors—
thus there is no unified ‘state’. In situations of ‘precarious penality’—a concept that I
flesh out below—the ambiguities of liberal theory become particularly apparent.
‘Precarious penality’
I use the term ‘precarious penality’ to refer to penality on the periphery of the state. The
periphery includes marginalized poor black townships where poverty and societal
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