Where government policy, process and enforcement fail, people tend to take the law into their own hands. And they do so in the worst possible way.
Violent vigilantism is on the increase in SA in general and in the Eastern Cape in particular.
There can be little doubt that the crumbling provincial criminal justice system is fuelling vigilantism.
When the SA Police Services, the National Prosecuting Authority and the courts are perceived as consistently failing communities, they resort to self-help.
Community safety MEC Xolile Nqatha revealed in reply to written questions from the DA that there had been a staggering number of vigilante attacks in the province with fatal consequences for hundreds of people over the past four years.
In that time, his department recorded 1,893 vigilante attacks resulting in 1,287 deaths and 606 injuries.
Communities’ lived experience of police neglect is reinforced by the constant barrage of evidence in the Madlanga commission pointing to shocking criminality, political interference and corruption in the criminal justice system.
In almost every part of this province formal justice is slow, weak or absent. And it shows.
The Eastern Cape consistently suffers the highest murder rate in the country.
It is no small wonder that people feel they have little choice but to take the law into their own hands.
But vigilantism seldom delivers justice.
There is no proper investigation or legal process to establish the guilt of the hundreds of people that died or were hurt in the vigilante attacks recorded by Nqatha’s department
They were beaten, burned and killed without any formal opportunity to defend themselves.
Some were falsely marked by rumour or personal grudge.
Vigilantism undermines the rule of law and creates cycles of fear, violence, mistrust and revenge.
Communities suffer trauma and grief, and violence becomes normalised.
But the most damning of all the statistics released by Nqatha is that the system chalked up only 10 convictions for the more than 1,000 deaths and 600 injuries suffered during vigilante violence.
It is this very failure to legally apprehend, prosecute and imprison the guilty that leads to vigilante violence in the first place.
Nqatha glibly suggests that mob vigilantism is the result of “intolerance by communities and lack of knowledge of justice processes”.
It is not. It is a symptom that formal policing and other processes for which leaders like Nqatha are responsible are failing South Africans.
To restore their faith requires a complete reset in public governance and the criminal justice system.
If our political and administrative leaders showed respect for the rule of law instead of constantly trying to subvert it, citizens would be more likely to follow suit.