The Power of naming: 'Senseless violence' and violent law in post-apartheid South Africa

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Date
2012-12
Authors
Thomas, Kylie
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Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation / Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape
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Abstract
This report focuses on vigilantism, on the practice of 'necklacing' as a form of punishment, and on police violence in South Africa post-apartheid. The report engages with a series of questions about how popular forms of justice are imagined and enacted and about what the persistence of forms of violent punishment that originated during apartheid signifies in South Africa today. The report explores some of the complex reasons why people understand violence to be a means for achieving justice. It considers issues related to collective violence, violence connected to service delivery protests, and violence widely understood by perpetrators, onlookers, and researchers to be punitive in intent. It contests the idea that such forms of violence are 'senseless', arguing that to do so is to evade the question of how violence is bound to the political order, both past and present.
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Keywords
Violence , Apartheid , Vigilantism , Police violence , Massacre , Murder , Justice , South Africa
Citation
Thomas, K. (2012) The Power of naming: 'Senseless violence' and violent law in post-apartheid South Africa. Available at: https://www.csvr.org.za/the-power-of-naming-senseless-violence-and-violent-law-in-post-apartheid-south-africa/ (Accessed: 27 February 2023)
Copyright
© 2012, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape