Violent Vigilantism in South Africa

• In Event: Informal Justice: Explorations Across the Globe

Abstract

Most researchers tend to agree that support for and participation in vigilantism occurs when formal justice institutions are weak, absent, or otherwise “unavailable”. However, little is known about the empirical determinants of vigilante behaviours. This project seeks to explain the prevalence and incidence of violent vigilante events in South Africa between 2009 and 2015 using the Armed Conflict Location Event Dataset (ACLED), a comprehensive set of political violence data that includes information on the location, actors, and circumstances of violent events in South Africa. We pair the ACLED data with determinants of vigilantism encompassing a range of theoretically relevant concepts, such as perceptions of police legitimacy, cooperation with police, fear of crime, trust in government institutions, and perceptions of social and economic security using regional data from the South African Social Attitudes Surveys and South Africa Crime Victimisation Surveys, and analyse vigilantism against the backdrop of socio-economic conditions and crime levels in the municipalities.

Authors

• Susanne Karstedt, Griffith University

• Amy Nivette, Griffith University