What’s in a Name and Why it Matters – a Historical Perspective on the Discourse of Vigilantism in South Africa

• In Event: Historical Studies of Crime

Abstract

This paper clarifies the constitutive relationship between the state and penal orders by examining shifts in how the terms ‘mob’ and ‘vigilante’ are used in popular discourse in South Africa. I track the political transformations that took place in the South African state in the late 1970s, the mid 1980s, and post 1994. Deploying the term ‘bordered penality’ I 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 ‘bordered 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.

Author

• Gail Jennifer Super, University of Toronto