When police won't uphold the law, sooner or later the community will act

 

In the second article of my recent series titled "Defending yourself in a progressive, left-wing environment", I pointed out, concerning the situation in South Africa during the most difficult years of resistance against apartheid:

The first thing that had to be done was to ensure local law and order by keeping as many criminals as possible at a distance.  This wasn't easy.  In such a lawless environment, many local gangsters set themselves up as warlords, dominating their areas and exacting a toll on residents to fund their criminal lifestyles.  Any resistance was met with savage reprisals.  Sadly, that meant the resistance also became more and more savage.  The Golden Rule tells us to "do to others as you want them to do to you".  If gangsters behave brutally, they must expect brutality in return - and they got it, in spades.

Tragically, once such attitudes become embedded in a community (including an ongoing, abiding distrust of the police and the authorities), they may continue to take the law into their own hands.  That's just happened (again) in Zandspruit, South Africa, where the victims were beaten up, tortured, and then executed by the dreaded "necklace".  It's the latest in literally hundreds of vigilante "executions" in that nation over the past year.

Gory images of the remains of eight men lying with their hands tied behind their backs with rope while their bodies are charred beyond recognition have once more highlighted the horrors of vigilantism or mob justice in some townships and informal settlements.

The eight victims found in an open field in Honeydew informal settlement, known as Zandspruit, Joburg this week will drastically increase the 903 number of people already murdered as a result of vigilantism in the last year in South Africa, according to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) figures supplied by the head of justice and violence Gareth Newham.

Witnesses have alleged that some members of the community rounded up suspects by beating one after another and forcing them to point out their fellow gang members. The men were then frogmarched to the open field where one resident described a heart-wrenching scene where they were beaten up with everything at the hands of the mob, including stones, sjamboks and hacked with axes and other dangerous objects while they were lying on the ground.

“It was horrible. They were bleeding and screaming for help while being dragged to the soccer field. The group was actually looking for 12 boys, three of whom managed to escape,” said a man who seemed unaffected by what he saw.

In the aftermath of the rage and mob justice, eight men succumbed to the injuries – four at the scene while another four died in hospital. The survivor is alleged to have been saved after pleading for his hands to be cut rather, is fighting for his life after he suffered burns on both arms.

. . .

One of the resident at the scene, Sphamandla Dludlu, said although he doesn’t condone what happened, these boys were very problematic. “This has been going on for a while now. There are lots of these boys, from different groups. These boys terrorised the community. My friend was killed by one of these groups called “Tripple O” in 2019,” he said.

He said one of the reasons that led to the community taking the law into their hands was the police’s lack of response to crimes.

“We report criminal activities to the police, but they sometimes tell us that there are no vehicles to attend to our complaints. Even those who killed my friend are out there enjoying their lives. We were told that an investigator who was dealing with the case has been transferred to Mpumalanga and that the dockets were missing. Now the community is fed up and opted to deal with these boys on their own,” he said.

There's more at the link.

I fear we'll see similar events in this country, if local police turn into partisan agents who allow certain groups to get away with their crimes while cracking down on others who are not in political favor.  The latter appears to be happening in left-wing, liberal, progressive jurisdictions across the country, and people are rapidly losing patience as a result.  It can't be long before we reach a flashpoint in one or more of those areas - and once that happens, things get out of control very quickly indeed.  I know.  I've seen it at first hand.

BLM and Antifa extremists might want to take note of that . . . before it's too late.

Peter