Three men accused of rape were beaten and hacked to death by an angry crowd in KwaMashu recently.
A passer-by noticed a crowd and stopped to see what had happened. He caught a glimpse of the three men lying on the ground, being kicked around "like soccer balls".
He recorded what was happening on his cellphone video.
The crowd continued to beat the men, and eventually severed their heads and limbs with bush knives.
As the dismembered bodies lay in a pool of blood, the crowd dispersed as if nothing had happened.
Mob justice had just run its grisly course - a not infrequent occurrence in South Africa, a country with a long history of communities dispensing swift retribution to those suspected of wrongdoing.
During the apartheid era, township kangaroo courts delivered stern punishment, including death by a burning tyre "necklace", to people suspected of collaborating with the state.
Nowadays, when a community takes the law into its own hands to become the judge-jury-and-execution team it still wants no truck with the establishment, but the reasons are no longer political.
Some experts say vigilante justice is the result of complex inter-related issues. A mob killing or beating a suspected rapist or robber may be less about delivering rough justice than about intimidating witnesses to the spectacle, as well as the "assertion of complete, repressive power".
At any rate for many administering "justice" on the streets, vigilantism does provide a ready alternative to the official system, which is seen as ineffective, at best.
full story from IOL here
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