Why We Kill
Check my rate
View locations
| Main centres: | 1-3 business days |
| Regional areas: | 3-4 business days |
| Remote areas: | 3-5 business days |
Product details
Why do so many South Africans prefer taking the law into their own hands to relying on the police? Why are those who do so often cheered or sympathized with? Of the unprecedented 27,000 recorded murders in South Africa in 2022, at least 1,894 - or 7 percent - were attributed to mob justice and vigilantism, more than double the number from five years before. In the first nine months of 2023, a further 1,472 mob justice deaths had already been registered.
Mob justice is nothing new, but in recent years it has taken on an undeniably desperate, furious edge. From the breathtakingly violent Zandspruit massacre in May 2021 to the killings during the July unrest two months later, to the march of Operation Dudula across the nation in 2022, vigilantism and the condoning of it has never before captured the zeitgeist of South Africa so sharply.
What has changed in the past few years, and what does it augur for the future?