DAVID DICKINSON: Communities caught between legitimate defence and mob justice

The defeat of the recent attempted insurrection was in large part due to community defence groups. Given the failure of the authorities to prevent or respond to the looting, these groups acted as “firebreaks” that contained and limited unrest, shifting the balance of power between two competing ANC factions.

This was a victory for the SA constitution. However, the role of community defenders raises important issues. First, the nature of community defence in the context of SA’s urban spatial geography. Second, those defending community and constitutional order do so, paradoxically, outside the law. Third, the importance of licensed firearms for community defence.

Exploring these issues is vital given SA’s entropic trajectory. Community defence, while not a solution to underlying problems, will be increasingly necessary to safeguard employment, property and lives in coming years.

The unrest, initiated for political reasons, was amplified by opportunistic participation, primarily, though not exclusively, by members of SA’s underclass: the unemployed and those in informal or precarious work who live in poverty.

While unique in scale, there is continuity between this insurrection and periodic disorder, typically involving xenophobia. Given vast social inequality, unrest can erupt at any time; it is dry brush with only a match needed for conflagration. Importantly, there are multiple divisions and tensions within as well as between communities. Generally, the poorer the community, the more acute these internal divisions.

The most effective instrument of community defence is restricting movement. This limits crowd formation at potential looting targets. Following this is preventing crowds gathering, often through no more than willingness to stand firm and engage would-be-looters individually. The last line of defence is to confront a crowd with resolve. How all this plays out, and the challenges presented, differ with socio-geographical location.

Typically, middle-class suburbs are insulated from looting because of distance from concentrations of the underclass. There was little community defence, rather a reliance on private security companies.

Mixed, working-class areas saw nonracial community defence emerge. The raw patriotic inclusiveness of the diverse Sophiatown Crisis Committee that I joined was tangible: “All Stations, All Nations!” were welcomed in defending the local shopping centre. At the same time there was a recognition that the threat, excluding the rumours of “Zuma’s people” arriving, came from within the community. Probably the most effective action of the crisis committee was to send home local youth gathering outside the shopping centre on the Monday afternoon; thereafter a high-profile presence neutralised further threats.

The most problematic situations are adjoining, different, racially homogeneous communities, such as Phoenix in Durban and its adjacent informal settlements. Racial conflict played out in the context of looting, along with fear and ill-discipline among some community defenders. The situation highlights the underlying problem of racially linked inequality, but also the lack of an effective police response, which would have prioritised such community-race boundary flashpoints.

However, in Gauteng at least, the majority of looting took place in large, racially homogeneous townships. Here also, the threat of looting was primarily from within, given that SA’s urban townships are a complex matrix of formal housing, backyard rooms, hostels and informal settlement. What happened in Soweto, Thembisa, Katlehong and elsewhere exposed increasing class differentiation within the African population.

With blurred boundaries between socioeconomic populations, community defence was difficult, but achieved in some cases. The example of Maponya Mall in Soweto has been publicised. Similarly, in Katlehong on the East Rand, close to 400 residents successfully defended Motse wa Lijane, the only mall in the area to remain intact. There are important tactical lessons as to how citizens can successfully defend community facilities in a disciplined way.

However, what needs ventilating is how defending community places patriotic citizens outside the law. This reflects a dilemma for South Africans willing to take a stand as the state becomes increasingly dysfunctional, predatory and fearful of its own population. Community defence curtails constitutional rights, notably those of movement and assembly. Roadblocks, questioning, searches and curfew enforcement by community patrollers can be morally justified, yet they are beyond the law. The legal fetishism that pervades public discourse in SA smothers debate. Stubbornly, debate proceeds schizophrenically to bemoan the inadequacies of the criminal justice system yet offers only solutions that rest on it being functional.

So-called mob justice provides a parallel example. Township communities are left without protection, caught between corrupt and incompetent police on the one side and tsotsis on the other. When patience snaps and extrajudicial punishment is meted out there is knee-jerk condemnation, and police hunt down those responsible. But what else do we expect people to do? The citizens’ defence of Motse wa Dijane was remarkably disciplined, yet at one point it was only warning shots that prevented the defenders from being overwhelmed. In Sophiatown it’s doubtful whether the crisis committee, operating initially in an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, could have initiated the shopping centre’s defence without licensed firearms to stiffen resolve.

To praise patriotic citizens for defending their communities from looting but then deny them the right to legally carry firearms, as pending legislation proposes, is to say that they should only defend when there is no threat. The only permanent solution for SA is greater equality. Yet in the context of state failure, citizens will need to defend, with actions as well as words, community and the rule of law as we enter increasingly dangerous times.

• Dickinson is professor of sociology at Wits University. This article draws on his membership of the Sophiatown Crisis Committee during the unrest and interviews with community defenders of the Motse wa Lijane Mall in Hlahatsi, Katlehong.