Nevertheless, there could be little sympathy with those being punished, if they really did gang-rape the girl. In the present case, however, the procedure was more rough-and-ready: the alleged offenders were simply roped together and lashed indiscriminately all over their naked bodies.Īs Ms Aitkenhead points out, some viewers will find these scenes distasteful. The best-known vigilante group in modern times, Mapogo a Mathamaga, has often explicitly stated that it concentrates its whippings on the offender's bare buttocks. Īs noted in Section 11 of our feature article Judicial Corporal Punishment in South Africa, the country has a long history of extrajudicial CP. Decca Aitkenhead, Rough Justice, The Observer, London. A TV crew filmed the whole affair, and harrowing footage of the boys screaming and bleeding caused a minor stir in liberal circles when it was broadcast. The youths, barely more than boys, were stripped naked, tied up, and the girl was handed a sjambok and urged to give them a whipping. The young culprits she named were swiftly rounded up, and a makeshift kangaroo court followed, where the girl identified the rapists. A teenage girl on the Cape Flats was gang raped last year, and her family took her to the local taxi people. This is an example of taxi vigilantism in action. The drivers acquired a fearful reputation as de facto elders - and so have come to function in some communities as the arbiters of local justice. The mini-bus taxi routes between the townships and Cape Town are traditionally lucrative, and rival operators have fought spectacularly bloody battles for control. 'They're the people who don't give a shit.' ![]() 'The taxi guys are very powerful,' explained one young man who had recently used their services to recover stolen property. In the townships, people have learnt to rely on a more informal form of vigilante justice. What was unusual about this vigilante beating was that the whole thing was filmed for television, and the case thus gained some notoriety, as explained in a newspaper article as follows: The rape victim herself was one of those wielding the sjambok. ![]() The footage shows a number of young men being rounded up and severely whipped for an alleged gang rape. This film consists of extracts from a TV documentary, The Limp Wrist of the Law, by Adri Kotzé, about the perceived incapacity of the official police and judicial system to deal with crime in the urban townships around Cape Town. UNOFFICIAL JUDICIAL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT Video clips: Community whippings, South AfricaĬLIP 1 OF 2 Date: 1999 Duration: 5 minutes UNOFFICIAL JUDICIAL CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: Video clips - Vigilante whippings of youths (South Africa)
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