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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Rejecting rights: vigilantism and violence in post-apartheid South Africa
Author:Smith, Nicholas Rush
Year:2015
Periodical:African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621)
Volume:114
Issue:456
Pages:341-360
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:vigilante groups
human rights
violence
External link:http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/114/456/341.abstract
Abstract:Academic and policy interest in the emergence, development, and efficacy of rights has increased substantially over the last twenty years. One particular effect that scholars have recently identified is the connection between the spread of rights across the globe and large-scale reductions in violence. While the expansion of rights may enable reductions in violence, the evidence in this article suggests the opposite may also be true. Drawing on ethnographic research on vigilantism in South Africa, a country deeply invested in the twentieth century rights revolution, the article shows how vigilantes have used the state's expanding rights regime to justify violence. Specifically, it examines the growth and spread of what was at one time South Africa's largest vigilante group, Mapogo a Mathamaga. Mapogo first emerged shortly after the country's transition to democracy and rapidly grew as its leadership preached a gospel that rejected rights, claiming that rights enabled crime and allowed immorality to proliferate. By assaulting suspected criminals, Mapogo's members claim that they are correcting the criminal, the post-apartheid state, and the flawed rights regime on which it is based, an outcome which the existing literature on rights and violence has difficulty explaining. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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