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Full download Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa Nicholas Rush Smith file pdf all chapter on 2024
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Contradictions of Democracy
OXFORD STUDIES IN CULTURE AND POLITICS
Clifford Bob and James M. Jasper, General Editors
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Eduardo Romanos, and Markos Vogiatzoglou
Curated Stories
The Uses and Misuses of Storytelling
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Human Rights and Public Opinion in the Global South
James Ron, Shannon Golden, David Crow, and Archana Pandya
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Political Legitimacy in Russia
Valerie Sperling
Democracy in the Making
How Activist Groups Form
Kathleen M. Blee
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The Micro-processes of Mobilization in El Salvador
Jocelyn Viterna
Contradictions
of Democracy
Vigilantism and Rights
in Post-Apartheid South Africa
xwx
Nicholas Rush Smith
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1. Vigilantism and the Contradictions of Democratic State
Formation 18
2. The People’s Justice: Historical Antecedents of Contemporary
Vigilantism 38
3. Spectacles of Statecraft: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission
and Post-Apartheid Lawmaking 57
4. Rights in Translation: Vigilantism and the Meanings of Institutional
Effectiveness and Failure 81
5. Taking Charge: The Contradictory Pleasures of Citizen
Crime-Fighting 107
6. The Risks and Rewards of Vigilantism 130
7. The Racial Geographies of Criminal Panic: Protesting Crime
in the Suburbs 153
8. Against Vigilantism: Citizen and State Action to Combat
Vigilantism 170
9. Lawmaking and State-Making as Vigilantism 191
Epilogue 213
Bibliography 219
Index 239
( vii )
PR E FAC E
closely with three different research assistants for much of this time (two
in KwaMashu and one in Sebokeng) who could make introductions and
help break down the barriers of race, class, and nationality that come with
being a middle-class, white American working in highly unequal African
neighborhoods with long histories of racial oppression. IsiZulu language
skills also helped me engage people who might otherwise be wary of
researchers.
Consequently, in each field site I participated in wide-ranging practices.
For example, I patrolled with anti-crime groups, attended anti-crime
protests, and observed community justice initiatives. I interviewed com-
munity policing officials, traditional healers, small business owners, taxi
owners, former policemen, and political officials. I spent time with young
men who earn a living illegally, as their insecurity is acute. Although some
may commit acts of violence, they are also possible targets of violence—
both from vigilante citizens and from the police. More generally, I engaged
in quotidian activities like meals, celebrations, and funerals to couch my
understanding of vigilantism in larger structures of meaning. In short, I ate,
drank, and often slept in KwaMashu and Sebokeng to understand the poli-
tics underlying vigilantism.
However, while my work was centered on KwaMashu and Sebokeng, it
became apparent early on that I could not segment the townships off from
larger processes of political, economic, and cultural circulation. KwaMashu
and Sebokeng residents constantly move between neighboring townships,
informal settlements, and cities, along with various destinations across
the country from major metropolises to ancestral villages. An incredible
range of media also circulate through the townships: newspapers, televi-
sion, music, movies, cell phone videos, and rumors. As my interlocutors
circulated, so did I. As my interlocutors consumed information, so did
I. The result is that the arguments laid out in this book are not exclusively
drawn from observations made in these two sites, nor are they reducible
to these two sites. For instance, I worked in areas that border my primary
field sites, including Ntuzuma, Inanda, and Phoenix near KwaMashu and
Evaton, Sonderwater, and Sharpeville near Sebokeng. I also did research
in places like Soweto near Johannesburg, Wentworth in Durban, the pre-
dominantly white suburbs of Durban and Johannesburg, and rural areas
in KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo provinces, as opportunities allowed. In
short, even though KwaMashu and Sebokeng form the bedrock for my
arguments, the arguments are not limited to these two places, even as the
processes I identify in the book that follows may operate somewhat differ-
ently in other areas.
The arguments are also not anchored solely in my ethnographic prac-
tice. Early in my ethnographic research, I realized that post-apartheid
( xii ) Preface
scholars have written about the same or similar events. In other instances,
like the historical events that comprise Chapter 2, little scholarly litera-
ture exists on them and the arguments make novel empirical and theoret-
ical contributions to our understanding of apartheid-era violence. In these
instances, describing the specific groups, as historians typically do, made
sense given the voluminous archival material the chapters draw upon, even
as I anonymize the specific people I interviewed about the conflicts.
Outside of the specific protections for research interlocutors, though,
there is a second set of ethical challenges having to do with the represen-
tation of historically marginalized areas. In particular, there is a danger of
focusing on an area’s violence, while ignoring or overlooking the other
daily experiences residents have unrelated to this violence, many of which
are quite joyous. Particularly in places like South Africa’s townships that
have long histories of being stereotyped as violent, there is a danger of
reproducing these stereotypes. How can one depict serious concerns
about insecurity that residents have without sensationalizing an area’s vi-
olence? This presents a complicated challenge, to say the least. I have tried
to address it in a variety of ways, though none may ultimately be satisfac-
tory to readers or to residents of KwaMashu and Sebokeng. First, by using
the two townships in comparison, I show that townships have important
differences from one another, even as the similarities between KwaMashu
and Sebokeng help draw out a larger narrative about vigilantism and dem-
ocratic state formation. By considering the two places in comparison to
one another, I hope to avoid using one township as representative of all
townships, a problem that attends many studies of crime or policing in ra-
cially marginalized places (Small 2009, 9–10). Second, the arguments are
drawn from places beyond KwaMashu and Sebokeng. We will see, for in-
stance, how residents of Pretoria’s predominantly white suburbs exhibit
surprisingly similar anxieties about South Africa’s rights regime as residents
in predominantly black townships, despite their living in statistically much
safer areas (Chapter 7). We will also ask how opponents of vigilantism have
mobilized against it (Chapter 8), so as not to suggest that support for vig-
ilantism is universal in South Africa. Lastly, in each of the chapters, I try
to bring out tensions embedded within the politics of KwaMashu and
Sebokeng in order to show the contradictions built into democratic citizen-
ship that enable vigilantism. After all, it is the contradictions of democratic
citizenship and state formation—a set of universal questions for demo-
cratic politics—that motivates this book, rather than the violence vigilan-
tism often entails.
In writing a book, one incurs many debts and in the case of this book, those
debts are deep. It began life as a dissertation completed in the political
( xiv ) Preface
Center, George Washington University, John Jay College, New York Law
School, Northwestern University, Yale University, Vassar College, and the
City College of New York, as well as audiences at the annual meetings of the
American Political Science Association, the African Studies Association,
the Midwestern Political Science Association, the Western Political Science
Association, and the Northeastern Workshop on Southern Africa.
Without the assistance of several funding and archival organizations,
this project never would have been possible. An International Dissertation
Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council funded a
year of fieldwork in South Africa for which I am thankful. Funding from
the Provost’s Office, the Division of Social Sciences, and the Department
of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and the Provost’s Office
at the City College of New York enabled additional research. The Faculty
Fellowship Publication Program and a Book Completion Award, both from
the City University of New York, provided valuable course releases or funds
to finish production of the manuscript. Fellowship and grant support from
the Foreign Language and Area Studies program of the U.S. Department of
Education, the Group Project Abroad program run by Fulbright-Hays, and
the African Studies Workshop at the University of Chicago enabled isiZulu
language study.
The City College of New York, my current academic home, has been
an incredible place to write this book. The Colin Powell School of Civic
and Global Leadership within the college—under the leadership of both
Vince Boudreau and Kevin Foster—hosts a range of dynamic scholars who
have pushed my thinking about how to present and structure the ideas
contained within this book. My colleagues within the department of polit-
ical science, under the inimitable chairmanship of Bruce Cronin, have been
a particular source of encouragement and tolerance as I took various forms
of teaching leave to finish this book. The students within the department,
many of whom are the first in their families to go to college, have been a
constant reminder of the revolutionary importance of education.
At Oxford University Press, I owe a debt to James Cook, who took an
early interest in the project and took a gamble on a junior scholar. It has been
a dream working with him and his team. Similarly, James Jasper, the series
editor, has been an incredible supporter of this book from its first proposal
until its final appearance. He has read numerous drafts of chapters, often
on short notice, while lending his expert eye on how to reframe arguments
or rearrange content so that it would read more effectively. It has been an
enormous privilege and learning opportunity to work with him. The book
is much better for his guidance.
Finally, although this book benefited from the assistance of many
individuals and institutions, my primary debts are owed to my family. My
Preface ( xvii )
parents, Conrad and Patricia Smith, have enabled me, since my childhood,
to pursue my dreams, including, most recently, my dream of pursuing a
PhD. Without their emotional and material support over many, many years,
I have no doubt this book would have never come to pass. Were it not for
my father’s work for the U.S. government abroad and my mother’s joyful-
ness in the face of change, I likely never would have wanted an itinerant life
that takes me across the world. And, yet, I was fortunate to have parents
who fostered this quality, which made pursuing a project far away from
anywhere I had previously known thinkable and possible. I regret that both
my father and my mother passed away before they could see this book in
print as, in many ways, it is a joint production of which I hope they would
be proud.
If my parents provided the worldly imagination that made this book
thinkable, my wife, Meg Alexander, has provided the daily motivation and
love that made this book possible. She has had to abide by more disruption
than most spouses have to endure in a marriage. Not only did she put up
with a partner earning graduate student wages for too long, about a month
after we were married I skipped town for another continent to conduct
fieldwork for a year. She has coped with repeated lengthy absences since.
When I am around, I’m not sure things are necessarily any better, as she has
had to live with a nervy, grumpy academic, who constantly grouses about
not being able to pursue some fun activity because he has a book to finish.
Despite all of this, she has constantly encouraged me to work in order to
make this book the best it could possibly be and repeatedly assented to
my performing additional rounds of research when I had questions I still
needed to answer. Through it all, Meg has been, quite simply, an amazing
partner. For that reason, I dedicate this book to her.
Contradictions of Democracy
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