Necklacings are a mirror to justice

THE justice system’s real crisis was on horrific display last week — and, true to form, none of those who claim to care about the courts even noticed. In Etwatwa on the East Rand, three boys were killed in a necklace murder. Why they died is unclear but the murders are connected to vigilante activity in an area plagued by gang violence.

As in many townships and shack settlements, residents say they are not protected and some take the law into their own hands, taking on those they believe to be gangsters. People die because the criminal justice system — and the courts — play at best a secondary role in the fight between citizens and those accused of crime.

Etwatwa is not the only place where vigilantes believe they can fight crime better than police and the courts — in other areas, people suspected of crimes have also been attacked. Still more widespread is the attitude that produces vigilantism, the sense that the justice system does not work and that following legal niceties only lets the criminals get away with it.

Violent crime, particularly when children are victims, is often followed by a familiar pattern in which whoever local people suspect, is assumed to be guilty without a trial: when arrests are made, people pack the courtroom insisting that the accused be punished before any evidence is led.

Activist groups sometimes demand the accused be denied bail, although they have not been convicted and so may not be criminals at all.

This is rarely noticed in a mainstream debate often obsessed with defending the courts from (mostly imagined) attack.

If it is noticed at all, the response is usually a thinly veiled attack on the savagery of the township and shack settlement residents who do not understand the rule of law and the need for a fair trial. Which shows precisely the bias that convinces people outside the suburbs that the system is not meant to protect them.

One of many signs of this country’s divisions is our sharply contrasting attitudes to the courts. In the suburbs, and in the mainstream debate that is their voice, they are seen as the thin line between civilisation and barbarism, the only part of the government system that looks out for “decent” people.

In townships and shack settlements, they are often seen as places where well-paid lawyers and judges protect bad people and allow them to prey on the weak.

This attitude ignores the reality that we need lawyers and judges if we are all to feel safe. But it stems not from ignorance but from a reality: suburban people value the courts because they work for them; people in rougher surroundings do not value courts because they do not work for them.

This does not mean all judges and lawyers are biased against poor people (although some are). But suburban people can better get the justice system to work for them. For a start, in a context in which the police are not protecting anyone well, suburbanites can buy private security.

They can also afford to use the courts to protect themselves. In the suburbs, a court is often where people go to protect their rights; outside them, it is usually where they (rather than the bad guys) go to face punishment. People in the suburbs are likely to feel at home with judges and lawyers who are like them; township and shack settlement residents are more likely to see legal office and courts as alien places.

None of this is easily solved. But solutions are impossible as long as the crisis is ignored. Alarmism about the (evil) government closing in on the (good) courts — which often persists in the absence of evidence because it is really another way of expressing the suburban fear that the dark hordes are coming to destroy the way of life of the “civilised” — obscures the fact that millions don’t trust courts, not because they are ignorant but because the justice system does not protect them.

The Etwatwa killings — and similar incidents — should show up the biases behind debate on the courts, forcing us to consider how we ensure that the system works for all so that everyone will value the right to a fair trial. But, as the mainstream debate is far more about how we protect the sensibilities of the suburbs than about how we achieve justice for all, the sad reality is that they probably won’t.