Creating People's Justice: Street Committees And People's Courts in a South African City

Abstract

Ever since coming under colonial rule, Africans in South Africa have operated informal courts which the state courts have not recognized. Using fieldwork data, we contrast two such nonstate judicial structures in Cape Town. We describe the street committees, constituted by the older generation as a subsidiary form of local government coexisting uncomfortably alongside formal apartheid authorities. We then show the explosive consequences of the development from 1985 of youth-run people's courts, which attempted to redefine community values. We conclude with a discussion of our findings in the context of existing theoretical work on informal justice and draw some tentative conclusions on possible developments in a post-apartheid era.

Othering diversity – a Levinasian analysis of diversity management

“…Thus, even though ANC won in 1994 with 63% of the votes, the state was still composed of a rather thin layer of newcomers (Asmal, 2000). During apartheid, the whites and non-whites had little contact due to segregation policies, which very specifically divided South Africa in to 'white' towns and non-white townships (Burman and Schärf, 1990). The unified situation was therefore very new to them, and they were not used to cooperate under equal terms.…”

“…2 http://humanrights.dk/. 3 Under the apartheid system, a 'race classification' was defined, which divided South Africans into four main groups: White, Black, Asian and Coloured (Coloured primarily includes descendants of Indonesians and Indians, who came to South Africa together with the Dutch colonists) (Burman and Schärf, 1990 …”

Dimensions of Restorative Justice

“…This means that in most cases, programs have to persuade both agents of the formal criminal justice system and the general public that the offence should be dealt with by a committee rather than by police or the court. But until recently in South Africa, the state has played little role in the provision of security, which has instead been undertaken by a range of private bodies (Burman & Scharf, 1990). These informal bodies are established with the best of intentions, but all too often degenerate into violent and oppressive forms of social control (Roche, 2002; p. 520).…”

Enriching trial justice for crime victims in common law systems

“…Illustrations from Northern Ireland, in particular, are readily found in the literature, and include the role of the Peace People (Byrne, 2001), the Ardoyne Commemoration Project (Lundy and McGovern, 2008), and more recently the evolution of community-based restorative justice schemes in traditional 'no-go' areas for the police during the Troubles (McEvoy and Mika, 2001). Examples from elsewhere include the use of Street Committees during the Apartheid era in South Africa (Burman and Schärf, 1990), grassroots reconciliation projects in Colombia (Diaz, 2008) or the work of the Peace Foundation in Bougainville in the aftermath of the civil war (Braithwaite, 2010).…”