AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	43. Making the African Suburbia
Paper ID	659
Author(s)	Sherrington, Richard
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	It is common practice in urban Tanzania that when a person is apprehended as a suspected thief summary justice of a violent and spontaneous nature is meted out. Using a case in point, this paper interrogates some of the justifications given by participants, on-lookers and proponents of mob justice as this occurs in one of Dar es Salaam’s newer, largely low-income settlements. Some of the reasons given are unsurprising. In common with the findings of the growing literature on vigilantes across Africa, with the Sungu-sungu of Tanzania and Bakassi boys of Nigeria relevant and comparable cases, the role of the ‘state’ in relation to citizens is questioned, and reference is typically made to the ineptitude, corruption and under-resourced law enforcement agencies of the Tanzanian government. But what emerges in my analyses are a number of discursive categories that are given meaning and content when situated in their particular socio-moral context. The category of the thief is made through popular reference to their supposed asociality, beings with evil spirits who would rather steal the property of others than work for it themselves. This is set against the morally virtuous category of the community of victims, each like the other, treading a fine line between success and failure, trying to self-develop and demonstrate this development through practices that denote social distinction, the latter depending largely on economic determinants. Mob justice and vigilantism as social practices are widely recognised in the social science literature for their conservative orientations, defending a particular image of the good life against its enemies, and there are similarities to be made here. The paper highlights how, in the context of financial insecurity, rampant property crime, and a legal system that is seen to help rather punish criminals, mob justice is a practice that in many ways replicates what the government should be trying to achieve through law enforcement - to protect the property rights of citizens and create social environments in which a consumerist lifestyle can prosper – practices that are intrinsic to urban development. But what also emerges from this analysis, and what the paper attempts to address, is that, while people popularly invoke discourses to reflect upon immoral wealth accumulation and inequality, mob justice, undertaken by a socio-economically heterogeneous community, overlooks this and instead serves to defend the property rights and lifestyles of the wealthy, thus perpetuating ongoing social inequalities.

Mob Justice and the Promotion of Inequality in Peri-Urban Dar es Salaam, Tanzania