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South Africans Are Taking the Law Into Their Own HandsChristopher ClarkCAPE TOWN, South Africa—On a sunny afternoon in late September, a solemn crowd of about 40 people gathered outside a small brick house in the suburban Cape Town neighborhood of Valhalla Park. They’d come for the Salat al-Janazah—an Islamic funeral ritual—of Tashrieq Johnson, a soft-spoken 25-year-old who had been burned to death in a brutal gasoline attack a few days earlier.In the living room, an imam began to wrap three pieces of white cloth around Johnson’s body, which remained zipped inside a white mortuary bag so those assembled wouldn’t have to witness the extent of his injuries. “He was burnt beyond recognition from the waist up,†Johnson’s father, Adil Masoet, said solemnly.Once the imam had finished shrouding the body, the men filed into the room, formed a circle, and began to pray. Johnson’s mother, Titi Lama, waited outside with the other women. She preferred not to see the body; she wanted to remember her son the way he was when she last saw him alive, before he was taken from his home by a roving group of vigilantes who claimed he was gang-affiliated and subjected him to a brutal form of mob justice.Read more at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/29/south-africans-are-taking-the-law-into-their-own-hands-vigilantism-extralegal-justice-police-apartheid-anc-private-security/amp/
