South Africa
The practice of whipping and necklacing offenders and political opponents evolved in the 1980s during the apartheid era in South Africa. Residents of black townships formed "people's courts" to terrorize fellow blacks who were seen as collaborators of the government using whip lashings and deaths by necklacing. Necklacing is the torture and execution of victims by igniting a kerosene-filled rubber tire that has been forced around the victim's chest and arms. Necklacing was used to punish victims, including children, who were alleged to be traitors to the black liberation movement and relatives and associates of the offenders. Sometimes the "people's courts" made mistakes, or used the system to punish those to whom leaders were opposed. There was tremendous controversy when the practice was endorsed by Winnie Mandela, then the wife of the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and a senior member of the African National Congress.
More recently, drug dealers and other gang members have been lynched by People Against Gangsterism and Drugs, a Muslim vigilante organization.
Read more about this topic: Lynching
Famous quotes containing the words south and/or africa:
“Returned this day, the south wind searches,
And finds young pines and budding birches;
But finds not the budding man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Everywhere—all over Africa and South America ... you see these suburbs springing up. They represent the optimum of what people want. There’s a certain sort of logic leading towards these immaculate suburbs. And they’re terrifying, because they are the death of the soul.... This is the prison this planet is being turned into.”
—J.G. (James Graham)