Community Assault

Community Assault is a term that I had not heard of before coming to South Africa.  It turns out it is fairly commonplace here and deserves mentioning.  When someone in the community commits a crime, they are chased down in the streets and beaten (sometimes to death) by members of the community as a form of punishment.  This form of vigilantism has its roots in the Apartheid era when the South African police force was focused on repression instead of protection within the townships.  Those communities had to police themselves and take matters into their own hands.  This form of justice unfortunately has remained prevalent and has even been on the rise in certain areas in the past few years.  The “criminals” are beaten with various tools and weapons like sjambocks, spades, sticks, and sometimes machetes.  However, nothing is as bad as necklacing (a tire necklace filled with kerosene), being by far the official “worst way to die."  Ever.  

Most of the patients that make it to us have massive bruises covering their bodies.  We treat them all for potential crush injuries and check their urine specific gravity to make sure that the breakdown products from the soft tissue trauma are not clogging up their kidneys and forcing them into renal failure.  Most of the people that make it to us make through OK, but a few have died in our hands.  Usually they die from head injuries that are non-survivable, but sometimes the beatings are so bad that they die from other complications related to the severity of their “punishment.”

Here’s a picture of a young man that came in after being caught for stealing.  He did not have any broken bones, but you can see the extent to which he was beaten by the sjambocks.  His back was by far the worst.  This kid made it out OK.  His kidneys responded to our treatment and he was able to leave the hospital in a couple of days.