Tag: Operation Dudula

Why do so many South Africans prefer taking the law into their own hands to relying on the police? Why are those who do so often cheered or sympathised with? Of the unprecedented 27 000 recorded murders in South Africa in 2022, at least 1 894 – or 7 per cent – were attributed to mob justice and vigilantism, more than double the number from five years before.

On 21 June, members of an anti-migrant group named Operation Dudula showed up at Park Station in Johannesburg vowing to shut down the station. They believed vendors operating there were not South African and therefore are taking away space from South Africans who cannot make ends meet.