These violent delights have violent ends: the righteous killing of Mlungisi Nxumalo.
Channel: Anthony Collins
Date: 03/05/2019

These violent delights have violent ends: the righteous killing of Mlungisi Nxumalo as an interpretation of South Africa violence.

These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so.
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
                         William Shakespeare -  Romeo and Juliet

While the tragic death of Mlungisi Nxumalo barely registered in the media and public consciousness, it provides a potentially significant exemplar of South African violence - and not just because of its particular ghastliness.  The disastrous unfolding of an attempt by concerned citizens to protect a child at risk provides both a useful case study for analysis, and a cautionary tale. The more closely we examine this incident, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish those fighting for justice, and those undermining it. The imagined boundaries between law-abiding citizen and criminal become unclear, as does the distinction between the use of force to protect citizens, and the antisocial use of violence to damage the social fabric. 

Rather, what comes into focus is how everyday life is imbued with physical violence as an intuitively available resource to execute a variety of intentions, good or bad. And more distressingly, what follows is how after a certain point, the good or bad intentions are not necessarily significant determinants of the social harms that are finally produced. It is precisely here that the explanatory value of this case may lie. 

This presentation reframes the problem of violence in South Africa not as an insurgent criminality in the face of failing social regulation, but as a pervasive and normalised resource readily available to negotiate many everyday situations. If this is to be understood as the problem, then it requires an entirely different range of interventions from the widespread appeal for more effective law enforcement.