In the aftermath of the bitter ghastly act of barbarism perpetrated against a young promising captain, which took his life in Denkyira Boase in the Central Region, of which, we all expressed our grief and disbelief, I am stirred to write about the syndrome of mob-justice and the labeling of “Dzulor” (thief) and its effect in Ghana.
The sad situation that took the life of Captain Maxwell Mahama was not the first in Ghana. Folks will remember the similarly horrible incident that took two lives of law enforcements in Ablekuma, a suburb of Accra, in the late 1990s. There are a lot of similar incidents that have gone without the media radar.
In the Ghanaian context, mob-justice in relation, mostly, to an allege theft, means citizens passing judgement on the alleged “dzulor” (thief), whether true or not, and dropping a gavel for punishment, usually in the form of beatings, which have resulted in deaths in some situations. This issue needs further exploration.
Social relationships spring from social acts, a moral prime mover. *So what springs mob-justice?*
Mob-Justice is orchestrated by some indigenes of a given community to deter crime-an allege crime, which is subject to scrutiny in the hands and mouth of those who shout “Dzulor”. An absent civil liberties, the fate of an alleged victim is like a chase of a poor mouse by an army of fat cats in an urban city over an allege theft of _le poisson_. what a clemency they have!
The lynching of Captain Maxwell Mahama raise questions on the value of community, law and order. In one sense, citizens are encouraged to be community-watch dogs, a sect of communal policing to allow for peace, law and order, and development. On the other, that value is overstretched forcefully and unlawfully, to ascribe the right to effect justice, however they choose. A doppelganger.
In his article on the same subject on mob-justice, after the gruesome slaying of Captain Mahama, Uncle Stanley Agbadey of Sokpoe, remarked that, he was taught as a kid on the adverse effects of labelling strangers or intruders as “dzulor” (thief), and the importance of reporting crime to the police.
Mr. Agbadey was told this was “One of the laws of Nkrumah.”
I pondered over the reasoning of such a simple rule that, anybody could kill and allege that the victim was a thief. That the person could be a rival and could plot taking the life and posit that the person was a thief and therefore deserved punishment.
A civic action of reporting crime to law enforcement could potentially prevent false imprisonment, assault and battery, and possible loss of lives and property. Instead, we want to be our own prosecutors and judges. The danger of anybody being “judge and prosecutor” on the streets and administering justice in the reason of deterring crime is only opposite of our upward slope.
Even if Kwame Nkrumah’s citizenry call of reporting crime to law enforcement was not codified, the 1992 constitution of our country, enshrines the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms, and that the protection of right to life is sacred and universally accepted.
Comparatively, though values and ideas differ, the diversification of human beliefs is a resting point in many constitutions along the path towards a shared universal end which validates the understanding that, it is immoral to take another person’s life.
Life has come to be lived in on an upward slope. The nature of things has a bias towards improvement. We have coded many laws. We have given powers to individuals and institutions, why have we refuse to hold true to them and believe in their powers? Why must we take laws into our hands? Today, an army of indigenes mob her own citizenry over allegations of theft. Yesterday, it was group of tugs gushing into the law court to release their own. They are free.
The understanding of our society is built on an episodic compact between us which validates rights which may be conceived as tacit, or metaphysical, as reacted unwittingly by each new born citizen as he enjoys the benefits of a civil social space, or enacted on his behalf .
Have we progressed? Two things come to mind: good or bad. Good may have in its bracket of conditions, presence of reason, or liberty, law and order, and civilization. The bad is the bracket of condition by their absence. What are the conditions of our communities? Where are the values and soul, preserve in our constitution which distinct the nobility of our country? How do we form a process of growth in holding in high esteem institutions, the beliefs we hold, the selves that we are? Out laws evidently have become myths that live in the shade and academic limbo.
Please join me build the Ghana Legal Institute to offer restatement of our laws to its evolution.
To evolve hopefully is now much more interesting than to arrive; indeed, the arrival-point seems almost to matter only in that it provides direction for the journey.
Finally, While the whole Ghana mourns the death of a gallant soldier, captain Maxwell Mahama, let us not wait to take actions only when a mighty fall.
The tears of the nation tell us, we must do something about mob-justice and the case of the “dzulor” in our communities.
Steve Awuyah Addae
Village boy
addae-steve@yahoo.com