By Tiago J.B. Paqueliua
Abstract
This article offers a critical and multidisciplinary reflection on the emergence of vigilante justice in Cabo Delgado province, Mozambique, in light of the state’s security failure and the resulting breakdown of the social contract. Drawing on a dialogical approach between Law, Theopolitics, Political Philosophy and Public Ethics, it discusses the impact of state absence and the popular legitimisation of private violence as a response to insecurity. The analysis engages with the thought of classical and contemporary figures – from Augustine of Hippo to Gilles Cistac, from John Calvin to Jaime Macuane – to interrogate the limits and possibilities of a just, legitimate, and responsible governance. The essay warns of the risks of normative and institutional collapse should the current disconnection between state and society persist.
Keywords:
informal justice, state collapse, social contract, human rights, theopolitics, security, Mozambique.
Glossary
Vigilante justice: An extralegal form of justice whereby individuals or communities punish offenders without resorting to formal state institutions.
Social contract: A philosophical concept according to which the state arises from an implicit agreement among individuals to guarantee mutual protection in exchange for some relinquishment of individual freedoms.
Theopolitics: The intersection between theology and politics, analysing the role of God, religion and biblical ethics in social order and the legitimacy of power.
Lynching: The summary and violent execution of a person by a group, without legal trial or due process.
Failed state: A state that no longer performs its basic functions, such as ensuring security, justice, and essential public services.
Governance: The set of processes and institutions through which decisions are made and implemented, with a focus on legitimacy, transparency, and accountability.
Human security: A paradigm that goes beyond military security, encompassing protection from hunger, disease, violence, and oppression.
Civil disobedience: The public, conscious, and non-violent refusal to comply with certain laws or orders of a government, in protest against perceived injustices.
Presumption of innocence: A legal principle according to which every individual is considered innocent until proven guilty through a fair trial.
Restorative justice: A model of justice aimed at repairing the harm caused by a crime through dialogue between victim, offender, and community.
I. Introduction: When Justice Is Taken into One’s Own Hands
In the wake of armed insurgencies and state abandonment in Cabo Delgado, local communities have begun to take justice into their own hands – a phenomenon that, while legally condemned, is fraught with ethical, theological, and political complexities. Viewed through the lens of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, such popular reaction may be read as a rupture of the civilisational pact, whereby the state ceases to fulfil its foundational role as guarantor of security.
In the Epistle to the Romans (13:1–4), the Apostle Paul asserts that all authority is instituted by God and that the ruler is a minister of justice. But what happens when such ministers, as in Mozambique, become complicit in omission, indifference, or even evil? The theopolitics of John Calvin and the resistance ethics of Martin Luther legitimise civil disobedience in such cases. Likewise, Augustine of Hippo argued that “without justice, states are but bands of robbers” (De Civitate Dei).
This article seeks to rigorously and civically explore the contours of this parallel justice as a symptom of a failed state and a society in self-defence, engaging with thinkers who, from Thomas Aquinas to Gordon Haddon Clark, interrogate what is just, legitimate, and necessary in times of exception.
II. Cabo Delgado: Between State Absence and Popular Self-Justice
The 27 July attack on the Chiúre-Velho Administrative Post, carried out by insurgents who, without resistance, held a jihadist rally, set a vehicle ablaze, and abducted a civilian, illustrates the chasm between the formal and the actual state. The total absence of Defence and Security Forces (FDS) in that locality brings to mind Gilles Cistac’s famous warning: “A state that is not where it ought to be is not a state governed by the rule of law.”
Two days later, on 29 July, in the village of Nivenevene, two unidentified individuals were lynched to death. A few days prior, a man summarily accused of links to the terrorist group met the same fate. There was no trial, no investigation, no presumption of innocence – only the raw and immediate application of popular justice in a context where the state exists solely in its absence.
Here, Vincent Cheung’s analysis of the moral failure of governments becomes relevant: “If the state systematically becomes an agent of evil or fails to repress it, moral and theological justice obliges ethical resistance.”
III. The Social Contract in Ruins: Between Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Theocracy of Despair
In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes justifies the concentration of sovereign power as the only means of avoiding a war of all against all. But when that sovereign abdicates its role, a return to the state of nature ensues. Jean-Jacques Rousseau contends that the social contract exists to safeguard citizens’ liberty and security; when this pact is unilaterally broken by the state, the people reacquire the right to self-defence.
John Locke, in his theory of legitimate revolution, affirms that “the people have the right to remove or resist any government that fails in its primary duty to protect the rights to life, liberty, and property.” In this context, vigilante justice emerges as the desperate expression of a population that no longer recognises legitimate authority in the constituted power.
IV. The Theopolitical Threshold: Divine Justice or Profane Vengeance?
Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, warns that justice must always be tempered by reason and charity. When it transforms into collective vengeance, it shifts from the common good to barbarism. However, John Calvin reminds us that “tyranny is a sign of divine judgment upon a people, but it does not preclude rightful resistance when exercised with discernment.” Gordon Haddon Clark and Vincent Cheung reinforce that the Christian worldview is not pacifist, but realistic concerning the legitimate use of force when evil becomes institutionalised.
V. The Post-Colonial State and the Void of Legitimacy
Mozambican jurist Gilles Cistac denounced the centralisation and partisanship of the state as root causes of its illegitimacy. Jaime Macuane, in turn, warns that political power in Mozambique has long been divorced from civil society, governing through imposition rather than consensus. The spread of popular justice in Cabo Delgado is, in this sense, a late symptom of a pathology long consuming the Mozambican state: the collapse of civic trust.
VI. Popular Justice or Emergency Justice? The Risks of Normative Collapse
The proliferation of lynchings on mere suspicion of terrorism, without any procedural safeguards, should raise alarm. While it may emerge as a survival mechanism, such practice risks entrenching a culture of illegality and arbitrariness that may prove difficult to reverse. As Michel Foucault warns, when the state loses the monopoly on legitimate violence, a “regime of truth produced by force” takes hold.
Epilogue: Between Popular Outcry and State Silence — A Possible Future?
The story of Cabo Delgado is the fractured mirror of a nation at war with itself. In the distorted reflection of popular justice, one finds not only barbarism or collective irrationality, but an ethical-political cry for recognition, security, and dignity. The lynching of suspects, however reprehensible, is also a primitive form of social justice in the face of the state’s near-ontological absence.
To jurists who cling to the cold letter of the law, it must be said: the law cannot become a monument to indifference. To theologians: the commandment “thou shalt not kill” is not incompatible with the ethics of resistance to institutionalised evil. To rulers: silence and omission in the face of popular suffering are, in themselves, forms of violence.
As the Apostle Paul wrote in his second epistle to the Corinthians, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17). In Cabo Delgado, such liberty entails the restoration of justice, security, and hope.
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