by Lipton Matthews
South Africa has adopted the forms of modernity without the psychological development to sustain them.
The images are harrowing. South African mobs wielding machetes and clubs,
forcing foreign nationals from their homes, looting their shops, and,
in some cases, ending their lives. In recent months, vigilante violence
has driven thousands of immigrants from countries including Nigeria,
Ghana, and Zimbabwe out of South Africa, with Nigeria and Ghana repatriating around two thousand of their citizens
on government-sponsored flights. The victims have been subjected to a
level of brutality that shocks the conscience. South African
authorities, overwhelmed or indifferent, have largely stood by as the
country’s long-simmering xenophobia boils over into organized violence.
While anti-immigration sentiment is certainly not unique to South
Africa, the way it manifests in the country’s townships and informal
settlements reveals something deeper and more troubling about the
nation’s psychological development.
Across the Atlantic, Western nations face their own immigration
controversies, yet the contrast could not be starker. In the United
Kingdom, the state remains tightly constrained by the rule of law in how
it approaches asylum seekers and immigrants, with independent courts,
legal aid, and appeals processes that protect the rights of even the
most vulnerable newcomers. In the United States, anti-immigration
rhetoric has sparked fierce counter-protests and legal challenges, with
lawsuits filed against immigration policies
and robust judicial oversight of executive actions. The ferocity of
counter-Trump protests suggests something approaching excessive fondness
for newcomers among certain segments of the American population. In
both countries, those who would restrict immigration must work through
democratic institutions, legislative processes, and the courts. There
are parliamentary debates, judicial rulings, and civil rights
organizations monitoring every move, not mobs with clubs. The contrast
with South Africa could not be more striking.
What explains South Africa’s persistent tribalism and xenophobic
violence? The answer lies not in economics alone, nor in political
failure, but in developmental psychology. Drawing on the insights of
Jean Piaget and the cross-cultural research he inspired, one can
understand why South Africa remains stuck at what the Swiss psychologist
called the preoperational and concrete operational stages of cognitive
development, incapable of the formal operational thinking that
characterizes modern societies. The evidence from South Africa’s
traditional and community courts demonstrates precisely the kind of
primitive legal thinking that Piaget associated with children below the
age of twelve.
Jean Piaget’s developmental psychology describes a progression
through four stages of cognitive development. The first two stages,
which characterize children up to about the age of seven or eight,
involve magical, animistic thinking in which the boundaries between
natural and moral laws blur. Children at these stages believe that
objects, rocks, and rivers can see and judge human actions, that fate
and morals govern every occurrence, and that the cosmos itself
intervenes to punish wrongdoing. The third stage, concrete operational
thought, involves some logical reasoning but remains bound to immediate,
tangible experience. The fourth and final stage, formal operations,
emerges only in adolescents and adults of modern societies between the ages of ten and twenty.
This stage enables abstract reasoning, hypothetical thinking,
systematic logic, and the capacity to distinguish between intentions and
outcomes. Crucially, cross-cultural research conducted across
Afghanistan, Lebanon, West Africa, China, and among American indigenous peoples
has demonstrated that adults in traditional or backward regions remain
bound to the second and third stages. They do not reach the stage of
formal operations. As Piaget himself noted,
“it is quite possible that in numerous cultures adult thinking does not
proceed beyond the level of concrete operations.” This means that
adults in premodern milieus share the same psychological structures as
children in modern societies, differing only in life experience and
knowledge. Both groups take animism as given, credit the idea that
events can be bent through magic, and treat ghosts and fairy tales as
real possibilities. Both reason about cause, luck, and likelihood using
the same conceptual tools. And most importantly, both approach questions
of society, politics, and morality through identical modes of thought.
What this means for the administration of justice is direct and
devastating. Piaget’s research on children’s understanding of rules and
law revealed three stages of development. Children below the age of ten
understand rules as being eternal, holy, and unchangeable, made by God,
parents, or government, and not subject to democratic choice. They do
not differentiate between natural laws and juridical laws, believing
that moral laws rule both society and nature. Moral codes are taboos,
enforced by supernatural powers. Correspondingly, these children believe
that the cosmos, God, ancestors, or the elderly do not change the laws
but care for their eternal status. The laws are holy. People must obey
but have no right to criticize, modify, or choose them. Children in this
stage also demonstrate what Piaget called “objective responsibility,”
attributing guilt and responsibility to persons based on the
consequences of actions rather than on intentions. They punish outcomes,
not motives.
Now observe the operation of traditional courts in South Africa. These courts, known as dikgoro among
Sotho-speaking peoples or inkundla among Nguni-speaking peoples,
function under the leadership of a chief who acts as judge. Adult males
attend sessions and participate in cross-examining parties and
witnesses, but women are strictly excluded. The procedure aims to
reconcile victim and offender, with criminal and civil cases often heard
simultaneously. In such courts, an offender may be sentenced to
punishment and compensation at the same trial, and the accused person
must prove their own innocence. Legal representation does not exist. The
trial takes place in public, with all allowed to attend, ask questions,
and offer input.
The case of Mononono village in 1997 illustrates the problem. A widow
objected to the Bakgatla mourning custom requiring her to sprinkle a
herb called “mogaga” on her pathway each time she left her yard. She
refused on religious grounds. The tribal authority sentenced her to
confinement in her yard for the entire twelve-month mourning period. The
traditional court made no effort to distinguish between the woman’s
intentions and the cultural expectation, between her religious
convictions and the community’s custom. They punished an outcome rather
than evaluating a motive, exactly as children do in Piaget’s
experiments.
The kangaroo courts that emerged in South African townships during
the anti-apartheid struggle provide even more troubling evidence. These
courts, dominated by young men, exhibited what can only be described as
the most primitive forms of justice. In Everton township in Gauteng, a
man who fought with his wife was assaulted by kangaroo court members who
arrived at his home at midnight, pulled him from his bed, and struck
him with a broken bottle. No investigation was conducted. No attempt was
made to establish facts. The accusation itself was sufficient
punishment. In another case, a kangaroo court adjudicator allowed
personal animosity toward a woman to cloud his judgment when she
reported her husband for adultery. Rather than examining the case on its
merits, he abused his position to punish the woman he disliked.
In Soweto, a young boy accused of snatching a handbag was brutally
beaten and stoned by a group of women. He was bleeding and swollen, and
it subsequently transpired that he was the wrong person. The mob had not
established his identity or guilt; they had simply acted on emotion.
Similarly, the community of Riverband near Randburg developed its own
constitution, with all digressions punishable by eviction. Three
executive members were evicted for allegedly embezzling community funds,
again without any proper legal process.
What characterizes these kangaroo courts is precisely what Piaget
identified in children’s understanding of justice. Emotion governs their
judgments, not reason. Outcomes get punished while intentions go
uninvestigated. Formal procedures for establishing facts, or for
protecting the rights of the accused, simply don’t exist. A “law and
order” mentality prevails, the same one Piaget identified in children
under twelve, who favor severe punishment and revenge and show no
capacity for proportionality, reconciliation, or compensation. The
younger children in Piaget’s Swiss survey
demanded punishment for a child who clumsily lost a roll, while every
child over thirteen rejected punishment and demanded compassion. The
kangaroo courts of South Africa’s townships reflect the same cognitive
immaturity.
The connection to xenophobic violence is direct. When South African
mobs attack foreign nationals, they are not engaged in sophisticated
political reasoning or economic calculation. They are manifesting the
same primitive psychological structures that produce animistic belief
systems, objective responsibility, and kangaroo justice. The mob does
not distinguish between the immigrant who deprived him of a job and the
immigrant who runs a legitimate business. They do not evaluate
intentions or circumstances. They punish the foreigner for being
foreign, for being present, and for being the convenient object of their
resentment. This is an objective responsibility elevated to a political
principle.
The historical record here is extensive. Societies across the world,
from Aboriginal Australia to classical Greece to medieval Europe, showed
the same psychological structures. Guilt was determined through ordeals
involving fire or poison; courtrooms handed down official punishments
against animals and even inanimate objects; sentences were brutal and
wildly out of proportion to the offense; and law itself was treated as
sacred, fixed, and handed down from the gods. None of these societies
had developed the formal operational thinking required for abstract
reasoning about justice, proportionality, human rights, or the rule of
law. They were stuck, as South Africa remains stuck, in the
psychological stage of childhood.
However, South Africa lacks the cognitive development of the typical
Western society. The country is not yet at the formal operational stage,
and its legal institutions reflect this fact. The Constitution of South
Africa recognizes traditional leaders and requires courts to apply
customary law, but as the South African Law Commission
has noted, traditional courts need to be alerted that “corporal
punishment is unconstitutional and therefore illegal.” The very
existence of this recommendation reveals the gap between constitutional
principles and traditional practice. The Constitution may be a formal
operational document, but the traditional courts remain concrete
operational. They operate according to the same logic that governed
medieval European customary law, which, as historian Fritz Kern described,
was understood as part of nature, cosmos, and God, something people had
to obey but could not make or change. The traditional courts of South
Africa manifest the same “holy law” ideology, and the kangaroo courts of
the townships manifest the same gap between holy ideology and scant
reality.
South Africa’s persistent tribalism, its inability to build a unified
national identity, its chronic violence, and its resistance to
democratic institutions all reflect the same cognitive deficit. They
are, in Piaget’s terms, operating at the level of concrete operations,
unable to grasp abstract principles of justice, unable to distinguish
between their immediate emotions and the rights of others. Hence, the
vigilante violence against immigrants is not an isolated phenomenon, nor
is it simply a matter of economic competition or political failure. It
is the manifestation of a society that has not yet developed the
cognitive capacity for abstract reasoning about justice, human rights,
and the rule of law. It is a society that treats foreigners the way
Piaget’s children treat the clumsy child who dropped a roll, with
punishment rather than compassion, with emotion rather than reason, with
objective responsibility rather than a nuanced evaluation of intentions
and circumstances.
The mob does not see the immigrant as a person with intentions,
circumstances, and rights. They see the foreigner as the object of their
resentment, the cause of their problems, the figure onto whom they can
project their frustrations. This is objective responsibility on a
national scale. It is the same cognitive deficit that makes children
believe that the bridge collapsed to punish the thieves, that animals
can be tried and executed, that objects can see and judge human actions.
The foreigner is the bridge, the animal, the object. He is there to be
punished, regardless of his intentions or guilt.
South Africa, in this sense, is not yet a modern society in the
psychological sense. It has adopted the outward forms of modernity, a
constitution, a bill of rights, democratic institutions, but these forms
are not deeply rooted in the cognitive structures of its people. The
solution, such as it is, lies in education, economic development, and
the slow process of psychological maturation. It lies in the patient
work of building institutions that can teach people to think in abstract
terms, to distinguish between intentions and outcomes, to see the
humanity in others. It lies in the continued efforts of the South
African Law Commission to bring traditional courts into compliance with
the constitution. It lies, ultimately, in the same process of cognitive
development that has transformed every other society from premodern to
modern.
South Africa has adopted the forms of modernity without the
psychological development to sustain them. It has the constitution of a
modern society with the mind of a child. Until that gap is closed, the
violence will continue. Until South Africa reaches the formal
operational stage, the mobs will rule the townships, the traditional
courts will rule the villages, and the immigrants will run for their
lives. The tragedy of South Africa is not just political or economic. It
is psychological, and like all psychological deficits, it will take
time, effort, and pain to overcome.
Lipton Matthews is a researcher and podcaster. He is a regular contributor to American
Greatness. In addition, his work has been featured in Mises, The
Federalist, Chronicles, American Thinker, Epoch Times, and other
publications. He is also author of Busting African Delusions:
Institutions, Human Capital, and the Path to Progress. He can be reached
at lo_matthews@yahoo.com.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/13/the-tribal-mind-understanding-south-africas-xenophobic-violence-through-developmental-psychology/
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