ABSTRACT
Between March and September 2012, there were 16 instances of ‘necklacing’ in the townships just outside of Cape Town. This chapter argues for understanding these events in relation to the violence of apartheid. It approaches the question of the meanings of the persistence of the practice of necklacing through an analysis of photographs of people who were subject to vigilante violence in the 1980s. The chapter focuses on photographs made by Gille de Vlieg, an activist and photographer who, during apartheid, was a member of the anti-apartheid women’s movement, the Black Sash, and of the Afrapix photography collective. The chapter argues for understanding de Vlieg’s photographs made during apartheid as a series of ‘wounding apertures’ that open a space for affective engagements with the violence of both the past and of the present.
