Abstract:
The legal doctrine of ‘common purpose’ in South African criminal
law considers all parties liable who have been in implicit or explicit agreement
to commit an unlawful act, and associated with each other for that purpose, even
if the consequential act has been carried out by one of them. It relieves the
prosecution of proving the causal link between the conduct of an individual
member of a group acting in common purpose, and the ultimate consequence
caused by the action of the group as a whole. The National Prosecuting
Authority’s controversial and vociferously challenged decision (initially upheld,
then withdrawn at the beginning of September 2012) to charge 270 demonstrators
at Lonmin Platinum Mine in Marikana with the murders of 34 colleagues
under the ‘common purpose’ doctrine, implying liability by association or
agreement, raises the question as to the constitution and characteristics of the
crowd and of the public, respectively. This article outlines the history of the
application of the common purpose rule in South Africa, to then examine
‘common purpose’ within the philosophical parameters of group psychology
and collective intentionality. It argues for methodological individualism within a
psychoanalytic theorisation of group dynamics, and a non-summative approach to
collective intentionality, in addressing some problems in the conceptualisation of
group formation.
