(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 7 ethnic minority. ‘Mass actor killings’ cover cases of vigilante killings; killings by consultants or private security outfits engaged in core state activities, killings by organised criminal gangs (militias, death squads, pirates and drug or human traffickers), killings by terrorist groups, and killings by rebels and insurgent groups in ungoverned spaces. It appears to be the case that responsibility for killings by terrorist, rebel and insurgent groups in ungoverned spaces is entirely that of the group concerned. International legal interpretation and norms now clearly define the positive role and responsibility of the State in preventing abuses perpetrated by non-state actors. Gone are the days when it could have been said with confidence that human rights violations against individuals could be committed only by States. A new awareness has since developed that the individual needs to be protected against the increasingly many and powerful non-state actors as well. The concept of State responsibility has evolved to recognise that a State also has an obligation to take preventive and punitive steps where human rights violations by private actors occur. A scholar of note has pertinently observed that ‘international law has achieved a major breakthrough by holding the relevant governments liable in situations in which they have not shown ‘due diligence’ in carrying out their own obligations to investigate, prosecute, and punish those who commit such crimes’.17 The State is of course not ordinarily responsible for human rights abuses by private actors for, in many cases, the isolated killing of a person by an individual will constitute a simple crime and not give rise to any State responsibility. However, the State is required to ensure the right to life. It must meet its due diligence obligations to take appropriate measures to deter, prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish perpetrators. The duty of the State extends to ensuring protection against the risk of human rights violation by non-state actors and to providing effective remedies to victims of violations. In Carmichele v Minister of Safety and State Security & Another,18 the South African Constitutional Court held the State liable for the brutal attack of the appellant by the accused, an attempted-rapist who was facing trial and had been released without bail. In Van Eerden v Minister of Safety and State Security,19 the South African Supreme Court of Appeal held the State accountable for the rape and robbery of a 19-year old girl by a known dangerous criminal who had escaped from police custody due to the negligent failure of the police to lock the security gate. Once a pattern of killings becomes clear in which the response of the State is clearly inadequate, the State’s responsibility under international human rights law becomes applicable on the good and sufficient reasoning that through its inaction it makes itself complicit and confers a degree of impunity upon the killers. Complicity by the 17 P Alston ‘Of witches and robots: the diverse challenges of responding to unlawful killings in the twenty-first century’ (2011) 28 Macalester International 10. 18 2001 (4) SA 938 (CC). 19 2003 (1) SA 389 (SCA).