Crowds clashed with police and ransacked or set fire to shopping malls in various cities South Africa On Tuesday, dozens of people were reported to have been killed because of dissatisfaction caused by the former president’s imprisonment Jacob Zuma Evolved into the worst violent incident in years.
Protests after Zuma’s arrest last week have expanded to robbery and widespread outrage over the difficulties and inequality that have persisted 27 years after apartheid ended.
Strict social and economic restrictions designed to stop transmission have exacerbated poverty Coronavirus disease.
Security officials said the government is working to stop the spread of violence and robbery, which has spread from Zuma’s home in KwaZulu-Natal to around the country’s largest cities, Johannesburg and Gauteng, as well as ports in the Indian Ocean. The city of Durban.
Soldiers have been sent to the streets to try to contain the riots.
Zu Ma, 79, was sentenced to prison for violating the order of the Constitutional Court for providing evidence in an investigation into high-level corruption during his nine-year tenure before 2018.
He also faces trial in another case, including corruption, fraud, extortion and money laundering. He pleaded not guilty in court in May.
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The Zuma Foundation stated that there will be no peace in South Africa until the former president is released from prison.
“Peace and stability in South Africa are directly related to the immediate release of President Zuma,” it said in a tweet.
“Violence could have been avoided. It started when the Constitutional Court decided to detain President Zuma… which made the people angry,” a spokesperson for the foundation told Reuters separately.
On Tuesday, as the large numbers of police seemed helpless to stop the riots, the army entered the outbreak point and armored personnel carriers lined up on the highway.
The governor of Gauteng Province, David Makhura, said the bodies of 10 people were found after a stampede in the Soweto shopping mall on Monday night.
Hundreds of looters raided warehouses and supermarkets in Durban, one of the busiest shipping terminals on the African continent and an import and export hub.
A Reuters witness said that outside the warehouse of Durban retailer Game, looters stuffed electronic products and clothes into cars. Inside, when the crowd emptied the shelves, the floor was full of discarded packaging.
The rand, once one of the best-performing emerging market currencies during the pandemic, fell to a three-month low on Tuesday, and local and hard currency bonds were hit hard.
According to state and provincial authorities, at least 45 people have been killed in the riots so far, including 19 in Gauteng and 26 in KwaZulu-Natal. Police Minister Bheki Cele set the official death toll at 10.
A Reuters reporter said that shops and gas stations were forced to close, while protesters threw stones in the street, and the police responded with rubber bullets.
Aerial footage from the local channel eNCA showed black smoke from several warehouses in Durban, and debris scattered on the ground.
A textile union stated that a garment factory providing 600 jobs in Isitabi, north of Durban, will be forced to close because all its machinery and materials have been looted.
Seiler said at a press conference that 757 people have been arrested so far, and said that no one is allowed to “ridicule our democracies.”
“No misfortune or personal circumstances of our people give anyone the right to rob,” he said, echoing the views expressed by President Cyril Ramaphosa overnight.
However, Defense Minister Nosiviwe Mapissa-Nkakula said at the same press conference that she believes that a state of emergency should not be implemented at this time.
The lawsuit against Zuma was seen as a test of South Africa’s ability to enforce the rule of law after apartheid.
But any confrontation with the soldiers could exacerbate the accusations that Zuma and his supporters were the victims of politically motivated suppression by his successor Ramaphosa.
The violence worsened as Zuma challenged his 15-month prison sentence in the Supreme Court of South Africa on Monday. The judgment was kept until an unspecified date.
The deteriorating situation shows that with the end of white minority rule in 1994 and the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa’s first free democratic vote, broader problems and unfulfilled expectations arose.
The economy is struggling to escape the devastation caused by the worst COVID-19 pandemic in Africa, and the authorities have repeatedly imposed restrictions on businesses.
The increasing unemployment has made people even more desperate. The unemployment rate in the first three months of 2021 hit a record high of 32.6%.
At the same time, the health department stated that it has been forced to temporarily close some vaccination sites affected by the riots, which disrupted the launch of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Basic healthcare services such as the collection of chronic medicines for patients with tuberculosis, HIV and diabetes are also affected by the violence.
An official, who asked not to be named, said that the government’s goal of vaccinating 200,000 people on Monday did not reach 54,000 shots, mainly due to the destruction caused by the violence.
(Supplementary reporting by Siyabonga Sishi in Durban and Tim Cocks, Siphiwe Sibeko and Tanisha Heiberg in Johannesburg, written by Tim Cocks, edited by Angus MacSwan)
