South Africa Zuma riots: Deadly unrest rages across country

July 14, 2021: The death toll in South Africa has risen to 72 as violence continues across the country following the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma.

Crowds looting and setting alight shopping centres clashed with police in several cities on Tuesday.

Press filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted. A day earlier, 10 people were killed in a stampede during looting at a shopping centre in Soweto. The military have been deployed to help police overstretched since the unrest began last week.

South African police said in a statement they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires started, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.

Ministers have warned that if looting continues, there is a risk areas could run out of basic food supplies soon – but have ruled out declaring a state of emergency.

More than 200 shopping malls had been looted by Monday afternoon, Bloomberg news agency quoted the chief executive officer of Business Leadership South Africa, Busisiwe Mavuso, as saying.

Several shopping centres in Soweto – South Africa’s largest township which was once home to Nelson Mandela – have been completely ransacked, with ATMs broken into, restaurants, stores selling alcohol and clothing shops all left in tatters. Soldiers working with the police managed to catch a few rioters; in total almost 800 have been arrested, but law enforcement remains heavily outnumbered, he reports.

Following the jailing of former leader Jacob Zuma, protests and mass looting have widened into an outpouring of anger over the inequality that remains 27 years after the end of apartheid.

Poverty has been exacerbated by severe social and economic restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

More than 1,200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air on Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centres were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations. South Africa’s largest refinery SAPREF in the eastern port city of Durban has been temporarily shut down as the country struggles with mass looting and the worst violence in years, according to an industry official.

Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing from stores, police said.

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