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BL Premium reports that SA is on a knife edge as violent riots have escalated to the point of police being in running battles with thousands of protesters intent on looting and then burning malls and warehouses and sabotaging strategic infrastructure.
So far, the effect of the deployment of the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) to assist the police with their operations to quell violence, which erupted on Friday in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) before spreading to parts of Gauteng, has been minimal as the looting continued well into Tuesday. With the death toll sitting at 72, mostly from stampedes, and with 1,234 people arrested across the country by late Tuesday, state security agencies indicated that the SANDF deployment of 2,500 soldiers to the front line would be “enhanced” on Wednesday. Police minister Bheki Cele said on Tuesday at a joint news conference that included defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula that his department was working around the clock to quell the violence triggered by the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma. Early on Tuesday, images started emerging of the destruction of factories, businesses, shopping centres and street-facing shops — indicators of massive job losses in the Gauteng and KZN economies. As the sun set on Tuesday, nothing in the path of looters had been spared. The Covid-19 pandemic has also taken a back seat in the struggle for food and safety on the one hand, and the mobs of looters on the other. This situation has forced some business leaders to call for a nationwide state of emergency, saying that what was happening in Gauteng and KZN would spread to the rest of the country.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Hajra Omarjee, Mary Papayya, Thando Maeko and Erin Bates at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
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