Death toll at 72 as crisis grips South Africa

There has been a fifth day of looting across South Africa despite the deployment of troops in a bid to quell violence that has claimed 72 lives.

Rioters hurl rocks at police near a looted shopping centre in Vosloorus, South Africa. Picture: AFP

Shops and warehouses across South Africa have been ransacked for a fifth consecutive day despite a move by President Cyril Ramaphosa to deploy troops in a bid to quell unrest that has claimed 72 lives.

As large-scale pillaging erupted in the economic capital of Johannesburg and southeastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, the crisis burst into the political arena, where South Africa’s main opposition accused radicals of stoking the unrest.

The armed forces were sending 2500 soldiers to help the police, who have been utterly overwhelmed.

But those numbers were dwarfed by the more than 70,000 troops deployed to enforce last year’s coronavirus lockdown, and only a handful of soldiers were seen at some shopping centres.

The raging unrest erupted last Friday after former president Jacob Zuma started serving a 15-month term for contempt after snubbing a probe into the corruption that stained his nine years in power. By the weekend it started spreading to Gauteng province.

“The total number of people who have lost their lives since the beginning of these protests … has risen to 72,” police said in a statement.

Most of the deaths “relate to stampedes that occurred during incidents of looting of shops”.

Others were linked to shootings and attempts top blast open ATMs. With the recent deployment of soldiers, police said, “more boots have been on the ground”.

The number of arrests have risen to more than 1200, although many thousands have been involved in the looting.

A police officer guards suspected looters at a shopping centre in Johannesburg. Picture: Getty Images.

In Alexandra township north of Johannesburg, hundreds of people streamed in and out of a shopping mall, freely picking up groceries.

In Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal’s capital, people hauled boxed refrigerators through bushes to a long line of cars that were parked along a highway.

In Durban, aerial footage showed hundreds of people looting a shopping centre and carting off huge boxes of goods.

In a nationwide address, Mr Ramaphosa lashed “opportunistic acts of criminality, with groups of people instigating chaos merely as a cover for looting and theft”.

“The path of violence, of looting and anarchy, leads only to more violence and devastation,” he said.

But the crisis took a political twist on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) as the largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, announced it would file criminal charges against Zuma’s children and the leader of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema.

In a statement, the party accused them of using “social media to express comments which appear to encourage and incite the violence and looting”.

Once dubbed the “Teflon president”, Zuma was jailed on June 29 by the Constitutional Court for ignoring an order to appear before a commission probing widespread corruption.

He started serving the jail term on Thursday after handing himself in to authorities as a deadline for his surrender loomed.

A suspected looter pleads for help after his brother was struck by a rubber bullet in Soweto. Picture: AFP

He is seeking to have the ruling against him set aside.

Zuma, 79, is a former anti-apartheid fighter who spent 10 years in jail in the notorious Robben Island jail off Cape Town.

He rose in democratic South Africa to vice-president and then president, before being ousted by the ruling African National Congress in 2018 as graft scandals proliferated.

But he remains popular among many poor South Africans, especially grassroots members of the ANC, who portray him as a defender of the disadvantaged.

South Africa, Africa’s most industrialised country, is deep in an economic malaise, with cripplingly high levels of unemployment. Economic activity had already been badly affected by restrictions to stop the spread of coronavirus.

AFP