Violence in South Africa has already claimed 212 lives and President maintains it was a planned revolt

President Cyril Ramaphosa assured this Friday that the instigators of the violence that has raged in South Africa for a week and that killed 212 they sought to provoke a “popular insurrection”.

“Those behind these acts sought to provoke a popular uprising among our people”, the president said in a nationwide television address.

Ramaphosa defined it as “a deliberate, coordinated and well-planned attack” with the aim of “crippling the economy, causing social instability and seriously weakening” the state. “They sought to manipulate the poor and the vulnerable for their own interests,” he added.

The president acknowledged in his statement that the authorities were “precariously prepared” for this mess, but assured that they would find “those who incited to violence”. Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni had previously told the press that the investigations are “at a very advanced stage”, with one suspect arrested and eleven others under surveillance.

Previously, he assured that the situation has returned “gradually but firmly to normality”, although the death toll has fallen during the last day from 117 to 212, 180 of them in the province of Kwazulu-Natal, the epicenter of these riots.

The president visited this eastern region for the first time since the violence began on July 9, and from the port city of Durban assured that the incidents “They were provoked, there are people who planned and coordinated them.” And he said: “We will not allow lawlessness and chaos.”

The first incidents erupted last week the day after the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma, sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of justice and from Kwazulu-Natal. They quickly spread to the metropolitan area of Johannesburg, in the middle of a endemic unemployment Yes new restrictions to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

South African health officials, along with the World Health Organization (WHO), have expressed concern over recent protests and massive looting in shopping malls cause a new spike in infections.

South Africa crosses third wave terribly deadly, fueled by the contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus. It is the African country most affected by COVID-19 with 2.2 million cases and nearly 66,000 deaths.

“We were armed”

During this first visit to the epicenter of the crisis, one of the most serious since the end of apartheid, the president assured that he was in permanent contact with provincial officials and police officials.

“We could have done better, we were overwhelmed by the situation,” he admitted, responding to criticism of the government’s action. But this situation “could have been much worse”, if the police had not been there, he claimed.

The president promised that up to 25,000 troops, ten times more than at the start of the week, will be deployed to ensure relative calm. To date, more than 2,500 people have been arrested, according to the last balance.

Arrived by helicopter in the suburbs of Alexandra, north of Johannesburg, the army commander Cut the cracks promised he wouldn’t allow anyone “Challenge the authority of the state.

The unrest affected supply and transport chains and raised fears of a shortage of food and basic necessities. But Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza asked not to panic. “We have enough food reserves in the country,” he said.

At DurbanHowever, queues continued to form in supermarkets, whose customers were running out of bread. At JohannesburgIn the middle of the southern winter, repair and clean-up work continued. The damage was extensive and many affected traders did not have insurance.

At Kwazulu–Native, which recorded 1,488 incidents in the previous night alone, the situation was more volatile.

At Phoenix, a municipality close to Durban, tension is also fueled by racial differences, after people in the Indian community were accused of taking justice into their own hands and killing 20 vandals.

(By Maryke Vermaak – AFP)

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