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Residents of South Africa cleared looted malls and stores on Saturday during a week of shocking violence that rocked the country and left more than 200 dead.
Aid organizations were also distributing food in communities cut off from main roads or where food stores were ransacked during the unrest.
Violence – the worst in post-apartheid South Africa – erupted after former President Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for snubbing a corruption probe.
His successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, who came to power promising to fight corruption, said the riots were a “coordinated and well-planned attack” on the country’s fledgling democracy.
It was the worst violence ever seen in post-apartheid South Africa. By GUILLEM SARTORIO (AFP) “Under the pretext of political grievance, those behind these acts sought to provoke a popular uprising,” Ramaphosa said in a televised address Friday night.
The riots caused widespread destruction, leaving thousands of businesses destroyed, including many retail stores that were specifically targeted.
As a precarious calm set in on Saturday, residents of Durban, in the hard-hit province of KwaZulu-Natal, swept up debris from the Dube shopping center, shoveling it into trash bags.
Behind them, walls topped with spikes and barbed wire had been spray painted with the words “Free Zuma”.
Many people in the province are now suffering from hunger after food stores have been looted and torched, or cut off from suppliers following the closure of main roads.
Aid agencies, charities and churches have started distributing food to people in need, including hospital patients and their families.
The unrest in South Africa. By Erin CONROY (AFP) “We are loading bread for staff at five hospitals,” Imtiaz Sooliman, head of Gift of the Gives, told AFP.
Sooliman said his food convoys were escorted by police.
“Yesterday we sent food for patients to private hospitals – they didn’t have food to feed the patients. They have all the money but they can’t buy anything, they called us saying that the patients had not eaten, ”he said.
The organization was also delivering door-to-door food parcels after a government minister told it on Friday that 59 areas of Durban did not have access to food, he added.
“Bad preparation”
Traffic has returned to normal along a main highway connecting the north to the port city of Durban after being closed for much of the week.
Ramaphosa said the instigators had “sought to exploit the social and economic conditions in which many South Africans live – conditions which have worsened since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.”
He said business owners told him it would take them “a few months” to restore normal operations after the destruction, disrupting supply chains and raising fears of shortages.
Of the 212 people killed, 180 have died in KwaZulu-Natal, according to government figures. Some of the dead were shot and others died in looting scrambles.
Zuma, whose home province is KwaZulu-Natal, enjoys the support of followers of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which presents him as a champion of the poor.
Over 2,500 people have been arrested for various violence-related offenses, including theft.
The government said all but one suspected brains were still at large.
Ramaphosa admitted that his government was “ill-prepared for an orchestrated campaign of public violence, destruction and sabotage of this nature.”
He called up army reserves and ordered the deployment of 25,000 troops, 10 times the number he had initially deployed.
Opposition politicians have condemned the government’s handling of the crisis, calling on Ramaphosa to ensure the suspected masterminds are arrested and charged.
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