South Africa’s death toll from days of riots on Thursday rose to 117 even as the worst of the violence appeared to ease, with the deployment of thousands of soldiers starting to take effect.
Authorities have arrested almost 1,500 people, including 12 who allegedly instigated the unrest, resulting in rampant looting and the destruction of businesses in two key provinces, South African Acting Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters in Pretoria.
The situation remains volatile in KwaZulu-Natal province, the heart of the violence, while the economic hub of Gauteng should stabilize soon, she said.
Photo: AFP
About 10,000 troops are now on the streets, leading to a drop in the number of incidents.
“These are not demonstrations, this is economic sabotage,” Ntshavheni said.
Protests erupted on Saturday last week after former South African president Jacob Zuma was imprisoned for defying a court order, before spiraling out of control as marauding mobs began to loot stores, banks and medical facilities.
The rising death count represents the most lethal uprising since the buildup to the end of apartheid in 1994, when violent demonstrations and subsequent crackdowns were relatively commonplace.
Telecommunications towers and other infrastructure have been destroyed, while transport networks and a program to vaccinate people against COVID-19 have been disrupted.
Business Leadership South Africa, one of the country’s main business lobby groups, estimates that damages amount to more than 5 billion rand (US$343 million) for the retail industry alone.
More than 200 shopping malls were targeted, more than 800 stores were looted, and 100 were completely burnt, the group’s chief executive officer, Busi Mavuso, told Bloomberg via e-mail.
Attention is now turning to whether insurance companies will be able to cover the cost of the carnage, with claims estimated to run up to several billions of rand.
The sheer number of affected businesses means that it is likely that processing claims would be slow and an interim fund might have to be set up for support, said Martin Kingston, an official at Business Unity South Africa, another industry group, which is calling for a rolling 24-hour curfew in the key provinces and a full deployment of the South African military to bring an end to the crisis.
“It will take two to three years to recover the infrastructure lost here,” former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Sub-Saharan Africa chairman Colin Coleman said. “To restock these centers will take 10 weeks, and we are going to have severe shortages for some time.”
Some groups have urged South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to give the police and military additional powers to end the violence, fearing that communities and private militias would mete out their own forms of justice.
Video footage published on Johannesburg-based radio station Kaya 959’s Web site showed private security guards firing live ammunition at a mob on Tuesday.
“I really would like to see our president talking to people, and giving a level of affirmation and confidence,” Investec PLC chief executive officer Fani Titi said. “At this point in time, we need much firmer communication.”
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