Michael - Thursday
Last week South Africa was plunged into turmoil that could
have been an existential threat to democratic South Africa. The damage to property and the economy has been estimated to be as high as two billion dollars, hundreds of shopping centres (and smaller shops) were looted and subsequently destroyed, roads were blocked and infrastructure damaged. This hit us as the third wave of delta-driven covid
was peaking and the economy was already reeling from the new lockdown and the
resulting blow to the tourist and hospitality sectors. In two provinces many
vaccination centres were forced to close. Apart from anything else the looting will be
a super-spreader event. At least many people wore masks – probably more to stop
themselves being identified than to stop the spread of the virus!
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| Looted shops burning |
The looting of shops and robbing of automatic bank machines was mainly in the historically black areas of the country. As usual, it was the poor who suffered the most and continue to suffer. Major
roads were blocked by burning tires – later burning trucks – and communications
infrastructure was attacked and damaged. The Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) provinces,
which experienced almost all of the damage, suffered shortages of goods
largely trucked from the coastal ports in KZN. Fuel refineries ran out of raw
materials and a shortage of petrol and diesel resulted. Dairy farmers flushed
milk down the drain as there was no way of getting it to the consumers.
Now that calm has been restored, supplies are moving again,
and we’re picking up the pieces, the question everyone is asking is why this
happened. Like everything in South Africa the question is complex, and I don’t
pretend to know the answers. But here are some of the issues.
IMPRISONMENT OF JACOB ZUMA
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Ramaphosa (left) and Zuma (right)
Friends no more |
The previous president has been playing a variety of games
to avoid giving testimony to the commission investigating state capture during
his kleptomaniacal term. After multiple adjournments, delays, and warnings, he
was finally told that he’d be arrested for contempt of court unless he gave
himself up by midnight on Wednesday two weeks ago. After much ranting about politically
motivated persecution and dire warnings, he did so at 11:30pm.
Despite his lifestyle and the looting of state coffers he
and his cronies carried out, he is still a loved and respected leader in some
circles. He was on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, so his struggle
credentials are as good as it gets. He is a Zulu leader, and the Zulus have a
proud and warlike history and are the majority tribal group in KZN. Also, there
is a faction in the ruling ANC that misses the rich pickings of the Zuma era
and fears their own accountings.
Undoubtedly, Zuma’s arrest was the spark. But it wasn’t the
cause.
HUNGER
The economy here has picked up since the first covid whammy,
but it had been knocked from a low base with official unemployment at more than a
third of the workforce. Youth unemployment is over 70%. The new lockdown hit
the winter school break (the previous one coincided with the longer summer
holiday season) and knocked the stuffing out of what was left of the hospitality
industry. International tourism has been essentially dead for eighteen months.
Smaller shops suffered as badly as the big chains in the looting, with
everything stolen and often the infrastructure destroyed. Many were run by
women making a meagre living to support their families. The big chains will
claim on insurance, write off a few million, and start reconstruction. The
small businesses are wiped out with no hope of recovery except uncertain government support.
One woman leaving a grocery store with a big bag of cornmeal
and a large sack of oranges told a reporter, “I’m not a bad person. I just need
this food for my children.” Yes, there were reporters there interviewing
looters. Where were the police?
POLICE AND GOVERNMENT REACTION
Initially the police reaction, especially in KZN, was
tentative to say the least. There was some muttering about not escalating a bad
situation. The president spoke of concern for people’s feelings, of the hurt and
anger of their erstwhile hero's arrest. Well, the bad situation escalated pretty quickly without any help. I saw
live TV coverage of a shopping mall being cleaned out. The looters did have a problem. It wasn’t the
police, it was the huge traffic jam that ran back for miles as people tried to
reach the mall for their share, simply parking in the highway outside, grabbing
what they could carry, and then returning and driving off so that someone else
could take their place.
CRIMINALS AND GREED
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| Talk about greed! |
Yes, of course. Get someone else to open the can, then help
yourself to much of the contents. Opportunistic thieves were clearly a big factor.
THE PLOT
The government is now adamant that the looting and rioting
was orchestrated. Ostensibly to protest the arrest of Zuma, it was part of
a multifaceted plot to overthrow the democratic order in South Africa and to replace
it by a group not yet identified but possibly including part of the old Zuma gang.
I’m always suspicious of conspiracy theories – apart from
anything else, they provide an easy way for leaders to direct blame at shadowy
groups of villains and away from their own failings. George Orwell wrote about this stuff in his novel 1984. His totalitarian regime had a single person to hate, which was even better. Even if he didn’t exist. Particularly
if he didn’t exist!
However, there are
some issues that are suspicious. Why attack cell phone towers? Nothing to loot there and hardly an
obvious way to express dissent. Closing the N3, the main artery between the
major population centres of Gauteng and the ports of Durban and KZN, makes some
sense in the context of protesting about the arrest. However, people were
seen arriving to loot in busloads. In buses? Who ever heard of looters being
“bussed to work”? Certainly, social media was used to advertise events and
protest actions, all ostensibly protesting about the Zuma incarceration, but
all leading to looting and infrastructure damage.
The government announced that twelve men were behind the
orchestrated uprising. (The Gang of Twelve sounds familiar.) One was
immediately arrested, but released shortly afterwards. Hmm. Gang of Eleven
doesn’t have quite the same ring.
AND SO?
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| People come together to protect what's theirs |
I imagine that there is something in all these factors.
But as so often in South Africa, there was a silver lining that may be the most
important part. People rallied round, not only to help clean up the looted
businesses, but to protect their own infrastructure from the looters. People of
all races, tribal groups, walks of life, worked through the police forums to be guards
and lookouts and simply be there for each other. Even the minibus taxi
associations, not always known for their respect for the rule of law, made it
clear that they would play their part and did so convincingly.
As a black young leader in the border town of Volksrust put it,
“This is ours here. We won’t let them destroy what we have.” He was referring
to the town’s small shopping centre. No one touched the shops and they
continued to operate normally.
Somehow, we always get it back together and carry on.
