Incidents erupted Friday in Zulu country (East), where ex-president Jacob Zuma is from and where he was taken prisoner after being sentenced to 15 months in prison
for contempt of justice.
Since then, the unrest has spread to the inner city of Johannesburg where the fate of Mr. Zuma is largely irrelevant.
There, the engine is food, economic: the restrictions imposed at the end of June to contain a third deadly wave of Covid-19 have stifled odd jobs and the livelihoods of the poorest.
It is a chaos of "criminals and opportunistic individuals" at the maneuver, in the words of a police spokesperson, who target malls and stores. They take giant televisions, food, mattresses, refrigerators, whatever comes in, straddle a brand new pink children's bike or carry around a bathtub balanced on their heads, according to AFP journalists on several sites.
The police, blatantly outnumbered, chase the looters by firing rubber bullets to disperse them. They arrested 489 people, the president said in the evening. With “a heavy heart”, Cyril Ramaphosa underlined the unprecedented nature of this violence, believing that if the “frustrations and anger” expressed have “political roots”, “no cause can justify them”. He promised to restore "calm and stability". On Monday, central Johannesburg presented a desolate landscape of shattered windows and scorched car wrecks. Police helicopters flew over the megalopolis. In affluent neighborhoods, shops closed early, rumors rife. "We were informed that the looters were on their way to here," a guard at the Rosebank Mall told AFP,being evacuated.
The army was called in on Monday to contain the overflows in South Africa, on the 4th day of violence which has already left about thirty dead.