Four protesters were shot and killed in South Africa on Monday during a protest against service price hikes which police opened fire on, police oversight said.
The protest took place in the township of Tembisa in the east of South Africa's economic capital Johannesburg, where residents angry over electricity prices in particular blocked roads with burning tires and burned down a public building.
"Protest action"
There were
"two fatal injuries"
in the
"protest action that took place in the early hours of the morning
," said city police spokeswoman Kelebogile Thepa.
"It is alleged that they were shot,"
she told AFP.
Later that evening, Kelebogile Thepa said two more bodies were found near the entrance to the burnt building, bringing the total death toll to four.
Police have yet to confirm the cause of death, she added.
Spokeswoman for the Independent Police Investigation Service (Ipid), Lizzy Suping, previously told AFP that an investigation was underway after registering
“a victim of
A wave of protests is swelling in South Africa, the most developed economy on the African continent, but plagued by unemployment and crime.
Last month, former South African President Thabo Mbeki blamed his successor Cyril Ramaphosa for failing to deliver on his promise to tackle poverty, inequality and unemployment which affects 34.5% of the population with a peaks at almost 64% among the youngest.
The summer of 2021 had seen a wave of large-scale rioting and looting unprecedented for thirty years, which had left 350 people dead.
These ten days of violence, which had affected various parts of South Africa, had broken out following the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, entangled in multiple corruption cases.