THE continuing unrest in South Africa has been met with shock and concern in the international community as investors hope for a rapid and overwhelming response to the looting and violence.
While foreign media did cover the ongoing violence taking place in South Africa over the past two days, it did not make front page news in most foreign newspapers.
Former UK anti-apartheid leader Lord Peter Hain has commented on the current instability on the ground in South Africa.
“The Constitutional Court ordering the imprisonment of former president Zuma was an encouraging signal that the rule of law in South Africa has triumphed despite his blatant attempts in both office and retirement to defy and subvert it,” Hain told Independent Media on Tuesday.
“However, the violence and looting that his cronies have unleashed must not win because that would be a big setback to President Ramaphosa’s efforts to establish good governance in the Mandela tradition, and rescue South Africa from the corruption and looting that Zuma led as president,” Hain said.
The looting of over 200 malls in the country by thousands of looters has, however, become largely opportunistic and criminal, as people take whatever they can get, and the police and military have been unable to establish a presence everywhere at the same time.
“While the scale of violence is unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa, the reasons behind such violence are familiar, and we have seen this happen in other countries as well, and in the Gilets Jaunes protests in France,” Dr Devon Curtis, senior lecturer in African Politics at Cambridge University told Independent Media.
“Violence was seen in London in 2011. There is often an element of opportunism, but also of deep frustration with continued and worsening inequalities, hardship, and unemployment, all of which have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Struggle stalwarts living abroad who made significant contributions to the overthrow of apartheid have expressed deep concerns about the economic and structural inequalities that persist in South Africa. Their analysis is that these socio-economic challenges have given rise to the current violence and lawlessness in society.
“Zuma went too far by inciting people, and he knew what he was doing,” former MK operative Helene Passtoors said from her residence outside of Brussels.
Passtoors, who worked directly under OR Tambo and Joe Slovo in special operations, and was presented with a National Order in 2011 said.
“What Zuma did was like putting fire on a powder keg, as South Africa was already in crisis due to Covid-19, and people on the ground are desperate for a decent life. There has also never been a clear solution to the deeply entrenched violence in the society, which has now exploded,” Passtoors told Independent Media.