Police minister Bheki Cele says there are “enough” police officers on the ground in KwaZulu-Natal following a flare-up of violent protests by alleged supporters of jailed former president Jacob Zuma, that saw parts of the N3 and N2 blocked by burning debris and trucks.
Cele would not comment on how many officers had been deployed to the province but said they included intelligence operatives.
Speaking to the media in Empangeni on Friday, Cele said officers brought in from other parts of the country were in the province to provide “extra hands” as there were areas “that might be hotspots, so we are working around that understanding”. He said the protests in Richards Bay, Pietermaritzburg and other parts of KwaZulu-Natal were “linked” to Zuma supporters.
The police were deployed to Nkandla in KwaZulu-Natal on Friday morning, after widespread protests in and around Durban following a viral message calling for a “#ShutdownKZN” protest in support of Zuma who was jailed on Wednesday night. He is serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court for failing to abide by a Constitutional Court order to testify at the state capture commission.
Cele said it took about nine hours of negotiating with the police team, led by maj-gen Nonhlanhla Zulu, to convince Zuma to hand himself over.
Earlier on Friday, the former president lost his bid in the high court in Pietermaritzburg for a stay of the execution of his arrest warrant.
Cele commended the police for ensuring there was no bloodshed on Sunday, when supporters of Zuma gathered outside his Nkandla home, vowing to block his arrest.
“The police controlled the situation,” the minister said, adding that those who broke the law by, among other things, firing guns into the air, had been identified and were being pursued.
“We have opened cases, we know who we are chasing, those people have been identified. We will follow those people [and] arrest them.”
He said the actions of those blocking major routes bordered on economic sabotage, adding: “If needs be, those people are going to prison for a very long time.”
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