As violence raged in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, a joint media conference by the government security cluster this week provided harrowing details of what had been averted and shed light on what is going on.
Minister of state security Ayanda Dlodlo gave reporters a long list of places rioters had targeted for destruction, including an Eskom power substation in Msunduzi, KwaZulu-Natal, and ANC headquarters in the province and in Sandton.
“The list really is endless on what we averted, between the State Security Agency and the police. South Africans should be comforted that as they sleep at night, we are hard at work,” Dlodlo said.
Acting minister in the presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, was more straightforward in a news conference on Wednesday: “It is economic sabotage.”
For almost a week, I played down the violence that erupted after the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma, seeing it as a spontaneous outpouring of anger in the world’s most unequal society. But if the cluster’s comments are anything to go by, this is a co-ordinated, violent attack on the lifeblood of the economy managed by much more dangerous people than shapeless crowds fed up with job losses and poverty in a pandemic.
How else does one explain a hungry mob setting fire to dozens of trucks on the N3, the main artery between the Port of Durban and SA’s economic hub in Johannesburg? It is the lifeline to the rest of the country, handling about 60-million tonnes of cargo every year to and from the port.
We heard on Tuesday, a day after a mere 2,500 soldiers joined overstretched, under-resourced police on the ground to quell the violence, that the Port of Durban also came under attack, taking out of action the largest and busiest shipping terminal in sub-Saharan Africa. Inevitably, Transnet, which oversees the operations of the country’s ports and terminals, had to declare force majeure as it suspended operations at the ports of Durban and Richards Bay.
What looked like a sporadic violent protest in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng unleashed wider panic about food and fuel shortages as South Africans, who had been watching meekly as the riots unfolded elsewhere, rushed to shops to stockpile everything from bread to milk.
In a leaked video days before his arrest, Zuma spoke darkly about the consequences of forcing him to go to jail to serve a 15-month sentence for defying the Constitutional Court order to appear before the state capture commission.
He told his supporters, who passed themselves off as members of the disbanded Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association, that South Africans should brace themselves for “trouble” if he is detained.
Zuma, who used skills honed as the head of the ANC’s intelligence wing to fend off everything from accusations of corruption, state capture and even rape in his long political career, must have a wry smile on his face, taking sadistic pleasure in the mayhem unleashed since his jailing.
Images of hundreds of his angry roving mobs — wrecking and looting shopping centres, raiding warehouses and disabling critical infrastructure like highways, railways and medicine distribution centres — are embarrassing to the country but they should not be minimised as a run-of-the-mill looting orgy.
It’s not hard to imagine that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s efforts to attract private capital at home and abroad to lift an economy ravaged by the disastrous stewardship of Zuma in his nine years in power has been dealt a huge setback.
Look no further than the rand, which has been one the worst performing currencies in emerging markets this week, while shares in retailers from Massmart to Shoprite have been under pressure.
This comes as we see tangible signs that foreign investors are setting their sights on SA assets, with Dubai-based DP World, one of the world’s biggest marine container companies, having put in a R12bn offer to buy Imperial Logistics, while Heineken is in talks with Distell about a tie-up.
Dlodlo, police minister Bheki Cele and the wider security apparatus’s response to those fanning flames, some of whom live far from the burning neighbourhoods, should match their dangerous and calculated assault on key commercial infrastructure.
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