As SA began calculating the cost of the week's destruction, organised business warned that the economic recovery has been set back, probably by one to two years.
This week's destruction of malls, shops and supply chains came as SA was still reeling from the economic fallout of a pandemic and lockdowns.
The unrest, which gathered momentum this week, was sparked by protests by supporters of Jacob Zuma, wanting him released from prison. Soon it degenerated into criminal mayhem.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his address to the nation on Friday night, said the violence and destruction "has done enormous damage to our economy at a time when we are struggling to recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic".
"It has destroyed businesses and will undoubtedly lead to further job losses," Ramaphosa said.
He said government would assist small businesses, including those in townships and rural areas, to "heal the damage they have suffered" and rebuild their businesses.
Ramaphosa said a team in the presidency and the National Treasury, as well as those leading the economic cluster in the government, are "hard at work to develop a comprehensive support package for cabinet's consideration".
"We will be in a position to make a further announcement in this regard soon."
The CEO of Business Unity SA (Busa), Cas Coovadia, said a significant part of SA's "retail sector has been destroyed" and it would "take a long time for that to recover".
"I think it is going to take us at least six to seven months to rebuild the infrastructure that has been destroyed. You then need to essentially rebuild businesses and that could take a year to two years."
Coovadia said SA was going to have an uphill task rebuilding investor confidence.
"I think confidence will be difficult to be rebuilt because we have essentially sent out a message that it is not safe to invest here, and we need to turn that around."
Busa vice-president Martin Kingston said the physical damage to businesses and property, as well as the overall cost to the economy, would "definitely run into tens of billions of rands".
He said it would likely "represent a highly material setback to the immediate prospects for GDP growth" and "massively amplify unemployment, especially in the immediate short term".
The South African Property Owners Association (Sapoa), which represents 90% of the owners of local commercial property, underlined the hard road ahead for its members. Sapoa president Andrew Konig, who is also CEO of JSE-listed Redefine Properties, said the property industry estimated that the "unrest over the past few days has resulted in over 800 stores being looted, and close to 100 stores having been torched in malls, shopping centres and standalone shops".
"Distribution centres similarly have been targeted, as have trucks, which have been looted. At this stage structural damage and the financial loss is yet to be established formally but it is safe to assume it will run into billions," said Konig.
The Consumer Goods Council of SA said this week that it was "particularly concerned about the potential impact of the disruptions on food security in the country and various supply chain issues".
"This is because factories will not be able to produce, resulting in food shortages, which will affect the most vulnerable and poor the most," said the council.
Tertius Carstens, CEO of PepsiCo Sub- Saharan Africa, which acquired Pioneer Foods in March last year for $1.7bn (about R24bn when the deal was agreed on), said a number of Pioneer Foods' operations had been affected by the unrest.
Carstens said it was "too early to calculate the exact monetary loss, but this disruption in production on top of the effects of the pandemic and the general economic slowdown will be significant".
Asked whether this had changed PepsiCo's view on its investment in SA, Carstens said the group's investment "into Sub-Saharan Africa is a long-term one" and that the "current situation clearly requires of us as business, government, and society at large to work collaboratively and hard at re-establishing stability and confidence".
Brian Leroni, senior vice-president, group corporate affairs, for Walmart-owned Massmart, said a number of Massmart operations had been "directly impacted", including its Riverhorse central distribution facility in Durban, which was set on fire.
Leroni said Massmart's central distribution centre network had "built-in redundancy for scenarios that disrupt supply and so we have activated the related backup plans".
"We are also in the final stages of commissioning a new distribution centre in
KwaZulu-Natal," he said.
Transnet, which earlier in the week had declared force majeure on the critical Natcor rail line that links Durban and Gauteng, said its port and terminal operations were "slowly beginning to normalise". It would resume rail services as soon as it was safe to do so.
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