Monday, July 12, 2021

South Africa deploys troops to attempt to quell massive riots.

 

A police officer confronts looters. BBC/EPA.

South Africa has deployed troops in an attempt to quell massive riots and looting. BBC. The riots began after former President Jacob Zuma was imprisoned on contempt of court charges. Zuma was sentenced to a 15 month sentence and is facing separate corruption charges. However, the scale of the riots suggests that the issue goes beyond just Zuma. Over 500 people have been arrested and six people have been killed in the rioting. There has also been widespread looting and arson. The looters have also destroyed or ransacked Coronavirus vaccination centers. 

 


My Comment:

I am far from an expert on South Africa but the video from these riots is insane. It appears to be total chaos in South Africa to the point where it almost matches the level of destruction during our riots last summer in just a day. It's crazy that this is happening. 

I know very little about Jacob Zuma other than he was corrupt. I also understand that he is also a fairly high ranking official in the local Bantu tribe and many of the initial rioters took it personally that he was arrested and imprisoned. 

With that being said it seems apparent that whatever the start of the riots it's no longer about it. Now people are just stealing and destroying for the sake of looting. They are taking everything that is not nailed down and some of the stuff that is. And whatever they can't steal they are burning or destroying. 

It does appear that many of the people of South Africa are taking things into their own hands to protect themselves. Private security is huge in South Africa and those people are being deployed everywhere. They are shooting protesters with rubber bullets and in some cases with live rounds. From what I understand the police are mostly useless in South Africa so there are few other options other than hiring private security or taking matters into your own hands. 

If these riots are not quelled soon it could get very bad in South Africa very quickly. With so much being looted there are going to be food shortages soon. And if the riots continue there won't be any way to ship food and other necessities to the people who need it. Why even try if everything will be stolen anyways? If that happens I think there is a very good chance that people start to starve and that's when things really get violent...

So what caused these riots? It's probably due to a lot of things. I think America contributed a bit with our riots last year. People world wide saw the rioters getting away with everything under the sun, including arson, looting and murder, and figured that if our government couldn't handle it nobody else could either. Plus they saw how much stuff the looters got and figured why not do the same thing in South Africa?

The economy and fallout from the pandemic probably were major contributions as well. From what I understand the unemployment rate there is obscene and when people don't have jobs and are still locked down from the virus they are going to riot eventually. 

But I think it's the government's fault mostly. They were right to go after Zuma but the rest of their government is terrible. South Africa is what happens when critical race theory takes over a whole country. The country has a racial hierarchy with Bantu blacks at the top and everyone else at the bottom. Non-Bantus are openly discriminated against and people are hired there based on their race and not how competent they are. 

Of course Apartheid was a bad system but what replaced it seems to have been worse. As discriminatory as South Africa was back then at least the country was more functional and we didn't see riots like this as far as I know. I don't think that South Africa should return to that system but I also don't think they can stay on the path they are on now.    

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