XPost: soc.culture.south-africa, soc.rights.human, za.politics
XPost: za.misc, alt.politics.religion

In an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, three news editors
say:

"It is now abundantly clear that this violence, that your government
cannot seem to stop, was instigated by intelligence officials and
other politicians or civil servants loyal to Zuma."

Source: https://t.co/jl8VKJ8IHW

Trade union leader Zwelinzima Vavi tweeted yesterday:

"We need the introduction of the Basic Income Grant soonest, in the
meantime government must reinstate the R350 social grants yesterday!
That´s the #State of Emergency we need not guns and state repression"

So there are two popular narratives here:

1) The Conspiracy Theory

That violence and looting are deliberately being promoted by a cabal
of corrupt politicians and businessmen who support ex-President Jacob
Zuma (called Zuptas for short, after Zuma and the Gupta brothers, two
of the most prominent businessmen), under whose presidency they were
allowed to flourish.

2) The poverty theory

That initial protests against the jailing of Zuma sparked off
spontaneous protests of the have-nots revolting against the haves.

I think that greater weight should be given to the first one.

Zuma was sent to prison because he thought he was entitled not to be
questioned about the corruption that was allowed to flourish while he
was president, and the protests are therefore by looters protesting
their right to loot and supporting the looter-in-chief.

The motivation and modus operandi are similar to what took place in
the USA on 6 January 2021, when a mob broke into the capitol in
Washington to protest against the failure of their favoured candidate
for president to gain re-election.

What I believe supports this theory is that in many places poor people
who are suffering from the economic hardship exacerbated by the Covid restrictions have nevertheless gathered to protect shopping centres
from looting and destruction. Poor communities in South Africa have
often done this, There has been looting before during eruptions of
xenophobic violence, and the local community in the shanty town of
Phomolong, gathered round foreign-owned shops to protect them.

The trashing of Mamelodi Mall shows every sign of being planned and
not spontaneous.

See here: https://t.co/6SoPl4CxB9

Why else would a thousand people suddenly converge on one shopping
centre at once, and leave others alone, unless they had been incited
to do so, probably by social media? If the state security apparatus is
not completely owned by the Zuptas, perhaps they will investigate who
was tweeting and SMSing whom in the lead-up to that.

People in other countries ask "What is the rioting in South Africa
about?" and the answer is that it is about accountability and the
culture of impunity. The riots are instigated by the beneficiaries of corruption who are afraid of going to jail like their leader, and are
trying to make the country ungovernable in order to prevent that.



--
Steve Hayes
http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
http://khanya.wordpress.com

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