South Africa

The backlash against illegal miners in South Africa is gathering pace as local residents formed mobs to beat them and destroy their camps in retaliation for the gang rape of eight young women filming a music video last week.

Miners’ camps were torched and roads around the townships of Munsieville and Bekkersdal outside the town of Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg, were barricaded with rocks and burning tires as residents protested against the presence of illegal miners.

Many of the miners are migrants from other African countries, and the reaction has raised concerns over xenophobia, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday condemning the violence.

A South African opposition figure has warned of impending civil unrest in the continent’s richest country and likened it to ‘an Arab Spring.’

The controversial opposition leader Julius Malema spoke of the country waking up one day with ‘very angry people that are not going to be reasonable.’

Discontent with the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party in South Africa is at all-time high levels due to the social conditions within the country and ‘the poor becoming poor,’ according to Malema.

‘When the unled revolution comes… the first target is going to be white people,’ Mr Malema told the BBC’s Hardtalk programme, adding that the uprising would also target ‘black elites.’

Personal attacks within the ANC come either by smear or funeral oration; the organisation’s strong traditions of omerta allow few other avenues. So when the former South African president Thabo Mbeki recently warned incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa that his inaction was courting a new “Arab Spring”, there was a sharp intake of national breath. It was akin to Pope Benedict openly accusing Pope Francis of not saying his prayers.

South Africa’s president says he’s “deeply disturbed” at the abuse of foreign nationals working in the country. It is a particular problem in the township of Alexandra, which was at the centre of xenophobic riots in 2008. Some immigrants there have told the BBC they now live in fear.

“When they came here for the first time there were seven of them. They made us lie all down. They took the machines, hairdryers and sprays. We had no choice but to let them take them because they had guns”.

David – not his real name – sits nervously in front of me at his barber’s shop in Johannesburg’s Alexandra township.

The Mozambican looks down at his hands as he describes the numerous attacks he’s been the target of, simply for being a foreigner.

Imagine the headline if the South Africans were white.

Corrupt politicians care little for the fracturing nation

A hinge moment happened this week in South Africa. The country finally transitioned from rainbow utopianism to reality.

The turning point was the municipal elections in which the 110-year-old ruling African National Congress failed to gain a majority of the vote. The party is, despite its manifest failings, still custodian of the liberator’s mantle among many black South Africans — a recent survey showed that although 60% of ANC voters associated their party with corruption, they would nonetheless vote for it; such is the brand loyalty — but the party’s once hegemonic power is in retreat. The decline over the years is neatly in tandem with the nation’s trajectory towards a failed state. At its peak in 2004, the ANC pulled nearly 70% of the national vote. This week, it could barely pull past 46%.

For the first time, people appear afraid for the future

The province of my birth is burning. Looters, using the excuse of the incarceration of former President Jacob Zuma, have laid an unimpeded trail of violence, arson, assault and damage across KwaZulu Natal, traditional home of the Zulu people.

Armed volunteers mount barricades at the entrances to my village while youngsters on trail bikes scout through the perimeter cane fields. There is no available food or fuel and the chat groups buzz with an incessant flood of posts about destroyed buildings, burnt cars and roaming mobs. The State is entirely absent.

White farmers in #SouthAfrica get whipped and have their cars stolen as the country descends into mass-looting frenzy pic.twitter.com/5vKlO9msPR

— RedPilledPoland (@RedPilledPoland) July 13, 2021

At a roadblock on the outskirts of Howick on Tuesday morning, a young black man was receiving medical attention for a bullet-wound in his hand.

He was noticeable for being the only black man among a group of about a dozen heavily-armed white men who are part of an impromptu militia who have stepped into the vacuum left by a police force hopelessly overstretched by South Africa’s worst outburst of street violence since the fall of Apartheid.

The sight of an all-white force of gunmen stopping vehicles carrying mostly black passengers brings back uncomfortable memories of the past. But residents here feel it is their last line of defence.

GRAPHIC ⚠️: more dead looters inside their looting van pic.twitter.com/csiQQuZoYo

— Kobayashi’s Basilisk (@FaeceSocietatis) July 13, 2021

POLICE are caught looting goods as South Africa’s descent into lawlessness continues

Policemen in South Africa have been caught looting goods as the ransacking of stores and warehouses continued into a fifth day – amid fears of food, fuel and Covid medicines shortages caused by the rioting.

Footage showed people accosting a man wearing a police jacket beside a hatchback filled with household supplies, including bread, milk and cooking oil. The woman filming says: ‘This is a police officer, in uniform, looting … This is our SAPS (South African Police Service), guys.’

A second video from the same woman showed another purported officer in plain clothes trying to hide his face from the camera after he was hauled out of his car by locals. His vehicle was laden with allegedly looted products, including a flat-screen television.–