Fire with Fire

South Africa has come to an inevitable crossroad of unrest and instability after twenty-five years of a so-called “Democratic” state. The country has long seen protests over inequalities, poor service delivery and many more vexing questions were left unanswered. The country saw a radical change in government in 1994 when the Apartheid regime came to an end and a Mandela led democracy took over with great aspirations. All of this time after the end of a nauseating and grim era of racial disregard and radical injunction, the country had been left with covered up wounds leaving the new democracy standing on weak foundations.

Although largely unrelated, the recent arrest of former South African President Jacob Zuma lead to many questioning the state of the democracy at hand. A disgruntled ex- president instigated groups of people to challenge the country’s democratic government sectors to destabilise the judicial system in an attempt to keep himself out of jail for contempt of court after allegations of corruption. This ignited a chain of events that shook the country’s foundations and challenged its democratic future. After slowly peeling off the bandages from the wounds of apartheid, and years of turmoil heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic, instigators were followed by many underprivileged South Africans in the looting and destruction of infrastructure.

Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal were the two provinces devastated by continuous attacks on malls, fuel stations, ATMs and many more public and private properties which brought the province’s economies’ to a standstill. In the midst of these happenings, violent attacks on migrants and their businesses ravaged the Johannesburg CBD and opportunistic criminals took it upon themselves to not only loot but destroy infrastructure with disastrous repercussions on economically deprived communities.

Security forces, overwhelmed by the number of people involved in criminality over the few days of violence and destruction, came down hard-handedly on the few looters caught, using brutal force as a means to spread the word that criminals would be dealt with accordingly. Customarily, some took it upon themselves to protect the malls and shops in their own communities, which meant vigilante groups were dealing with looters as they pleased - brutally and without mercy, in order to set a precedent.