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South Africa has deployed troops to help the opposing police force in the country as riots and violence spread after the imprisonment last week of Jacob Zuma, the former president, out of contempt of court.
At least four people have been killed and hundreds arrested in recent days. Police struggled to contain the escalating violence in cities like Durban and Johannesburg on Monday after a weekend of looting and riots. Protesters have blocked major roads and burned trucks.
The “deployment” will provide security and a secure work environment for members of [police] and other law enforcement agencies while fulfilling their constitutionally binding law and order obligations, ”South African defense forces said in a statement on Monday. Troops were used to enforce the first coronavirus blockade, but are rarely deployed in response to the riots. It is unclear how many troops will be sent to the hardest-hit provinces of Gauteng, the nation’s economic center, and KwaZulu-Natal, where Zuma began his sentence on Thursday.
Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison after challenging an investigation into corruption during his nine-year rule. Zuma’s lawyers on Monday made a last-ditch attempt to convince the constitutional court to overturn his sentence on the grounds that the 79-year-old is too weak to survive in prison. Legal experts say the attempt is unlikely to succeed.
President Cyril Ramaphosa, who succeeded Zuma in 2018 and has tried to fight endemic corruption, on Sunday condemned the “sporadic but increasingly violent protests”. Ramaphosa promised that “we will not tolerate acts of crime,” but the riots continued overnight.
“While there may be those who may be hurt and angry at this time, there will never be any justification for such violent, destructive and disruptive actions,” Ramaphosa said on Sunday.
Zuma was jailed by order of the South African constitutional court, which last month found him guilty of defiance for his refusal to respond to allegations of systematic corruption during his presidency. The ruling was hailed as a victory of the rule of law in Africa’s most industrial nation, after Zuma repeatedly attacked the courts and predicted a popular uprising against the judges. Zuma denies any wrongdoing.
The violence and anger of his supporters has exposed tensions in the ruling African National Congress, and many looters invoked Zuma’s name in online images. “It is a matter of concern to all South Africans that some of these acts of violence are based on ethnic mobilization,” added Ramaphosa, a veiled reference to attempts to provoke Zulu nationalist anger over Zuma’s imprisonment. .
The joint operational and national intelligence structure of South Africa, a body that coordinates law enforcement agencies, said on Sunday that hundreds of people had barricaded a major road and attacked police in Johannesburg for “opportunistic crime emanating from violent protests.” Shots were fired and courts were forced to close on Monday in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal’s largest city, while a shopping center in Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital, caught fire.
The Zuma Foundation last week described the unrest as “the reactive and just anger of the people. . . that others have characterized as violence ”. The riots were in response to the “violent provocation” of Zuma’s prison sentence, he added.
KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma’s power base, has a long history of political violence, including killings and truck burns. South Africa’s high levels of inequality and poverty also mean that protests can lead to looting, analysts say.
South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, said Ramaphosa “should have recognized the ANC’s role in this crisis, as this is essentially its civil war being waged in our streets “.
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