Deadly protests in South Africa are stretching the nation\u2019s social fabric to breaking point, scarring an already weakened economy and exposing fault lines within the party that\u2019s held power for more than a quarter-century.<\/p>\n
The official death toll during rioting that followed former President Jacob Zuma\u2019s July 7 imprisonment on contempt of court charges jumped to 117 late Thursday as additional soldiers took to the streets to restore calm.<\/p>\n
Damages from days of rampant looting and arson run to billions of rand, some areas are facing food and medicine shortages, and business confidence is shot.<\/p>\n
The carnage has also undermined president Cyril Ramaphosa\u2019s authority and placed the ruling African National Congress at risk of losing its grip on KwaZulu-Natal, Zuma\u2019s home province and the epicenter of the violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur future is bleak. It is going to be very difficult to come back from this,\u201d said Xolani Dube, an analyst at the Xubera Institute for Research and Development in the eastern city of Durban. \u201cRamaphosa is politically weaker than he has ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rand slumped to near a four-month low as South Africa\u2019s outlook darkened. Along with political uncertainty, structural unemployment and one of the world\u2019s starkest divides between haves and have-nots – perennial problems that were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic – are set to worsen, with the state\u2019s coffers too depleted to provide meaningful relief.<\/p>\n
The country remains on a knife-edge. Sporadic gunshots ring out over some KwaZulu-Natal neighborhoods, smoke hangs over gutted malls and factories and many residents carry guns or makeshift weapons. Foreign investors have been selling down their holdings of South African shares.<\/p>\n
The police have proved ineffectual, and initial plans to deploy 2,500 soldiers have been increased 10-fold, highlighting just how incapable the state was rendered during Zuma\u2019s almost nine-year rule.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa estimates that more than R500 billion was stolen during that era, which saw many capable senior civil servants leave their posts.<\/p>\n
Ramaphosa didn\u2019t mention the protests until the evening of July 11, two days after they erupted, when he addressed the nation on the latest coronavirus-related restrictions. He made another appeal for calm the following night, his apparent impotence demonstrated by broadcaster eNCA, which ran a split screen of him speaking with live footage of a Durban mall being looted.<\/p>\n
Pule Mabe, the ANC\u2019s spokesman, said the party was doing all it could to ensure order was restored.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be unfair to suggest we are here because of an ANC problem,\u201d he said. \u201cThe ANC did not sanction any of these activities we have seen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Government officials have described the demonstrations as \u201ceconomic sabotage,\u201d but haven\u2019t identified the instigators. Irrespective of whether the protests were spontaneous or orchestrated — and a debate is raging in South Africa as to whether they are – Zuma, 79, lies at the heart of it.<\/p>\n
A former ANC intelligence operative, he\u2019s credited with playing a key role in ending apartheid-era violence between supporters of his party and the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party.<\/p>\n
Later he delivered the Zulu vote to the ANC and moved the political center of gravity of the party to the province from the Eastern Cape, from which former leaders Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki hail.<\/p>\n
Now, ironically, his arrest appears to have triggered an outpouring of violence.<\/p>\n
Valli Moosa, who served as a minister in Mandela\u2019s and Mbeki\u2019s cabinets, expects the upheaval to end soon and doesn\u2019t see it as an insurrection. While the initial protests against Zuma\u2019s jailing may have been organized, the widespread chaos that ensued was probably just opportunistic, he said.<\/p>\n
Even so, it\u2019s unclear whether the looting that engulfed the nation\u2019s two most populous provinces is a violent coda to Zuma\u2019s reign or the beginning of the end for the party, which was founded in 1912. It has weathered two breakaway attempts, but remains mired in factional power battles.<\/p>\n
Zuma \u201cis an albatross around the neck of the party in the province and nationally,\u201d said Cyril Madlala, a former newspaper editor in KwaZulu-Natal. \u201cHis influence is such that he doesn\u2019t need a position in government or the ANC, he is a phenomenon on his own.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanking Economy<\/strong><\/p>\n Internal power battles have meanwhile rendered the ANC sclerotic. Decisions necessary for the national good are often taken slowly and are subject to careful political calculation, hampering efforts to turn around the tanking economy and tackle a record 32.6% unemployment rate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe political time-line of the ANC is moving at the pace of a tortoise,\u201d said Claude Baissac, the head of Eunomix Business and Economics Ltd, which advises on political risk. \u201cThe economic decline is moving at the pace of the hare.\u201d<\/p>\n And that has, no doubt, played a part in the riots and helped those who may have orchestrated them.<\/p>\n The instigators knew if they created a space for the unemployed and criminals \u201cthey would jump at the opportunity,\u201d said Mcebisi Ndletyana, a political science professor at the University of Johannesburg. \u201cAnd they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
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