South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is resisting calls to declare a state of emergency as the nation counts the cost of days of looting and violence.

Former National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli is the latest high profile figure to call for a such a declaration after looters, operating with impunity against outnumbered police,  stripped bare the shelves of stores in the coastal province of KwaZulu/Natal and the commercial heartland of Gauteng.

At least 73 people have died in the violence that has cost an estimated two billion rands.

Police have made 1200 arrests.

Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula says a state of emergency will be declared should the need arise.

2500 of her troops have been drafted in to help police.

Carrying assault rifles loaded with sharp point ammunition, they have stopped looters who minutes earlier were taunting police armed with teargas and rubber bullets.

Police Minister Bheki Cele, visting the ruins of a mall in Alexandra, which neighbors salubrious Sandton, says the emphasis now has to be on preventing further anarchy.

“It would have been better had this not happened,” he said pointing to the burned out shops, “but the fact that it did does not mean we cannot prevent it happening again.”

The looting was initially ascribed to protests against the jailing last week of ex-President Jacob Zuma for contempt of court.

Ramaphosa has condemned the exploitation of ethnic differences with Zuma’s Zulu tribe in KwaZulu/Natal

Analysts and community leaders, however, say the anarchy is spread by the desperation of people facing unemployment and grinding poverty exacerbated by the COVID pandemic lockdown and by rampant criminality as people realize they can grab what they want without consequences.

Cele says the authorities have identified a dozen people who have exploited this and used social media to instigate violence snd disorder.

State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo says they are investigating a sinister third force of former state security agents loyal to Zuma using their insider knowledge to stoke the flames of unrest.

Traffic along the arterial highway between Johannesburg and Durban has been stopped for a week. At least 40 trucks have been torched and used to block the road.

This means that the stores stripped by the looters will take weeks to resupply once the trucks are able to move.

The break in the supply chain has also affected the COVID vaccination programme that began hesitantly and late in the African country worst his by the pandemic.

Fear of the violence has closed the SAPREF petrol refinery that supplies a third of South Africa’s fuel.

Motorists have began queuing to fill their vehicles.

Ramaphosa will meet political leaders today, seeking bipartisan support against the anarchy.

He met with business leaders yesterday and with the State Security Council.

Communities are stepping up to protect their neighborhoods and shopping malls.

Armed private security firms in the wealthier neighborhoods have thus far managed to ensure that malls under their protection are not among the 200 that have been gutted.

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Thousands of people looting with impunity in Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Johannesburg.

Police, under equip and outnumbered, have been reduced to spectators.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is obliged to draft the military in to help try to contain the anarchy.

The destruction and lawlessness by black South Africans apparently unconcerned about being stopped let alone apprehended brings to mind the apartheid-era fears of their white counterparts that they will leave their country of birth on the first available flight with nothing but their pajamas.

The looting continues as Ramaphosa addresses the nation. Indeed, it is shown in a little window on his television backdrop, giving the lie to his assertion: “this is not us!”

The looting was initially ascribed to “righteous anger” about the incarceration of disgraced ex-President Jacob Zuma for contempt of court.

It soon becomes clear that it is about much more. There are ethnic tensions involving the Zulus. There is the desperation of people rendered jobless and hungry by the protracted COVID pandemic lockdown. But most of all there is enthusiastic criminality embracing an opportunity to grab something for nothing.

With television covering moving to and fro from KwaZulu/Natal to Gauteng the anarchy seems to have become terrifyingly unstoppable.  

Ramaphosa does nothing to alay those fears.

His assertion that the looters will face the full might of the law rings hollow.

South Africans who eschewed revenge for apartheid to build a greater peace are revealed to be as venal and short-sighted as their fellow Africans.

They no longer have a  claim to the moral hight ground.

This morning Police Minister Bheki Cele, who was invisible yesterday, briefs the media.

He speaks of more than 700 arrests and a death toll approaching 50.

Incredibly he advises South Africans to sanitize and regularly wash their hands.

This is a reference to the pandemic and the fact that the violence and the looting and destruction of trucks traveling between Johannesburg and Durban has stopped the already botched and tardy vaccination programme in many centers.

Again, his briefing takes place against the backdrop of persistent looting in both KwaZulu/Natal and Johannesburg.

It is briefly stopped in Alexandra around lunchtime by the arrival of a few dozen of the 2500 troops dragooned into restoring order.

The mob that was minutes earlier taunting police runs from the soldiers who carry neither teargas nor rubber bullets. Their assault rifles are loaded with sharp point ammunition.

Visibly shocked as the destruction he sees after looters have stripped a shopping mall in Alexandra, within sight of salubrious Sandton, Cele says the emphasis must now be on prevention. Flanked by both police and army brass, the minister says: “It is better that this did not happen. But just because it did does not mean that it cannot be prevented from happening again.” Cele says police are investigating a dozen people believed to be instigators of the looting.

Are we meant to be reassured?

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In what is being hailed as one of the most significant legal decisions in South African history the Constitutional Court has jailed disgraced former President Jacob Zuma for 15 months for contempt of court.

Zuma has five days to hand himself in to police.

Failing this, Police Minister Bheki Cele is ordered to do whatever necessary to ensure Zuma goes to jail.

This is a first time a former South African president has been sentenced to imprisonment,

Not even leaders during the apartheid era suffered such punishment.

Zuma defied a Constitutional Court order to appear before the Zondo Commission into state corruption.

He had earlier walked out of the commission, refusing to appear again if Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, whom he claims has close familial ties with him, recuses himself.

sub head Accuses state of politically motivated camapaign

Zuma accuses the state of mounting a politically motivated campaign  against him.

Zuma faces corruption charges in the KwauluNatal High court involving five billion euros misappropriated before he was president

He has rounded on the Constitutional Court saying it behaved like an apartheid institution

Acting Chief Justice Sisi Khampepe, reading the 7-2 majority judgment,  regretted that Zuma “has elected to make unmeritorious, vituperative remarks calculated to impugn the integrity of the judiciary called his remarks

She said it would serve no purpose to impose a suspended sentence on Zuma in the hope of getting him to comply because that would only give him further reason to delay.

She awarded unitive costs against Zuma.

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Even the Constitutional Court judges could not agree

The ex-president’s spokesman Mzwanele Manyi say if the nine Constitutional Court judges could not agree on a ruling, it was surely not possible for a layman to accept it.

He would not comment on the whereabouts of Zuma who was not in the Constitutional Court and said a more comprehensive response to the judgement would be made later

Split judgements are commonplace in the Constitutional Court and even the minority judgment agreed that Zuma was guilty of contempt of court.

The ANC military win Umkhonto We Sizwe has sent members to Zuma’s at Nkanadla and vowed to protect him from arrest.

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Daughter says he is in good spirits

Zuma’s daughter Dudu Zuma Sambudia says he has spoken to her father since the judgment and found him him in good spirits.

He plans to hand himself to  police at  Nkandla and members of his family will accompany him to Gauteng, which is currently closed to outsiders because of stricter COVID 19 lockdown restrictions imposed this week.

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On World Press Freedom day it is apposite that we show concern and solidarity with colleagues under the thumbs and worse of oppressive regimes.

On our continent, I think of those bravely trying to speak truth to power in Eritrea, Rwanda, Morocco and Zimbabwe among others.

We may justifiably take a modest bow when told that we are an integral part of democracy by giving  people the facts that enable them to make crucial decisions about their futures.

It is all very reminiscent of the apartheid days when South Africa’s independent media could explain their mission statement in a paragraph.

It was all about ending one of the greatest evils of the 20th century.

We used to hand off compliments about our courage by saying to our readers and listeners that it was in fact they who were being brave.

We had the information and were able to get it to them by driving a coach and horses through the oppressive machinery of the apartheid regime.

It was the people who had to act on that information.

So important as we liked to think we were, it was about them, not us.

Things have changed dramatically since then.

The democratic government in South Africa has lamentable failed to keep its promises as a liberation movement.

Corruption, greed and inefficiency have enriched a thin strata at the top of society and destined the majority who voted them into power to perpetual suffering.

The independent media, which always was a business operation, has been forced to make deeply compromising choices to secure their very survival.

The economic downturn has put them on the back foot.

The COVID 19 pandemic has already pushed some outlets over the edge and threatens to send others into the precipice.

This is reflected in the coverage of what is unquestionably the story of our generation.

Young and inexperienced journalists, who are the reporters that proprietors can afford, are doing their level best to keep their viewers, listeners and readers abreast of developments.

They cover virtual media briefing and try to make sense of the utterances of ministers who are often as much in the dark as they are.

The analysis, both positive and critical, is largely left to the small band of foreign correspondents.

Surely this is the job of the South African media.

Even with the relaxations that came last Friday, our lockdown is one of the most draconian on the planet.

We make the United Nations roll of shame for excessive action by security forces policing the enforced stay-at-home.

We are also in the top ranks of countries suffering gender-baed-violence during the enforced confinement .

What happened to the moral high ground of 25 years ago?

Ministers have allowed their personal ambition and prejudices to impact on their decisions.

A perfect example is continuing on plainly spurious grounds to deny the sale of tobacco products. This was clearly designed, among other things,  to embarrass President Cyril Ramaphosa who now has to countermand the inveterately anti-smoking Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, whom he has put in charge of this process, if he wants to keep the word he gave last week.

As to the continued alcohol ban, we can be assured of heavy-handed enforcement under Police Minister Bheki Cele.

On World Press Freedom Day surely we should be doing our job by shining  the light on these inequities.

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The minister,  who was briefing media, says there’s not place for xenophobia in South Africa.

Naledi Pandour says despite some incidents of violence against foreigners,  South Africa is not a xenophobic country.

Sharing the platform with the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation was Police Minister Bheki Cele who commended the SAPS for their professionalism in dealing with the raids and the violent attacks from  the vendors.

Pandor says foreign envoys understand the need for  protecting and respecting the rule of law.

“Member of the diplomatic corps fully understood no country could allow the police service to be treated in that way. And that must be respected by every person.”

She says continued dialogue is the best way of countering xenophobia.

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