On the sixth day of violence that has already claimed 72 lives in South Africa, amid rampant unemployment and new anti-Covid restrictions, concerns over possible fuel and food shortages began to agitate the country on Wednesday.
Predicted fuel shortages
Early in the morning, queues had formed in front of several gas stations, especially in the vicinity of Johannesburg and
Durban. The day before, the largest refinery in the country announced the closure of its plant near Durban in Kwazulu-Natal (East), which supplies about a third of the fuel consumed in the country, due to “force majeure”.
“Fuel shortages in the coming days or weeks are inevitable,” Motorists Association (AA) spokesperson Layton Beard told AFP. According to him, some stations are already dry and others are rationing at the pump.
Queues of customers worried about shortages
In Durban, affected by looting of shops and warehouses, lines of customers who had come to get supplies were already stretching out the day before in front of the supermarkets, for fear of quickly running out of food.
For several days, the province of Kwazulu-Natal and Gauteng, which includes the two main cities of the country Johannesburg and Pretoria, have been caught in a whirlwind of violence, fueled by the economic crisis in a country exhausted by the coronavirus pandemic and which reached a record unemployment rate (32.6%).
The violence has sporadically started to spread to other provinces, including Mpumalanga (North East) and Cape North (Center), according to police. A final official report on Tuesday evening reported 72 dead and 1,234 arrests. Most of the deaths occurred during stampedes during looting of shops and malls.
The first incidents had erupted the day after the incarceration of the former president on Thursday Jacob Zuma, sentenced to 15 months in prison for contempt of justice, which acted as a spark to rekindle economic frustration.
Monday evening, after making the decision to deploy the army, President Cyril Ramaphosa had already warned of the risks of “shortages” if the spiral of violence did not stop.
Support groups
In some neighborhoods, residents have organized themselves to ensure the security of their stores. With signs “Hands off our shopping center”, residents of the township of Tembisa, between Johannesburg and Pretoria, formed a human chain Tuesday at the end of the day in front of their “mall”.
The authorities have warned against any slippage, encouraging “communities not to take justice into their own hands.”
Self-help groups have also appeared on social media, some offering a helping hand in cleaning up the damage caused by looters, others offering surplus food.
Despite the authorities’ call for calm and the deployment of some 2,500 troops to lend a hand to the police, thousands of South Africans continued to pour in on Tuesday to strip sheds and stores. Compact and messy crowds ripped off giant televisions, tables, diapers or cans, leaving behind aisles of shops and streets littered with debris and shattered cardboard boxes. The police, outnumbered, were quickly overwhelmed.
Late in the evening, videos still showed dozens of people leaving a brewery with their arms laden with cases of beer. Same spectacle in a warehouse, where clusters of people left with several kilogram sacks of rice.
The wave of looting is also fueling security fears outside the country’s borders. The African Union “firmly” condemned the violence and looting on Tuesday evening, calling for an “urgent restoration of order” and citing risks to stability in the region.