Violence after Zuma imprisonment: South Africa uses military against protests

So far, six people have died in South Africa in violent protests against the imprisonment of ex-President Zuma. The government is now using the military to contain the unrest.

Six people have died and 219 have been arrested in South Africa in the worsening violence following the imprisonment of ex-President Jacob Zuma. Shops and other businesses were looted and damaged by vandalism, the police said.

Army soldiers have now been sent to two provinces in the country. The troops are to support the police in the Gauteng region with the metropolis of Johannesburg and the province of KwaZulu-Natal in containing the unrest, as the military announced.

Land split by Zuma’s imprisonment

At the end of June, Zuma was sentenced to a 15-month prison sentence by the Constitutional Court for disregarding the judiciary, which he began last week. While many South Africans hailed the imprisonment as a success for the country’s rule of law, supporters of Zuma took to the streets.

The protests turned violent in many places. On Monday, buildings were set on fire and houses looted for the fourth day in a row, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, the home province of Zumas. Protesters infected a shopping center in the provincial capital Pietermaritzburg. In Eshowe, a town near Zuma’s hometown of Nkandla, police opened fire to disperse the crowd.

President Cyril Ramaphosa called on people to “protest peacefully” on Sunday. Zuma came to power in 2009 as a beacon of hope for the poor. But he gambled away his credibility with a series of corruption scandals. At the beginning of 2018, the scandalous president preceded his dismissal with his resignation.