Eighteen months after the lawlessness of July 2021, the identities of those who masterminded the violence and widespread looting remain unknown. Those unprecedented events cost more than 354 lives and economic damage estimated at R50 billion.
Most of the several dozen arrests made have been of suspected instigators. Sixty-one people charged with crimes related to violence and arson recently appeared in court, and the state announced it would also seek to charge them with terrorism. The defendants’ bail has been extended until May 2023, suggesting the wait for further disclosures will be a long one.
But the information that has come to light about the chaos in July reveals that serious police and intelligence problems facilitated the wave of destruction. This is the argument of my recent working paper, Beyond Protest: Violence, Looting and Lawlessness in July 2021, published by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.
The document shows that 17 months after these tumultuous events, there are no signs that any real progress has been made to adequately prevent a recurrence of widespread public violence.
The large presence of security forces in front of Nkandla, the private residence of Jacob Zuma, on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, dispersed after the former president left to go to prison shortly before midnight on that date. By Friday, July 9, the main national highways to the north, south, and inland, and other highways in KwaZulu-Natal, were blocked, including by trucks.
That same day, the protest action had started in the center and outlying areas of Durban. By the weekend, it had spread to Gauteng, facilitated, according to the expert panel’s subsequent report on the July 2021 civil unrest, by minibus taxis from KwaZulu-Natal.
In the province itself, violence and looting increased during the weekend of July 10 and 11 and, during the first two days of the following week, it was taking place throughout the province.
The similar modus operandi in different parts of KwaZulu-Natal, within a limited period of time, showed that the events were orchestrated. Vehicles, generally without license plates and some with tinted windows, arrived at selected sites.
Its occupants came out with tools to break locks, bars and gates, while encouraging others to join them. They left when the looting began.
In Durban and Pietermaritzburg, crowds from nearby townships and shanty towns came on foot to take whatever they could. Others arrived in vehicles to remove the bulky merchandise. In addition to the looting, some shopping malls and stores were razed, especially those selling bulk goods to the poor.
In the north coast town of Eshowe, where nearby sugarcane fields of small farmers burned, even the local bank burned.
In the Phoenix settlement, northwest of Durban, racial tensions broke out between Indian and black African residents, and by the end of the violence, which included roadblocks and vigilante attacks, 36 people had been killed.
Two historical legacies provide the context in which events in the large urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal unfolded. Durban is a typical apartheid city planned for four racial groups, with white residential areas in the closest proximities to the city center and concentric circles of other racial groups providing “buffer zones” separating white residents from townships. black Africans on the outer periphery.
Historical events (stemming from apartheid policies) in which Africans have attacked Indians, such as the Durban “riots” in 1949 and the Bhambayi “riots” near Phoenix in 1985, are etched in people’s memories. . In 2015, the Report of the Special Committee on Social Cohesion, established to investigate threats to social cohesion in KwaZulu-Natal, linked racial tensions in the province with economic problems and provided recommendations to address racial grievances. These were never implemented.
Violence that erupted in July 2021 in Phoenix, previously a designated area of indigenous residence and surrounded by large African townships and informal settlements, was linked to people from these nearby areas flocking through the (now) non-racial suburb to loot businesses. .
The flames were fueled by racial fears, a complete lack of constructive action by local police, and the overt racism of drug vigilante gangs and rogue security firms with ties to the police.
The executive members of the government must bear the blame for what happened during these fateful days. Even without intelligence, it was clear on July 9 that the police minister should have asked the president to deploy the army to keep roads clear and protect infrastructure.
As the ANC held a national executive committee meeting over the weekend, it continued to insist that what was happening was a “normal” protest.
When soldiers from the South African National Defense Forces began arriving on July 13, most of the damage had already been done.
The executive and parliament share the blame for failing to take steps deemed urgent in a 2018 report by the high-level panel on state security, which recommended restructuring the security services and restoring the status of the State Security Agency as civil. control organism
The high-level panel had reached damning conclusions about how constitutional principles had been violated by becoming a private resource to serve the political and personal interests of the factions.
The reports from the Zondo commission on the state capture reinforce the findings of the high-level panel and are highly critical of the way in which the parliamentary intelligence oversight body has been slow to pass necessary legislation.
Both the executive and parliament share blame for failing to take seriously the findings of the Zondo commission on the police’s criminal intelligence division to date, including nepotism, corruption and irregular operational involvement of ministers.
Those to whom we entrust governance have yet to explain why the recommendations of the Report of the Expert Panel on Crowd Policing and Management, delivered to the minister in 2018, have not been implemented.
These findings referred not only to the reform and equipment of public order surveillance, but also to the need to demilitarize and depoliticize the police (according to the National Development Plan). Crucially, the expert panel report should also have led to the establishment of a police board to oversee appointments and promotions.
Action in this regard is especially urgent given the regularity of the protests and the way in which politicization, nepotism and corruption in the police force took root during the Zuma years.
The July 2021 expert panel report presents a devastating picture of the lack of police preparation for what happened. The capacity of the operational response services was well below what was required, even under normal circumstances, and the appropriate equipment (one water cannon per province) was lacking.
The equipment that was available had not even been properly maintained.
What happened in July 2021 is a product of how South Africa has become a criminalized power bloc state: criminals operate with members of the secret service and senior officials, holding political office as a means of personal enrichment through expense of good government.
Since July 2021, there has been no discernible political will to implement the necessary changes detailed in the reports cited here, nor, amid continuing severe socio-economic disparities, have crucial issues of social cohesion been addressed.
Raymond Zondo, Chairman of the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into State Capture Charges, and now Chief Justice, has warned that without actions recommended by the executive and parliament, state capture may happen again.
If we are to be protected from those described by the expert panel on the July 2021 civil unrest as “appetites for lawlessness”, the return of good governance must begin immediately.
This requires addressing both critical policing issues and the failure of parliament to exercise adequate oversight.
This article is based on the author’s research contained in the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra) working paper and the chapter’s contribution to the next research volume, Protest in South Africa: rejection, reaffirmation, recovery (Johannesburg, Mistra), to be published in early 2023.
Mary de Haas is an advocate and activist for human and political rights, human dignity, and social justice.
