The death toll from rioting in South Africa climbed to 72 on Tuesday, with many people trampled to death during looting at stores, as police and the military fired stun grenades and rubber bullets to try to halt the unrest set off by the imprisonment last week of former President Jacob Zuma.
More than 1,200 people have been arrested in the lawlessness that has raged in poor areas of two provinces, where a community radio station was ransacked and forced off the air Tuesday and some COVID-19 vaccination centers were closed, disrupting urgently needed inoculations.
Many of the deaths in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces occurred in chaotic stampedes as thousands of people stole food, electric appliances, liquor, and clothing from stores, police Maj. Gen. Mathapelo Peters said in a statement Tuesday night.
He said 27 deaths were being investigated in KwaZulu-Natal and 45 in Gauteng.
In addition to the people crushed, he said, police were investigating deaths caused by explosions when people tried to break into ATMs, as well as fatalities caused by shootings.
The violence broke out after Zuma began serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court on Thursday. He had refused to comply with a court order to testify at a state-backed inquiry into allegations of corruption while he was president from 2009 to 2018.
The unrest then spiraled into looting in township areas of the two provinces, although it has not spread to South Africa’s seven other provinces, where police are on alert.
“The criminal element has hijacked this situation,” said Premier David Makhura of Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg.
More than half of South Africa’s 60 million people live in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 32%, according to official statistics. The COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs and an economic downturn, has increased the hunger and desperation that helped propel the protests triggered by Zuma’s arrest into wider rioting. ♦
