South Africa 🇿🇦

[Hidehi4]

Has anyone seen what is happening in South Africa? Why isn’t this on the news around the world. They have trashed the country all because the ex president stole money and got sent to jail. There’s looting, freeing animals from the zoo, burning shops. Locals are having to protect their community without help from the police or army as the gangs are threatening to start on people’s home. They are now running out of food and they aren’t importing. Very sad time for South Africa and the innocent people. Has anyone heard or seen anything?

@Daisychaincarrot

Unfortunately this sort of thing isn’t new for SA. Doesn’t make it okay!

Not on this scale Daisychain

I have seen this is happening from tiktok. It was just on BBC radio 4 news. The one on the hour on the today programme.

But not very evident on BBC or guardian news app. Not sure what the criteria is for wider press to pick these things up....

Perhaps long overdue is the wrong phrase but the crime and poverty in SA is so rife, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner.

I doubt crime and poverty is worse now than at any other time in the last 50 years.

I only know about it through a SA friend, having watched footage, this is devastating.

The unrest is thankfully not currently in the whole of South Africa. I am in Cape Town and at this stage we are fairly unaffected.

It is primarily in KZN (Kwazulu Natal) where Jacob Zuma is from and pockets of Gauteng Province (where Johannesburg is). The utter destruction in KZN is devastating for all communities. Bloodbanks have been looted and animal charities etc…

I have seen coverage on Sky News

@Montsti why are people looting blood banks?

[quote Porcupineintherough]@Montsti why are people looting blood banks?[/quote]
They are just stealing whatever they can get. They took computers and equipment. The worst of it is, is that we watched it happen live while the Ramaphosa was addressing the nation. In the corner of the screen. I don't think anyone heard what he said, at that time, we were just aghast at what we were seeing.

There was also footage of the KFC being looted, boxes of chicken being hauled out, bottles of oil, one man trying to carry a chest freezer.

They looted pharmacies today. Along with medication they destroyed all the covid vaccines. We have struggled to get going with the programme, this is just intolerable behaviour.

It has been all over the news, I've been following it all week as my family live there.

I have heard this only because of knowing someone who is South African and has family there. Having only one meal a day to avoid completely running out of food.

Awful situation.

@randomLondoner

Mandela was elected in 1994. The situation in RSA has been getting worse since 2007.
If you are actually talking about apartheid that is a different issue.

I have heard of it, it is rife in some regions of SA.

Horrible. I'd hate to be there. Over the years I've met many people who have left because of the violence.

(So many 'theys')

@Maggiesfarm

I have heard of it, it is rife in some regions of SA.

Horrible. I'd hate to be there. Over the years I've met many people who have left because of the violence.

(So many 'theys')

There are many of us on MN who are here and have not left.

Please be sensitive. There are affected people on here reading all these comments.

I've just googled South Africa crime statistics. From a wikipedia article, using the murder rate per 100,000 people, the crime rate is vastly lower now than it was in 1994 and for many years afterward. Yes there is an increase from roughly 2008 onwards, but levels overall are far, far lower than what existed when Mandela was actually in charge. Not that that was his fault.

Bottom line, current levels of crime are not exceptional by the standards of post-apartheid South Africa. (And in fact it's only the 1980's that were bad under apartheid, the 70's and before appear to have been a lot better than now.)

I haven't managed to find long-term poverty trends, I'll leave that for anyone who wants to prove it's increasing. (Given there was plenty of it before anyone alive today was born, I'm assuming it would be quite hard for it to increase.)

I'm not saying the situation isn't bad, in absolute terms. I'm just disagreeing that rising crime and poverty are an explanation for people suddenly behaving differently in 2021. There has always been a lot of crime and poverty in South Africa, and I don't see any statistical validity in picking a short-term low in 2008 as a baseline.

I didn't know anything about it until now

Just noticed the wikipedia graph only goes up to 2015, so I may be missing changes since then.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_South_Africa#/media/File:South_African_murder_rate.png

@RandomLondoner

I've just googled South Africa crime statistics. From a wikipedia article, using the murder rate per 100,000 people, the crime rate is vastly lower now than it was in 1994 and for many years afterward. Yes there is an increase from roughly 2008 onwards, but levels overall are far, far lower than what existed when Mandela was actually in charge. Not that that was his fault.

Bottom line, current levels of crime are not exceptional by the standards of post-apartheid South Africa. (And in fact it's only the 1980's that were bad under apartheid, the 70's and before appear to have been a lot better than now.)

I haven't managed to find long-term poverty trends, I'll leave that for anyone who wants to prove it's increasing. (Given there was plenty of it before anyone alive today was born, I'm assuming it would be quite hard for it to increase.)

This is not general crime though.

Not that it has been verified, but it seems that there are plans to destabilize the country by certain individuals.

The riots are due to Jacob Zuma, the ex president, being jailed.

How can there be any accurate crime statistics when the police are such a large part of the problem?

At present it's localised to areas where the dreadful old illiterate kleptomaniac Zuma has support. Zuma is Zulu. Zulus get labelled a 'tribe' in Western media. 'Nation' would be more accurate. They have their own separate history and culture - and language - so way more points of difference than say English and Scots. So it's not a surprise that the old rascal's support is in places where there's a strong Zulu presence.

I'm hoping this means the violence won't spill over to other areas like the Western Cape.

People talk about this being caused by poverty. It's not. It's what happens when fraudsters and psychopaths get to run a country.

One example of what Zuma has caused: so much money went missing that the government cut mental health funding and put it out to private tender. The results, in some cases, were people being locked in garages and starving to death. South Africa is not good at keeping callous people away from power.

@Porcupineintherough

The poor and dispossessed rise up. Understandable but sadly likely just to make things worse.

No. It's hooligans and looters rising up. There are plenty of poor and dispossesed in SA. They aren't doing anything. This is not an attempt at a revolution any more than the 2010 disorders in England, although certain politicians will try to exploit this.