AT LEAST 72 PEOPLE DEAD IN SOUTH AFRICAN PROTESTS AND RIOTS

South African authorities have announced that at least 72 people have been killed and 1,234 people arrested in the ongoing protests that have since deteriorated into chaos and violence sparked by the imprisonment of former president, Jacob Zuma.

According to the south African police service, the death toll is from different parts of the country like KwaZulu-Natal which is the home province of the former president and Guateng mostly caused by stampedes, explosions from people trying to break into ATM machines and shootings. From this number, at least 1 police officer have been reported dead and seven others suffering from different degrees of injuries.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Massive looting is also seen to occur in different cities ranging from food, liquor, clothes, electrical appliances, animals and furniture.  People setting fire on houses and factories.

But despite the arrests, the violence hasn’t stopped as the South African Police Service has recalled officers from leave and rest days, while the South African National Defense Forces has deployed thousands soldiers to assist the overstretched law enforcement agencies on the ground.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has vowed to “restore calm and order,” describing the unrest as the worst the country has witnessed since the 1990s, before the end of the apartheid regime.

Written by BoomRadioNG