[ads2]
Astute Ghanaian businessman and highly-respected sports administrator, Herbert Mensah has called for an end to protest and looting in South Africa amid fear of rise of the devastating coronavirus.
The arrest of former South African President Jacob Zuma this month has triggered looting and violence in the country’s two most populous provinces amid a record wave of Covid-19 infections.
Why was Zuma arrested?
Mr. Zuma was president of South Africa from 2009 until 2018, a time when alleged corruption escalated in government and the ruling African National Congress. After he resigned, a government-mandated commission started investigating some of these allegations, but Mr. Zuma repeatedly refused to testify, despite an order to do so from South Africa’s Constitutional Court. On June 29, the same court sentenced Mr. Zuma to 15 months in prison for contempt of court, and he was arrested last week. Sporadic protests against his arrest over the weekend turned into broader violence and looting, much of which didn’t appear to be linked to political motives.[ads2]
How widespread are the riots in South Africa?
Most of the violence and looting has been concentrated in Mr. Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, where South Africa’s economic capital Johannesburg and political capital Pretoria are located. Mobs have targeted shopping malls, factories and warehouses, many of them in impoverished townships, where residents have been hit hard by three brutal waves of Covid-19 infections and government-imposed lockdowns. Some residents formed vigilante groups to protect their communities.
South Africa is facing unrest on a scale that has been rarely seen since white-minority rule ended in 1994. Here’s how one political event exposed deep-seated inequalities that have increased during the pandemic.
And Herbert Mensah who is concerned about the happenings in South Africa has called for peace in the country, appealing to leaders of other African countries to join the call for peace.
In a video, the former Asante Kotoko Chairman has appealed to South African leaders to do everything humanly possible to restore calm in the country to avoid a disaster.[ads1]
“I stand with South Africa and I also have a family there, my wife and kids are there too and seeing them (South Africa) going through such situation, with looting and covid-19, I stand with them and I believe peace will be restored”, he said.
” I appeal to the other countries to take in what is happening globally so we won’t be much affected, as Africans we need to stand side-by-side and for the people in power, keep in touch with those they don’t have and understand their situation”, he added..
Meanwhile, reports indicate that at least 212 people have been reported dead in the unrest, including some in shopping-center stampedes, and more than 2,500 have been arrested across the two provinces.[ads4]
But as of today, calm had returned to much of Gauteng and residents from other provinces were sending food and other essentials to KwaZulu-Natal, where some communities have been cut off from supplies through roadblocks and insecurity since the weekend. Thousands of volunteers helped clean up littered streets and destroyed shopping centers to begin repairing some of the damage.
[ads5]
