AMN / WEB DESK
At least 72 people have been killed in violence that engulfed parts of South Africa following the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma.
This includes 10 people killed in a stampede during looting on Monday night at a shopping centre in Soweto, the BBC reported on Tuesday.
The rioting originated in Zuma’s home province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), where he is serving a 15-month sentence for contempt of court, after failing to appear for a corruption inquiry. It has also spread to other provinces like Mpumalanga, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and Northern Cape. Warehouses and stores have also been ransacked in the economic capital Johannesburg and Durban.
The BBC has also filmed a baby being thrown from a building in Durban that was on fire after ground-floor shops were looted.
South African police said in a statement that they had identified 12 people suspected of provoking the riots, and that a total of 1,234 people had been arrested.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has called it some of the worst violence witnessed in South Africa since the 1990s, before the end of apartheid, with fires set, highways blocked and businesses and warehouses looted in major cities and small towns in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces.
Ministers have warned that if looting continues, there is a risk areas could run out of basic food supplies soon – but have ruled out declaring a state of emergency.
More than 200 shopping malls had been looted, the media reported.
Several shopping centres in Soweto – South Africa’s largest township which was once home to Nelson Mandela – have been completely ransacked, with ATMs broken into, restaurants, stores selling alcohol and clothing shops all left in tatters.