By Richard Abelson

July 17, 2021

-The Gateway Pundit

 

At least 121 people are dead in South Africa and 2556 have been arrested after a week of rioting and looting following the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma, who is accused of corruption (GP reported).

Massive lines formed before supermarkets, as the government struggled to restore order.

Military convoys finally arrived in KwaZulu-Natal province after almost a week which saw overwhelmed police beg civilians for help and ammo.

Police escorts brought much-needed fuel to local gas stations after fuel looting.

President Cyril Ramaphosa visited KwaZulu-Natal province, where the Army was deployed to restore order, and expressly welcomed the contribution of improvised civil militias to defending communities in the Durban area. “We welcome the fact that ordinary citizens are working together with security forces, not only defending their own assets, but also defending our democracy.”

Local volunteers have now begun with the cleanup:

Speaking with Tucker Carlson, AfriForum spokesman Ernst Roets, author of the definitive book on farm murders “Kill the Boer“, saw South Africa as “a warning to America”: “To put it frankly, there’s a very strong anti-Western sentiment underneath this whole thing.”

Writing in “Revolver”, Darren Beattie said:

“The meltdown in South Africa isn’t a natural disaster or a random fluke. It’s a choice. South Africa was the first modern nation to be refounded on the anti-white principles of critical race theory, and now it is reaping the whirlwind of that choice. South Africa did everything that is being done in America right now. As a hyperdiverse multiethnic, multilingual society, South Africa has followed almost every prescription embraced by the globalist ruling class. 

This is about more than riots. This wave of violence will eventually peter out. But there is no reason to be optimistic when that happens. There will be no sense of having survived a calamity, and having a chance to rebuild. When this wave of burning and looting and killing are over, there is nothing to look forward to but the next wave.”

Many observers believe the riots would spell the end of efforts to make gun ownership in self-defense illegal in South Africa: “Lawful firearm owners saved our democracy this week”, Paul Oxley, National Chairman of the Gun Owners South Africa (GOSA) wrote:

“GOSA has always maintained that an armed citizenry is the final defence of democracy. We never thought we would see a large scale experiment played out before our eyes to prove this… and yet here we are after a tumultuous week during which an orchestrated attack on our fledgling democracy was launched, and largely thwarted due, primarily, to thousands of armed South African citizens who stood in the way of anarchy and defended themselves, their families, and their communities.”

Echoing another debate ongoing in the US, others sought to place blame with social media, which often were the only source of up-to-date info on rioting and looting in South Africa this week. The Institute for Security Studies wrote that “the instigators of what started at the weekend as a campaign of politically motivated economic sabotage have demonstrated how social media can be weaponized, with devastating consequences.”

The ANC-aligned Institute for Security Studies noted that “Weaponizing social media is a crime”, and warned that “if tweets, messages or conversations are peppered with fake or deliberately manipulated images, the offenses may amount to cyber forgery and uttering. Simply resharing deliberately manipulated content that is malicious could make any one of us unwittingly assistants in committing a crime.”

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