The Zuma Apocalypse; South Africa Tears Itself Apart By John Steele
The riots in South Africa that have been going on, at the time of writing for six days, are not in any way parallel to the BLM, antifa situation in America. There are no white leftist forces driving the violence; rather it is a revolt of largely poor Blacks, motivated on the surface by the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma, but deeper, by poverty, unemployment and the culture of resentment. The vicious attacks upon property can only be by a people aching with resentment. But, if these people are so poor, why take expensive TV sets and electronics, rather than food? Well, food is being taken too, but the looting of the expensive gear is an opportunistic thief by people who will never otherwise have the money to buy this stuff.
However, the looting is totally indiscriminate, and Black businesses get looted and burn as easily as white, so there is equal opportunity violence here, beyond race.
Police have been beaten to a standstill, those police who are not corrupt; many are joining in the looting. Having run out of ammunition, non-looting police have advised people to stay home and defend themselves. Gun banners take note, in this situation, without a firearm, you will be toast, if armed thugs come your way. In places where there were few firearms people are resorting to melee weapons. I saw one video with a rock fight, and people defending with make-do shields, sheets of galvanised iron. It will ultimately go back to ancient times, and the warfare of that era. Spear versus spear, not that I am saying that there is anything necessarily wrong with spears, but it is a highly personal weapon. I have known old diggers who fought this way in the trenches, and it is not pleasant.
Zuma is not going to be let out of prison just because of the violence, this is not the US, and there are more charges to be laid against him. Look at the videos on YouTube, and sites like Ferfal, the Modern Survivalist, who has covered this. One can be as learned as one likes, but at the end of the day, if you cannot defend yourself from predatory violence, which is here in the West as documented below, one is simply prey. Sorry, the world is really cruel and most people in the West, who have not fought in wars, have lived in a shielded artificial womb.
https://nypost.com/2021/07/13/at-least-45-dead-during-looting-rioting-in-south-africa/
At least 45 people have died in South Africa during violent riots over the imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma — with even cops seemingly caught helping themselves during shocking scenes of mass looting.
Sporadic violence first broke out last Thursday when Zuma, 79, started serving his 15-month sentence for defying a court order to appear at an inquiry investigating corruption during his nine years in office.
But it soon grew to some of the worst violence seen there in years — spreading from Zuma’s home in KwaZulu-Natal province to the country’s biggest city, Johannesburg, and surrounding Gauteng province, and to the Indian Ocean port city of Durban.
Shocking videos showed hundreds of people swarming through shopping districts and climbing up through almost completely empty shelves. Some malls were even torched.
“So uneccesary. So uncalled for,” one person said as they filmed burning cars in the street and shopping areas “absolutely destroyed.”
One clip shared on social media even seemingly caught a police officer looking around cautiously as she helped load up a squad van with items, including several coolers.
Many of the deaths have been blamed on chaotic stampedes to steal food, electric appliances, liquor and clothing, officials have said.
“The criminal element has hijacked this situation,” said David Makhura, the premier of Gauteng province, which includes Johannesburg.
At least 19 had been killed in Gauteng, including 10 on Monday at a mall in the Meadowlands area of Soweto where gunshots were heard. Another 26 people had also been killed in KwaZulu-Natal province, many crushed in the shops, officials said Tuesday.
The looting continued Tuesday even after the deployment of 2,500 soldiers to support the South African police.
Announcing that there had been at least 757 arrests, Police Minister Bheki Cele said no one would be allowed to “make a mockery of our democratic state.”
“No amount of unhappiness or personal circumstances from our people gives the right to anyone to loot,” he said.
An emotional Makhura, the Gauteng premier, said the “looting is undermining our businesses.”
“It is undermining our economy, our community. It is undermining everything,” he said.
Zuma’s foundation said there would be no peace in South Africa until the former president was released from jail.
“Peace and stability in South Africa is directly linked to the release of President Zuma with immediate effect,” it said in a tweet.
“The violence could have been avoided. It started with the decision of the Constitutional Court to detain President Zuma … This is what gave anger to the people,” a spokesman for the foundation told Reuters separately.
The Constitutional Court, the country’s highest, heard Zuma’s application to have his sentence rescinded on Monday.
Zuma’s lawyer argued that the top court made errors when sentencing his client to prison.
After 10 hours of testimony, the judges said they would announce their decision at a later date.
The former president also faces trial in a separate case on charges including corruption, fraud, racketeering and money laundering. He pleaded not guilty in court in May.
The rand, which had been one of the best-performing emerging market currencies during the pandemic, dropped to a three-month low Tuesday, and local and hard currency bonds suffered.”
Violence in the US continues to worsen.
“Every week the horrendous crime wave that is sweeping across America seems to get even worse. In some of our largest cities, looting, murder and violence are becoming a way of life, and authorities seem powerless to do anything about it. Is this what we can expect life in the United States to look like moving forward? All over the globe, people are watching us, and they are stunned by what they have been witnessing. Criminals are wildly out of control, and many of our largest cities are being transformed into extremely violent war zones.
For example, just check out what happened in Oakland over the weekend. According to Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, his officers were completely overwhelmed by “the level of violence and gunfire”…
The Fourth of July reeled into “12 hours of non-stop chaos” Sunday night with several victims wounded by celebratory gunfire, a homicide and a massive sideshow marred by gunfire. The night culminated at the sideshow, where more than 200 participants pelted police officers with debris and flashed them with hand-held lasers.
Embattled Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told reporters that the level of violence and gunfire overwhelmed his officers.
Next door, the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco has evolved into systematic looting.
Sadly, no retailer is immune. Even though Neiman Marcus has enthusiastically embraced a whole host of “woke” causes, criminals ruthlessly looted one of their stores in San Francisco on Monday…
Looters were captured on video Monday ransacking a Neiman Marcus in San Francisco as thefts continue to plague businesses in the area.
At least nine suspects smashed display cases, snatched handbags, and jetted out of the building before law enforcement arrived to the scene at about 6 p.m., according to footage. The suspects were seen running out of the store with their hands full of merchandise before entering an apparent getaway car that sped off down a busy intersection.
If you have not seen footage of the looters yet, you can watch it right here. This happened in broad daylight, and it is hard to believe that such scenes are actually happening in the United States of America.
At this point, the looting has gotten so bad that some major retailers are taking drastic actions…
Walgreens shuttered 17 of its stores in the San Francisco area in the past five years, and the company said thefts in the area are four times more likely than anywhere else in the country as executives budgeted 35 times more for security personnel to guard the chains.
Target executives in the city also decided to limit business hours in response to an uptick in larceny.
But unless they completely close up shop, the looting is going to continue.
Criminals in California have learned that if they keep the value of the merchandise they steal at each store to under $950, they won’t be charged with a felony even if they are caught. So now we are witnessing a wave of retail theft that is unlike anything we have ever seen before…
SF Police Lt. Tracy McCray pinned the blame on DA Chesa Boudin (whose parents were part of the radical and violent Weather Underground, and left two police officers dead during a botched heist). According to McCray, Boudin’s “criminals first agenda” is responsible for the uptick in crime.
“What happened in that Walgreens has been going on in the city for quite a while,” McCray said in June. “I’m used to it. I mean, we could have a greatest hits compilation of people just walking in and cleaning out the store shelves and security guards, the people who work there, just standing by helplessly because they can’t do anything.”
Earlier today, I was saddened to learn that a very generous man that had put up a pop-up swimming pool for the homeless during the heat wave had been viciously stabbed to death…
A man whose ingenious pop-up swimming pool kept the homeless cool during the recent heat wave was fatally stabbed in the same spot just one day later, according to Portland police.
Officers identified Tyson L. Morlock as the man who was found stabbed in the inner eastside Hosford-Abernethy neighborhood at Division Street and Southeast Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard around 3:37 a.m. on Thursday, July 1.
He tried to make Portland a better place, and now he is dead.
Of course so many people are being murdered these days that it is extremely difficult to keep up with all of the carnage.
In Chicago, this holiday weekend was the most violent weekend that we have seen in 2021 so far, and that is really saying something…
Every July 4th weekend police in Chicago brace for an uptick in violence – even more than is usual when typical weekends average about 40 shootings – and this holiday weekend was no different, easily registering as the deadliest and most violent this year given the total death count. New York City has also been witnessing a steady uptick in seemingly random shootings and violence, including brazen acts committed in broad daylight in heavily trafficked areas, such as the recent Times Square wounding of a US Marine.
On Monday the Chicago Sun-Times has tallied 92 people shot over the long July 4th weekend, with 16 killed. The Sun-Times database shows the numbers killed to be a weekend high for all of 2021 so far.”
The world is spiralling into chaos, by design or by default.
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