Gauteng - The African Mirror

Jul

2021

Mandela Day used to repair looting damage

AFRICAN MIRROR REPORTER SOUTH African from all walks of life used Mandela Day - the celebration of the birthday of the country's founding president - to do good humanitarian deeds, all aimed at repairing the damage done by last week’s violence and looting. Several individuals and groups donated and helped to distribute food and water to communities that have been left stranded after shopping malls, factories and warehouses were set alight and looted in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in the worst violence since the dawn of democracy. While some provided food, large groups joined clean up campaigns across the two provinces…

Jul

2021

By The African Mirror

Why have South Africans been on a looting rampage? Research offers insights

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

THE looting of businesses, shopping centres and warehouses in South Africa over the past week, particularly in the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces, has taken place at an unprecedented scale. It has affected both poor and middle-class areas. Private as well as government property has been damaged and destroyed. People have been injured and lives have been lost. GUY LAMB, Criminologist / Lecturer, Stellenbosch University A variety of narratives have emerged in an effort to explain the looting frenzy. Some have accused die-hard supporters of former president Jacob Zuma of fuelling the unrest. Others have intimated that the looting is a…

Jun

2021

By The African Mirror

Johannesburg in decay

AFRICITIES

"WHAT'S the word Johannesburg?” Gil Scott-Heron asked in 1975. An answer came the following year when children in Soweto ran into fascist bullets, their hearts full of courage and resolve to overcome oppression. Johannesburg – Joburg, Jozi, eGoli, eRhawutini, Gauteng, Maboneng – is a city of gold, lights, barbed wire, jazz, the sun setting into lava, the burnt orange of aloes in flower against dry grass, a great university, men with guns, shopping malls, the sudden malachite of parakeets on the wing above the city forest and the smoke from the braziers hanging low in the shack settlements when winter bites. Its…