The President admitted that the state had failed to quash the unrest, but reiterated his ‘attempted insurrection’ stance at the South African Human Rights Commission’s hearings into the deadly July 2021 riots.
President Cyril Ramaphosa told the South African Human Rights Commission on Thursday that nearly two million people were left unemployed and more than R50-billion had been “wiped off the economy” due to thethat brought KwaZulu-Natal and sections of Gauteng to a standstill in 2021.
“Shops, businesses, and warehouses were looted and torched and people [were] being beaten and humiliated. We felt uncertain, fearful for ourselves, our loved ones in our country. We felt the greatest sense of betrayal that there were some amongst us who would go so far as to plot to destroy this very country we have spent the past 28 years to build.”
A man is seen sweeping, surrounded by damage following riots and looting in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in the aftermath of the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma, 15 July 2021. He repeated his statement from 16 July 2021 that the riots were “nothing less than a deliberate, coordinated and well-planned attack on our democracy, intended to cripple the economy, cause social instability and severely weaken or even dislodge the democratic state”.
The commission completed three weeks of hearings in KwaZulu-Natal in 2021 and further hearings in Gauteng between February and March. But, “try as they might” they “did not turn us against each other”. Instead, South Africans “came together as never before”.
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