Tuesday July 13, 2021
JOHANNESBURG (HOL) - Three Somali nationals were killed on Monday in the ongoing protests in South Africa that have swept across cities following the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma on corruption charges.
According to Abdi Ismael, a spokesman for the Somali community in South Africa who was quoted by local media, one Somali was killed in eSikhawini while two others were also killed in Hammarsdale. Both areas are located in the restive KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa.
“They were not fighting. They were running for their lives. They were innocent people. We don’t know how they died,” Ismael said. He added they had not recovered the bodies owing to the ongoing spate of violence.
Violence and looting have been spread in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces in South Africa in recent days forcing president Cyril Ramaphosa to deploy the military.
“What we are witnessing now are opportunistic acts of criminality, with groups of people instigating chaos merely as a cover for looting and theft. There is no grievance nor any political cause that can justify the violence and destruction that we have seen in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng,” Ramaphosa said Monday in a national address.
He confirmed that six people Gauteng and four others in KwaZulu-Natal had been killed during the unrest.