Organised business in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, where most of the looting and riots took place during the July unrest, have denied any knowledge of the role of their members in the racial profiling, violence and killings that engulfed parts of KwaZulu-Natal.
On Thursday, the Durban and Pietermaritzburg chambers of commerce took the stand before the national investigative hearings conducted by the SA Human Rights Commission into the causes and the impact of the unrest, which also spilt over to parts of Gauteng after the imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma.
Palesa Phili, CEO of the Durban chamber, said while she had heard of blockades and killings that took place by business owners, vigilantes and security companies in Phoenix and other areas, the chamber had not received any information regarding the involvement of its more than 3,000 formal members and more than 53,000 informal members.
“I did hear about some of the blockades and killings in the news... I was just focused on ensuring that business operations resumed and I did not get any report in relation to our members,” she said.
Phili said the riots had the most devastating effect on SMEs including in townships, with some having never recovered from the looting and destruction.
“We have been going around as a chamber trying to raise funds to help those business people who for most of them it was their life savings and they were to get loans to start them. They were destroyed by their own communities,” she said.
The business chambers reiterated that while socioeconomic factors influenced the looting, much of it had been driven by the intention to harm the economy as village crops and black-owned businesses in townships, including surgeries, were destroyed without being looted.
Melanie Veness, CEO of the Pietermaritzburg Business Chamber, argued that the unrest had been a deliberate political power game aimed at changing political power in the country, as it was filled with expletives against President Cyril Ramaphosa and in favour of Zuma.
“I think there is a tendency to make what happened in July largely about inequality. People that led that insurrection utilised that to their advantage, but I think the chief motivation behind the insurrection had a political role. It was too well-organised and orchestrated.
“Standing in those businesses and watching what was sprayed on those walls, the 'Free Zuma' and 'Ramaphosa must go back to Venda' [slogans] and expletives about white monopoly capital, the rhetoric was very clear that it had a distinctly political undertone and had more to do with power than anything else,” she said.
Veness, whose chamber represents more than 700 companies in the region, described how the riots and looting brought unprecedented devastation to businesses in the Midlands and Pietermaritzburg, which she said prompted some business owners to come out and protect their businesses.
“I thought I was in some kind of war zone. It did not seem real that it was a place that I frequented. It was not just about looting, it was about destroying and it was orchestrated and you could see how orchestrated it was,” she said.
Venesse said the riots had created a trust deficit between business and the state, which would last for some time as businesses were left to fend for themselves.
She alleged that while there were complaints of police shortages, members of the police had received instructions not to come stop the looting in some of the affected areas.
Some of the security companies accused of racially profiling, assaulting, maiming and killing black community members during the unrest were found to have operated unlawfully.
Security bodies from the affected regions were also expected to take the stand and testify on the role of security companies that were implicated in the violence that took place on July 12 and the days that followed.
