The arrests of alleged instigators of last year's deadly KwaZulu-Natal riots were long overdue, and a welcome development.
However, a year on we are still waiting for the mastermind/s of the “attempted insurrection”, as the government termed it, to be brought to book.
So far 25 people have been apprehended, 22 accused of public violence and incitement of public violence appeared in the Durban magistrate's court on Friday. They were granted bail of R3,000 each.
Three more suspects, charged with the same crime, also appeared in court yesterday after their arrest at the weekend.
The group allegedly incited violence through social media and other platforms during the riots which resulted in looting, the destruction of property, and left more than 300 people dead.
“These people were using social media platforms, hence we brought in our cybercrime unit as well as digital forensics from the Hawks. That is how we got to trace them but I cannot give more details,” said Hawks spokesperson Brig Thandi Mbambo.
According to reports, more arrests are imminent. The Sunday Times reported that police had planned to arrest 85 people last week but due to issues of jurisdiction the magistrate could not authorise some arrest warrants.
Last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa told the nation the July unrest was an “attempted insurrection”. He also told the SA Human Rights Commission in April that the riots had “wiped R50bn off the economy”, and left two million people jobless.
But the Hawks have been silent on whether high-profile instigators of the failed “insurrection” would be part of the imminent arrests. The profile of the accused before court so far are small town politicians among others, were they acting alone?
It has been over a year of investigations until the recent arrests, previously we saw charges being provisionally withdrawn and cases being struck off the roll against some of the people who were initially arrested last year.
It has taken the police this long to effect more arrests and we hope their cases are water-tight. The 300 who died and millions who became unemployed deserve answers and justice, there is no room for shoddy work that will not stand in court.
We are waiting to see the “brains” behind the riots, which further damaged our ailing economy, to face consequences for their actions.
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