Johannesburg Calls for Extra Police as Riots Kill 22
May 20th, 2008Via: Bloomberg:
Authorities in Gauteng, the South African province containing Johannesburg, called for police reinforcements after rioters targeting mainly Zimbabwean immigrants killed at least 22 people over the last two days.
Incidents were reported today in Cleveland, just south of the city center, in Diepsloot, north of Johannesburg, Primrose in the east as well as in Tembisa, Reiger Park and Zandspruit, police spokesman Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said in an interview. The Times newspaper, based in Johannesburg, showed a picture of a policeman dousing an immigrant with a fire extinguisher after he had been set alight by a mob.
“In some places police have come under fire, in some places we are overstretched,” Firoz Cachalia, the head of safety and security for Gauteng, told reporters in Johannesburg today. “Our primary concern is for safety and to bring the violence to an end,” he added, saying that there is no need to call in the army. Cachalia didn’t elaborate on how many additional police officers may be deployed or when.
South Africa has as many as 3 million illegal Zimbabwean immigrants and is also host to others from African countries, including Mozambique and Somalia. An increasing number of Zimbabweans have entered South Africa, driven south by a decade of economic recession and the world’s highest inflation rate, 355,000 percent, according to the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper.
South Africa, with a population of 48.5 million, has a shortfall of 2.4 million houses and one in four people don’t have a job.
I’ve been following the South Africa situation with interest, as it’s a major choke-point for industrial activity.
~80% of the world’s PGMs come from there (platinum, palladium and rhodium being the big 3), as well a large amounts of gold.
So far we’ve had the electricity crisis, and from what I’ve read, the physical infrastructure is falling apart pretty quickly. Add to the witches brew this kind of social disintegration and things might get interesting mighty quick.
Gold @ ~$930 and Oil @ $132 at time of writing.
Give it a few years and it will be just like Zimbabwe / Rhodesia.