Hi everyone. I am all good
Alex. I'm glad to hear you are ok! I saw the flooding on the news
What a crazy week last week was!!!
I'm in Pietermaritzburg, and it was a warzone here. The backstory is that the former president has been found in contempt of court for not giving evidence at a big court hearing that he is part of. He is/was as corrupt as you can get. He has been playing delaying tactics, but the court eventually said enough and sentenced him to 15 month in prison. He still has a huge following, even still in the ruling party of the ANC, and when he handed himself over, his followers said that they are going to protest and cause havoc until he is released. This was on Saturday 10 July. On Sunday, loads of people started looting shopping malls and warehouses and burning them to the ground
Durban and Pietermaritzburg were worst hit, as well as areas of Gauteng, which is the economic hub of the country. The rest of the country was fine. You were scared to leave your own house! The police were overwhelmed and the government dragged its feet in deploying the army. There were gunshots and bangs for the next few days. I live between two shopping malls, so i was seriously stressed about whether they would be hit too, as I live in the middle.
Because of the lack of police and army, the community stood together and formed Community Protection groups that did patrols and manned checkpoints in and out of out of suburbs. Private security firms stood by the community members too. It was crazy!!! Who thought that in a matter of 2 days we would be scared to go anywhere and patrolling the streets with neighbours. Major highways to the rest of the country were closed, so we couldn't even go anywhere.
With shops and malls being closed and/or looted and burned, there was nowhere to get food either. Distribution warehouses were also some of the places looted and burned. If you didn't have a few days worth of food you had to get from a neighbour. When things slowly opened up again, only select unlooted shops and petrol stations are open, and those were few. Lines stretching forever to get in. Just down the road from me i have several community checkpoints that you had to go through. Tractors pulled across the road with community members patrolling the streets. Town is finished! Nearly every shop looted and burned. Gunshots can be heard all the time. This town was filthy and dysfunctional to start with.....but now its terrible
I had bags packed to get flee my house with the dogs if I needed to. It was bad here. I keep on thinking of the rest of the country living pretty much blissfully unaware of the reality here where I am.
One good thing that has come of this is that the community has shown it can pull together and protect what is ours as well as help each other in need.
For a good laugh, have a look at this guy trying to steal a huge TV
He has the news camera on him the whole time. You can skip to 7:45 to see it
Hilarious, but sad!
I am all good though and things have settled down back to some veneer of normalcy. I attached 2 pics of the community roadblocks/checkpoints.