By Chris Faure for The Saker Blog

Part 1

The riotous looting has reduced but is still continuing into Wednesday. We don’t really know what is left to loot and burn but whatever is standing is still being looted and burnt.

This clearly was a planned initiative as the looter vehicles, cars and trucks have their number plates removed or covered with black plastic bags, the movement of the mobs are coordinated so there are instructions coming from somewhere, the looting mobs are growing bigger in size and the reasonable communities are in fear. Yet overall the activity has reduced with fewer targets and towns lying in rack and ruin.

It is difficult to give this a name, excepting anarchism and it is taking the shape of siege warfare. It seems to be a faction fight but who is really fighting who?. The looting is done by different mobs than the arson and burning of buildings and central business districts. So, is it a civil war, a coup d’état, or instigation toward a Rwanda type situation? Or, simply the poor eating the rich? The major question is why did the state security apparatus not see this coming? Or did they? And further, where is the state of emergency? Where is the tear gas to disperse crowds? Where is the sound cannon and where is the water cannon? Why are the crowds not being dispersed? At this moment, it could be a first force, a second force or a third force, some combination or some weird conflation, in charge of the lawlessness.

On the ground, the biggest danger now (besides looting mobs and real bullets being fired) is hunger. Shops are running out of stock (if they have not closed outright) and the biggest food distribution warehouse in South Africa serving other African countries, is being looted to nothing by thousands of looters. This is the central nerve centre for bulk food distribution in KZN (KwaZulu Natal) supplying all the major retailers including Shoprite, Checkers, Woolworths, SPAR and Game. There is a massive food crisis developing now. There is no bread, meat, milk, petrol and other essential supplies in most parts of Durban. KZN is literally burning to the ground.

The Police and military have lost control, and that is if they ever had it. Holding cells are full, so what is to be done with hundreds of arrestees but kick ‘em around a bit and let them go. Every single shop, every single warehouse as far as the horizon in every direction has been looted.

Unintended Consequences : There is a profound reason that some business regions and residential areas emerged completely unscathed: so far

Yet, South Africa is a strange place. There is another force and this is a force to be reckoned with and they have had their baptism of fire. Nobody really cares about an ex-President in jail, yet, town after town, area after area the citizens are showing that they know how to deal with this.

After years of taking care of their own security in a country with a crime rate as big as a war zone, civil society stood up, ready. The citizenry of South Africa have been living under the worst crime conditions imaginable.

The everyday ordinary suddenly became extraordinary. Here an overweight pensioner in shuffling sandals, there a roundish housewife with a handgun, a young man with a hunting rifle, an Indian trader with a shotgun, a skinny youngster with a golf club, another Indian woman, dressed in an elegant sari, but with a cane machete stuck through the back strap, others just with paintball guns.

With the police nowhere in sight, and the defense forces but a dream protecting the deli counters of supermarkets, these citizens stood up to protect their own. The ordinary, random citizens of South Africa who have had enough suffering beneath the most corrupt regime in Africa stood up, joined hands in ice-cold determination and superb organization to defend themselves and their lives and livelihoods. The mere sight of a wall of civilians who knew that their homes and livelihoods were at risk, was enough to indicate to looting mobs that this is not a soft target. Housewives were mobilized and small business owners blockaded entrances to suburbs with their private vehicles. Others patrolled with private drones. Food parcels were distributed. Shifts were rotated. Communication was relayed and coordinated. All around the country, the most unlikely people in the most unlikely groupings understood exactly what they had to do and set about doing it with full discipline.

The firearms legislation is draconian. One curious benefit has been the fact that all South African firearm owners had to have compulsory re-training in firearm handling.

There is an enormous irony. Just a few weeks ago, a new bill was proposed for public comment. This involved radical changes to the firearms act, which called for completely disallowing self-defense as a reason for obtaining a firearm license, and severely curtailing and eliminating most other reasons for owning arms as well. If accepted, it would practically mean the disarmament of the private citizens of South Africa. Meanwhile, what we saw happening over the past few days is probably the greatest international proof of concept for the need for private firearm ownership in a century. It provided conclusive proof that there are occasions on which the armed and police forces of a country cannot and will not protect its citizens – and that when this happens – the greatest and most valuable fallback army a country can have is its own private citizenry.

Let’s be clear. This citizen defense force did not set out to protect the government which is clearly now a state unable to even play the role, they did not protect an ex-President in jail, they did not protect the laws of the land, but they protected themselves against the tyranny of the majority. White, Black and Indian protect living areas together.

Still, serious calls for further help are also being heard. In the large town of Pietermaritzburg about 100,000 hooligans stormed .. but today, there is no food for 2 Million inhabitants. This morning there is a call for help from this city for experienced hands to re-establish stability. The citizen forces cannot continue on a longer term given millions of hungry in the countryside.

The town of Empangeni is looted and trashed completely. Entire shopping malls emptied in other places and cleaned out. Fridges, cell phones, TVs, bananas and floor mops, gun shops, veterinary surgery, computer repair, pharmacies, charity stores carried away in trucks, vans and cars or forklifts and industrial carts. Solar panels and corrugated iron sheets were ripped from the roofs. Farms and sugar cane fields set alight, animals half burnt and torched trucks all over the roads. The plunder is indescribable.

It seems that the small numbers of police that could be found, were employed to formally arrest perpetrators and process them. Scattered police co-operated very nicely with the citizen defenders and both parties greatly appreciated each other’s help. Perhaps they did what they could to handle a situation that had gone completely beyond the capabilities of their leadership to handle, despite the unnaturally large size of South Africa’s police force. Unconfirmed but I believe the stocks of ammunition is low.

Elsewhere, videos showed how members of the Indian communities of Natal, assembled to perform exactly the same tasks. Indians who have slowly found themselves to have been disdained and humiliated by the present dispensation, were now proudly on the side of resistance against tyranny.  In other parts the brown communities evidently did the same. There has been instances of private citizens arresting police members for looting. This is a zoo.

There are not too many “free Zuma” slogans being heard and Julius Malema so far seemingly has not taken his Economic Freedom Fighters to join the looters.

We’re looking at a country that has become an incredibly dangerous mess. To find, amid all this confusion, that the country’s organized defense system had been caught completely off-guard is a huge embarrassment. And to find the non-formal defense citizenry strangely prepared and very organized, is probably going to be a surprise phenomenon. The clear preparedness of the civilian population is a ray of much hope for themselves but holds a warning for an utterly corrupt regime.

Yet, this is siege warfare. Siege against food, delivery of food, communication, main road arteries closed, trucking to deliver food. We do not know what anyone’s next steps will be.

The calls have just gone out in the last few minutes of writing, to change this yet again to a race war against whites.  Listen to this video:  https://saker.community/2021/07/14/video/

This is also fast becoming an international crisis as Sputnik has just reported that India is talking to the South African government about the attacks against Indian Suburbs.  https://sputniknews.com/india/202107141083382415-india-in-talks-with-south-africa-about-pro-zuma-riots-after-indian-suburbs-are-attacked/

For photos, videos:  https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/

More from Sputnik:  https://sputniknews.com/africa/202107141083383964-police-caught-looting-goods-as-deadly-riots-in-south-africa-enter-day-6—videos/