Food riots in Durban: 3 supermarkets looted

Shoprite, Checkers and Pick’n Pay supermarkets at Durban shopping mall looted simultaneously by hundreds of people from the “Unemployed People’s Movement’…

Growing anger against white community about forced removal of 5,000+ Early Morning Market traders from July 31 to make way for upmarket mall…

Members of the so-named Unemployed People's Movement (together with the Abahlali baseMjondolo shackdwellers movement) went on the rampage on Wednesday afternoon looting shops at the upmarket Durban central railway station’s Workshop Shopping Mall, police said.

Earlier in the week, this same group had threatened to ‘destroy shops in KwaZulu-Natal if the government failed to meet their demands for a monthly R1,500 grant – within seven days, for all unemployed people’. They said 26-million people were now unemployed in South Africa.

Only some 50 people were arrested during these well-organised food-riots, during which “many hundreds” of poor people had stormed three top supermarkets simultaneously: Shoprite, Checkers and Pick n Pay. Police captain Khephu Ndlovu said they had been monitoring the situation and 34 women, 15 men were arrested. Continue reading this article...