The Economy That Never Sleeps
AT EXACTLY 10AM ON JULY 12, A COLD MONDAY winter’s morning in Johannesburg, Ntombi Tyesi answered a frantic call from her security services company alerting her about alarms going off at her restaurant in the sprawling township of Soweto.
As owner of The People’s Republic, a small pub and grill eatery in the heart of Soweto, located in front of the normally-bustling Maponya Mall, Tyesi was shocked.
South Africa was on strict lockdown with Covid-19 numbers rising adamantly and a deadly Delta variant on the prowl, and her restaurant had been shut, just like most retail establishments forced to comply with government regulations.
Confused, she requested the security company to go on site to assess what may have triggered the alarms.
“They called me and told me that they were running for their lives,” Tyesi recalls the horror of the day in an interview with FORBES AFRICA. “They said the [people] were throwing bricks and stones at the pub and now, because they were trying to get through, [they were hurling them] at their car as well.”
Shaking with trepidation, Tyesi took the 15-minute drive from home in Pineville to The People’s Republic, a magnet for food-lovers not so long ago, now filled with strangers blatantly stealing from her.
“They took everything! They did not even hesitate when they saw me. Have you ever watched as people just come into your place and take all your stuff? That is exactly what I had to do – watch as people took my furniture, my equipment, my stock, everything!”
Elsewhere in the country, thousands of similar heart-breaking scenarios unfolded, as civil unrest and anarchy gripped the nation eventually leading to over 200 dead, many more beaten and broken, coupled with the arbitrary looting of businesses and rampant destruction of properties across the country. Over 3,000 people were arrested during this turbulent period in South African history.
Tyesi was but one example from a large contingent of small and medium businesses that took the biggest hit, especially in the townships in two of South Africa’s most pertinent provinces and economies; KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Gauteng.
The unrest was precipitated by a series of factors set off by the incarceration in KZN of the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, on July 7. Zuma loyalists demanded his release from prison immediately. As the riots and protests grew, so did the vehemence of the “opportunistic criminals”, as President Cyril Ramaphosa put
