South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday said he has dispatched his Police Minister and premier of KwaZulu Natal province to a township in Durban amid escalating tensions between the Indian and Black African communities there.
The tensions between the two communities in the Indian township of Phoenix and surrounding areas have been sparked by social media posts in which there are calls for action against each other’s communities following the violence over the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma on July 7.
Ramaphosa was briefly in Ethekwini, a metropolitan municipality that includes the city of Durban and surrounding towns, to assess the situation following the continuing violence and looting in the region.
However, he did not visit the suburbs of Phoenix and Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital of KwaZulu-Natal, that have been most affected.
Durban is the largest city in the KwaZulu-Natal province.
Ramaphosa asked police minister Bheki Cele and Premier of KwaZulu Natal province Sihle Zikalala to go to these areas to address the situation.
“The Minister of Police was on his way to Phoenix. Our local leaders - the Premier, the MEC’s (Members of the Executive Committee of the City) are going to have to deal with that type of situation," the president said.
“I wanted to go myself, but time now is of the essence. We are going to have a Cabinet meeting later, so I’m going to have to go back to Gauteng (province), but I’m here now, encouraging and holding the hands of both our people on the ground and also directing the security forces and getting them to go to those areas that are volatile at the moment,” Ramaphosa said.
Concerned over the widespread violence and rioting in South Africa, India''s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Wednesday spoke with his South African counterpart Naledi Pandor who assured him that her government was doing utmost to enforce law and order and an early restoration of normalcy was the overriding priority.
Phoenix and Chatsworth are the two sprawling townships created to forcibly rehouse the thousands of Indian citizens of the region under the draconian apartheid-era policy of separate development. Phoenix is now surrounded by several Black African townships.