What started as a march against undocumented migrants has collapsed into two days of stone-throwing, looting, and running battles with police.
The CBD is scarred. Shops are gutted. And this morning, police and private security firms were still patrolling streets that look like they have been through a riot.
More than 19 people have been arrested for public violence and malicious damage to property after protests erupted in the Point and spread across the city center. On Friday, cars were torched, shopfronts were smashed, and groups were filmed walking out of stores with stolen goods while rubber bullets cracked in the background.
KZN police spokesperson Robert Netshiunda confirmed the arrests but warned that the final number would be higher.
“Because we’ve arrested in different parts of the province, different parts of Durban as well. So at least more than 19 of them, mostly are students, no surprise because we saw the numbers on the ground they were young people, most of them,” Netshiunda said.
“They are arrested for public violence and malicious property damage. We are going to see if there are additional charges.”
According to police, the flashpoint was the point precinct. Residents – many of them foreign nationals themselves – threw stones at the marchers. The marchers retaliated. And Durban exploded.
This is not happening in a vacuum. On 30 June, thousands marched in Durban, demanding the removal of undocumented migrants, blaming them for crime, stealing jobs, and collapsing clinics and schools. The anger is young, it is raw, and it is becoming more militant by the week.
Now, the state is panicking.
The KZN government has requested the deployment of the SANDF on the streets of Durban because it knows what this province has seen before. July 2021 started exactly like this – localised anger, then opportunistic looting, then an entire province on fire with more than 300 people dead. No one in eThekwini wants a repeat, but everyone can smell it in the air.
And here is the political problem no one wants to admit: some of the protesters did not even know what they were protesting.
SABC News reported that some marchers were unaware that the controversial asylum directive they were marching against had already been withdrawn.
So, who is mobilising these young people? Who is feeding them half-truths on TikTok and WhatsApp groups and then sending them into the CBD?
The IFP says the government left this vacuum open for years.
“This was predictable. For years, we have warned that if the government does not fix the porous borders and the asylum system, people will take the law into their own hands,” a senior IFP leader told SABC.
