A Story Lungelo Sibiya wrote for the Sunday Times Commemoration of the July unrest 2021
‘ Wake up and loot so Zuma can be released’ Zama*, 21, was at home with her mother, a friend, and her niece and nephew in Nhlalakahle outside Greytown, KwaZulu-Natal, when she heard about the looting. “On Friday 9 July 2021 there was a car going around Nhlalakahle township announcing that we should wake up on Monday morning, on the 12th, and go to Greytown and loot so that Jacob Zuma would be re- leased,” said the student. Zuma had been taken to prison in Estcourt just before midnight on Wednesday July 7. Less than two days later in Greytown, which is about 70km from Zuma’s Nkandla homestead, Zama watched as two men she didn’t recognise, wearing ANC T-shirts, drove around her neighbourhood in a white van. On a loud hailer, she says, they were “begging” residents to loot the town to help force Zuma’s release. Zama’s mother and the friend she was with at the time, confirm her story. “It seemed like many people around this street are Zuma supporters because many of them during ...