South African police did not ask armed citizens to help quell unrest
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 16, 2021 at 11:48
- 3 min read
- By James OKONG'O, AFP South Africa
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The voice note was posted here on Twitter on July 12, 2021, and has since been shared more than 1,700 times.
“Army has just been deployed now ... The police have put a thing out to say armed civilians please come and assist all areas and, yeah. Shoot to kill, basically. So yeah, at least everyone is doing something, hey,” an unidentified woman says in the voice note.
The person who tweeted the audio file denied it was her voice in the recording.
“Hello everyone, I did not make the voice note, I only shared the voice note, having only listened to the first half and not the last, I apologise,” she wrote on Twitter.
The message appears to have originally circulated as a screen recording of a voice note shared in a WhatsApp group.
Some people commenting on Twitter responded to the contents of the voice note with shock.
However, the claim that the police asked armed civilians to help contain the chaos by giving them shoot-to-kill orders is false.
No call for civilian assistance
Police denied issuing any statement seeking the help of armed civilians and warned people not to take the law into their own hands.
“The police did not ask armed civilians to shoot and kill protesters, that’s criminal,” said police spokeswoman Themba Lirandzu. “Anyone taking the law into their own hands will be arrested.”
Local media reported South African Police Minister Bheki Cele making a similar statement on July 13, 2021.
Mobs sack stores and malls
Unrest erupted in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng provinces in South Africa on July 8, 2021, as rioters looted shops, burnt buildings and cars, and set up blockades on major roads.
AFP reported that the disorder could lead to food and fuel shortages in the country as the manufacturing, farming, and oil refining industries were badly disrupted.
More than 100 people have died as a result of the trouble and another 1,200 have been arrested, according to official figures.
With police overwhelmed by the chaos, communities in the affected provinces (and elsewhere in the country) banded together to protect businesses and properties.
In addition, the army was called in to help police and on July 14, 2021, the South African government said it had increased the number of troops on the streets to 25,000 — 10 times more than had initially been deployed.
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