Picture File: Looters outside a shopping centre alongside a burning barricade in Durban on 12 July. Picture: KoreaTimes/AP-Yonhap
A document from intelligence officials has reportedly outlined measures by police to quell planned attacks on law-enforcement entities and public infrastructure on Monday, 23 August 2021.
Netwerk24 reported on Thursday that the document warned of a possible flare-up of violence and looting targeting police stations, military bases and other premises where law-enforcement officials work.
This is apparently meant to make the country ungovernable, according to the report. But it was unclear why the attack was being planned for Monday.
Last month, deadly civil unrest rocked parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng and saw the looting of shopping malls, vandalism and destruction of property.
According to Netwerk24, the intelligence document has also revealed that the masterminds behind the planned riots on Monday want to target state, municipal and police vehicles.
They have apparently urged people to take firearms from law-enforcement officials and security officers, and to target correctional service facilities to free prisoners.
In response, police are said to have encouraged police to wear bulletproof vests and not to work alone.
ALSO READ: Death toll in KZN, Gauteng riots rises to over 300
More than 300 people died in the wake of the violence and the damage to infrastructure and the economy has been estimated to run into billions of rands.
Government labelled the unrest as part of a “failed insurrection” and said it was a deliberate, coordinated and well-planned attack on the country’s democracy.
Several suspected instigators have appeared in various courts on charges of inciting public violence.
The violence was supposedly sparked by the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma for being in contempt of the Constitutional Court. Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison and he is serving his sentence at the Estcourt Correctional Centre in KZN.
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