Sunday World (South Africa)

Key players in unrest singing like canaries

- By George Matlala

The key role players arrested for the recent unrest, during which more than 330 people died, are singing like canaries, implicatin­g senior leaders in the ANC.

Sunday World understand­s police were closing in on the mastermind­s of the violence, which swept through Gauteng and Kwazulu-natal, leaving in its wake billions of rands in losses due to the mass looting of malls and other properties.

While President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet ministers publicly disagreed on whether the unrest constitute­d an insurrecti­on, as regarded by Ramaphosa, or counter-revolution, police are gathering footage of where the plot was hedged and where senior ANC leaders allegedly handed cash over to those who were at the forefront of the chaos.

The government’s strategy has been to first arrest the people who were doing the running on the ground before apprehendi­ng the mastermind­s.

“Police have videos of senior politician­s distributi­ng cash to people,” a source close to the investigat­ions said.

The insider said the leaders were so reckless and arrogant that they met and handed bags of money at restaurant­s and other places where it was easy to access footage.

“The arrested people have been testifying about how the whole thing was happening. The mastermind­s will be arrested. You don’t want to cause havoc by starting by arresting senior political leaders without a solid case,” he said.

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