Minority Front leader Shameen Thakur Rajbansi says intensive investigations must be conducted into the deaths that occurred in Phoenix, north of Durban, during last week’s unrest.
Twenty people lost their lives in the area following the widespread looting and destruction of property. The incidents also led to a flare-up of racial tensions.
Rajbansi says the causes of the deaths must be probed.
“ It was from both communities. We are getting a lot of reports. Those are still coming in and the police are also investigating how many of those were maybe murders, how many of those were people caught in a crossfire. How many of those resulted just from stampedes in the looting. So, the causes are various. We lost lives in all communities.”
Police Minister Bheki Cele visited the area following the deaths:
Rajbansi has also appealed to members of the community to refrain from posting videos and voice notes on social media that incite violence and cause panic. She says these messages should rather be forwarded to the police for further investigations.
“These videos are very violent; the audio clips are very threatening. People are simply sending it just to about everybody thinking that they need to make people aware of it and they need to react. The correct reaction should be to actually forward these to the police and not to other people. Because there is a lot of fake news currently going around. People just need to identify these and report these.”
