CEO of the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry Palesa Phili is continuing with her testimony at the South African Human Rights Commission’s hearings into July’s civil unrest.
At least 350 people died when violence and widespread looting erupted in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. She says that law enforcement agencies were overwhelmed by the number of people that looted shopping centres.
“For us, it really seems like a well-coordinated attack on the business communities. Because how do you mobilise so many people to be in one place at a certain time. And some of them are told that they just loot, in other places there’s arson, or burning down buildings after looting. I don’t have any evidence that I can say this is why we are saying that but it is just a general view of the business community,” says Phili.
Phili says they were unable to get hold of police at the peak of the unrest.
“The people that went AWOL were the police, but the MEC I was talking to her literally every two hours, I felt for her because she was almost like powerless, because for me it’s putting pressure, where your people and then we shifted the attention to say, we need to bring in SANDF. Then once we started doing that then it was a better conversation, but she never went AWOL. It was a commissioner, as well as his generals whose phones didn’t even ring,” Phili explains.
SAHRC hearing into July unrest: 18 November 2021
