The real reasons for South Africa’s riots

Sixty-eight years ago, when I was four, my Scottish father and English mother took me from London to South Africa, to a seaside town 20 miles south of Cape Town in the Western Cape. This is Fish Hoek (pronounced ‘fishhook’). I was brought up here, and after working in England and elsewhere in South Africa, I have returned. I have lived through the rise and fall of apartheid, and the 27-year rule of the ANC. I watched the terrible recent events, which seem to have subsided. We are sifting through the ruins and wondering what happened, and why. South Africa has nine provinces. Two of them, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN, formerly Natal) and Gauteng (with Johannesburg and Pretoria), have been devastated by violent riots. More than 300 people have been killed and more than 50 schools in KZN have been ransacked; thousands of shops, including big, insured, white-owned supermarkets and small, uninsured, black-owned stores, have been destroyed; pharmacies and clinics have been attacked and trucks and buses have been set on fire.