Unemployment not exactly at the heart of looting, experts argue

Experts say looting wasn’t necessarily due to the high unemployment rate but rather criminal behaviour.

This week, a Shoprite truck was looted in Durban, sparking further panic and paranoia about relief funds and possible looting after President Cyril Ramaphosa declared the province a state of disaster.

Gauteng Democratic Alliance shadow MEC for social development Refiloe Nt’sekhe said 35.3% unemployment, poverty, and poor food security caused the looting.

“Solutions include increasing welfare to work programmes, developing and incubating small businesses, teaching people urban subsistence farming and instead of food parcels give food vouchers,” she said.

“Nobody wants to go and steal. They are risking their lives. The unemployment rate is at an alltime high and people needed to feed. They end up resorting to looting because shops are vulnerable,” she said.

Nt’sekhe said it became even easier to loot because of a lack of security.

“There is no trust in government after how money raised for Covid had been used, which leads to any other relief fund.

“Beneficiaries do not trust they will get what’s intended for them,” she said.

Head of the department of criminology at the University of Limpopo Prof Jaco Barkhuizen said it might be that some people are desperate for food and water and looting was the only possible way of gathering what they needed to survive.

“But if you look at the looting happening now and last year, this was pure criminality. No security or police made it easier for criminals to take what they wanted,” he said.

Barkhuizen said the looting showed a lack of fear and a lack of consequence.

“Criminality in South Africa is a huge problem. People are suffering, people die and yet you have people that enrich themselves during a national disaster such as in Covid,” he said.

Economist Dawie Roodt said there were various reasons why looting took place other than the high levels of unemployment and poverty.

He said it was true that many people go hungry at night but this was not the main reason why they were looting.

He said there were countries far worse off than South Africa that did not resort to looting.

Another economist Piet Croucamp added looting was due to the absence of authority and consequences.

“In South Africa, the conditions for looting existed because there was a high unemployment rate and because the state was absent and [the state] were the primary looters,” he said.

Croucamp said when the state is the primary looter, it becomes somewhat justifiable for the citizens to become secondary looters.

“There was an absence in authority in general. You can empower the police and send the military to the streets, but it doesn’t take away the reason why people behave as they do,” he said.

Croucamp said economic development, job creation and economic growth was the solution.

Security expert Dr Johan Burger said looting happened because looters assumed that the authorities, including the police, were busy with other matters concerning the disaster and that their looting would not be seen, or stopped.

Burger said when the provision of relief aid is slow and inadequate people become desperate to get their hands on food and other foodstuffs, especially when it affects children.

“But then there is also always the usual criminal element. They simply exploit such situations to their advantage,” he said.

AfriForum’s campaign manager Jacques Broodryk said South Africa has developed a culture of lawlessness.

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“This is again clearly reflected when communities decide to go on looting sprees.

“This criminal mentality has developed because people know the chances are very good that they will get away with it.

“Furthermore police are under-resourced and constantly struggling with political interference and poor leadership,” he said.

“Add the example set by politicians who repeatedly get caught with their hands in the cookie jar and you’ve got a recipe for creating a lawless society.”