Riots leave ugly scars as Richmond braces itself to go the polls

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Three months after the Richmond central business district was devastated by the wave of riots and looting that swept through KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, the scars they left on the Midlands town remain visible.

Bhamjees Corner — a 150-year-old heritage building housing a pharmacy and a number of small shops — has been reduced to an ugly pile of broken brick and rubble, burned to the point that its owners were forced to demolish it.

Sayeed’s Building — itself more than a century old — has also been flattened and cordoned off with emergency tape, another victim of the wave of looting and arson.

The buildings — and Richmond — survived the deadly war between the ANC and Inkatha in the 1980s and early 1990s and the subsequent ANC/United Democratic Movement (UDM) conflict that ravaged the town during the mid-1990s.

The bloody tit-for-tat turf war between the ANC and UDM claimed nearly 100 lives over two years of massacres, assassinations and counter-assassinations. The carnage ended with the murder of UDM Richmond leader Sifiso Nkabinde, who joined Bantu Holomisa’s party after being expelled from the ANC for allegedly being an apartheid agent.

Sayeed’s and Bhamjees — along with Richmond — survived these conflicts and the wave of political killings since 2016, including the assassination of municipal manager S’bu Sithole outside the police station.

They didn’t survive the July riots. 

Buildings that were looted then burnt during the 2021 looting and unrest in Richmond. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Graffiti demanding the release of former president Jacob Zuma sprayed on shop walls in Shepstone Road, Richmond’s main street, and in the streets leading off it, remains untouched, another stark  reminder of the week of destruction carried out in his name.

A smattering of election posters, mainly those of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), ANC and Democratic Alliance, stare down on the remains of the ruined buildings from light poles and broken traffic lights — as if Richmond’s recent past is competing with its future for the attention of passersby, who appear more focused on their daily battle to survive than the call to the polls on 1 November.

Busi Nyembe sold chickens, fruit and vegetables on the verandah of Sayeed’s Building from 1994 until 11 July this year, when the building was burned.

Nyembe, who has a home at Magoda but rents a room closer to her place of business, stored her merchandise on the premises and earned enough to put her oldest daughter, Lindiwe, through school and support the family.

Now she uses a torn plastic sheet suspended between palate wood uprights to try to form a shelter for herself, her youngest daughter and her grandson, both of whom accompany her to work every day. 

She now has to pay R500 a month to store her produce in a container owned by a nearby business, which increases her operating costs and reduces profit.

“It is very hard for me now. Before we could work under shelter. There are no people coming to buy here now, so my business is very bad,” she said. “I don’t know what is going to happen.”

Nyembe is undecided about voting on 1 November. “I don’t know if I can vote. Maybe.I don’t know.”

Nonku Khathi, a cashier at the Mr Price Store, was at home when her workplace was looted on 11 July. 

“The shop was looted early in the morning. I was still at home. They called to tell us to stay at home. We came in to help clean up on the 14th. We’ve been sitting at home since then, waiting for the store to re-open. We’re ready now to start working again,” she said.

Khathi and her colleagues were luckier than most employees of businesses that were looted and burned. They have been receiving their wages despite being at home while the store, which was cleaned out, was being refurbished.

“This looting thing was a disaster for Richmond. There are so many people who have lost their jobs. We are lucky that we have been still getting paid. Most people have been sitting at home with nothing since July. You can see it: there are more people begging for food and crime is worse now,” Khathi said.

Khathi, who is a resident of Ndaleni, Richmond’s largest township, said she will still vote for her councillor of choice for ward 1 on 1 November. “I do vote and I’m registered to vote again. I will vote. I have to vote.”

For Khathi, Richmond’s erratic water and electricity supply, poor roads and unemployment are the key issues that will influence her choice of councillor. “We have just finished two weeks with no water. There is load shedding and there are other problems with electricity as well. There is no light, there is no electricity to cook when I come home from work.”

The governing party controls all seven of Richmond’s wards, with the DA taking two of seven proportional representation seats and the EFF one. Neither the Inkatha Freedom Party nor the United Democratic Movement were able to secure enough votes even for a PR seat in 2016, when the ANC’s dominance over the town was reinforced. 

The ANC also controls the uMgungundlovu district municipality, under which the Richmond and six other local municipalities — Msunduzi, Impendle, uMgeni, Mkhambathini, Mpofana and uMshwathi — fall, despite the ongoing infighting and killings in its troubled Moses Mabhida region.

The district was a two horse race between the ANC and the DA in 2016, with the DA targeting uMngeni, which it lost by nine percent, and the IFP hoping to build on its comeback in 2019 and take a greater PR slice — and hopefully wards — across uMgungundlovu this time out.

ANC members attend a political campaign to encourage people top vote for the party. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

The DA coordinator for the eastern part of the district, Goodman Madonda, who is contesting ward seven, said this week that the party would field candidates for all seven wards in Richmond. In some of the other municipalities in the district, some candidates would contest more than one ward.

Madonda said the DA’s target was to “ensure that the ANC goes below 50% in the municipalities”.

He said that poor service delivery under ANC rule would work in the DA’s favour, as would the looting and riots, but that the violence had led to people in the area being “scared”.

“The police have failed to ensure that the people who burned and looted here were arrested. These riots took us back 27 years. A lot of things which were meant to progress are now dead,” Madonda said. “This is something that was planned by the ANC.”

The DA election sound truck was hijacked and stripped and burned last month while passing through Richmond, which worsened the sense of fear in the area.

“We are trying to make sure that people are safe and that nobody gets killed. Everyone is afraid of that. Most of our activists are scared. They end up not wanting to be at the forefront. It is also not easy for us to ask them to go with us door to door in case anything happens to them,” Madonda said.

One of the candidates for Khathi’s ward is Clinton van der Byl, who is contesting the election on a DA ticket. 

Democratic Alliance mayoral candidate in Richmond Clinton Van Der Byl. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Van der Byl’s father was Rodney van der Byl, the ANC deputy mayor of Richmond who was shot dead while watching the World Cup in 1996 at the Richmond Tavern in the centre of town.  

Clinton van der Byl’s uncle is Andrew Ragavaloo, who served as ANC mayor of Richmond and led the town through the ANC/UDM war and into an era of relative stability and economic recovery.

Despite this — or perhaps because of it — Van der Byl has become a key figure in the DA campaign to try to win more seats on both the Richmond council and in the uMgungundlovu district.

Van der Byl said voter loyalty to the ANC would be a “tough nut to crack” but that the violence and looting and subsequent loss of jobs and livelihoods might help voters to “see through the facade” presented by the governing party.

“If we deny the actual source of this looting and the violence, there is no hope for the country as a whole and for KwaZulu-Natal in particular.”

Van der Byl said a culture of fear existed in Richmond because of its violent history and current events.

“The threat of violence on one’s person is almost inescapable here and in other parts of KwaZulu-Natal. It’s sad. People have become numb to this,” he said.

Richmond’s current mayor and de facto ANC mayoral candidate, Samora Ndlovu, said the riots had caused serious job losses in the central business district and in the surrounding farming community.

Richmond Mayor Samora Ndlovu. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with ANC volunteers in ward 4, Ndlovu said the riots — and the violence which had taken place since 2016 — were “regrettable”.

He said the murder of Sithole, councillor Sifiso Mkhize and deputy mayor Thandazile Phoswa — which have not been solved — had created uncertainty and fear in the town.

But the “rate of political killings has slowed down” and the situation appeared to be stabilising, Ndlovu said.

The ANC’s new candidate selection process, which now involved residents, appeared to have assisted in lowering political tensions. All the disputes that had been lodged by branches had been resolved, Ndlovu said.

The large turn-out of volunteers — each ward had contributed a team of 100 — for the ANC campaign was also a sign of increasing stability in the party in Richmond, he said. “People still love the ANC here and trust us. That is why young people are turning out in these numbers to campaign for the party with no pay.”

The Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) Richmond offices were looted and torched in the riots and that equipment – including hand held scanners – was stolen.

The Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa’s spokesperson, Thabani Ngwira, said the offices had been rebuilt and the voter management devices and other equipment that was stolen had been blacklisted to deactivate them. “There will be no impact on the upcoming election. No voter stations were damaged in the riots.”