South Africa national shutdown

South African security forces say 87 people had been arrested in the last 12 hours across the country over public violence before planned protests by the ...

There have also been arrests in other provinces such as Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape. Parliament said in a statement on Sunday that the South African military would deploy 3,474 soldiers for a month until April 17 to prevent and combat crime in cooperation with the police. The arrests come before a planned protest by South Africa’s third-largest party against the country’s economic woes.

Economic Freedom Fighters leader calls for peaceful demonstrations against alleged state corruption.

Despite the animosity, the ANC is widely expected to lose its majority at next year’s elections and could come to rely on the EFF as a coalition partner, a decade after the movement broke its ties with the governing party. The ANC insisted that businesses would be open as usual on Monday and ordered civil servants to report to their desks but the show of force is being seen as an effort to avoid a repeat of the violent scenes that erupted two years ago following the imprisonment of Mr Ramaphosa’s predecessor “Those very security services that you may want to use against the people may turn against you – and be careful, because they may very well be the ones who will come into the Union buildings, pull you out of your chair, take you down the road to Kgosi Mampuru prison and put you where you belong,” he said. A spokesman for Mr Ramaphosa said on Sunday: “As much as the right to protest is guaranteed and protected under our constitution, equally that right is not absolute, and that right is not a ticket to any form of anarchy or violence.” In anticipation of potential hostilities, the country’s parliament issued a statement on Sunday declaring that the South African military would deploy 3,474 troops as an additional peacekeeping force to support local police and guard government buildings and key infrastructure for a month until 17 April. The EFF is South Africa’s third-largest party, is allied with a number of anti-ANC unions and draws its primary support from black South Africans who feel left behind by the governing party, which has ruled since 1994 and the end of the

South African police on Monday monitored protests by the country's leftist Economic Freedom Fighters party, which is demanding the resignation of President ...

“All South Africans should be protesting with us right now because loadshedding (power cuts) is affecting all of us. “At least 24,300 tires have been confiscated by law enforcement agencies. The party urged all South Africans to participate in a national shutdown but there was limited response in most of the country’s major cities.

Monday, March 20, is the day of the #NationalShutdown in South Africa. The protest is spearheaded by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) against ...

The EFF and its sympathisers, on the other hand, point to the effectiveness of their mobilisation as the reason. From today’s shutdown, it is clear that social media is going to play an influential role in deciding the flow of the tide in the 2024 general elections. The EFF has, since its formation in 2013, been known as the “Twitter party” as a mocker ybecause of the inability of the party to translate its extensive social media support to ballots.

Economic Freedom Fighters is calling for the removal of the president for his failure to end steep rise in unemployment and power blackouts.

The ANC dismissed the shutdown to be a “flop”, while the EFF said it was a sign of a coming “revolution”. Roads were quiet and shops closed in parts of Johannesburg and Pretoria, but there were few reports of violence. Thousands of troops have been deployed to protect roads and businesses in South Africa, while scores of people were arrested as a Marxist opposition party tried to bring the country to a halt.