A South African court has sentenced a former security guard to 12 years in prison for instigating deadly riots in support of ex-President Jacob Zuma in 2021. Zuma, not related to the former president, shared a video inciting people to loot and burn a mall. At least 350 people died in the unrest, the worst to hit South Africa since apartheid ended in 1994. President Cyril Ramaphosa described the violence as an "attempted insurrection." Some of Zuma's supporters were angry that he had been imprisoned for contempt after refusing to cooperate with an inquiry into widespread corruption during his time in office. The riots began in KwaZulu-Natal and spread to Gauteng, resulting in the looting of over 200 shopping malls and the loss of over 150,000 jobs.
Mdumiseni Zuma, a security guard at a shopping mall in KwaZulu-Natal's Pietermaritzburg city, was accused of recording and distributing an incendiary video that called on people to attack the mall. The court dismissed Zuma's defense of the video being a "drunk prank." A further 65 suspects are due to appear in court in January in connection with the unrest.
