12 heads led riots

Police Minister Bheki Cele said 12 people have been identified as the masterminds behind the looting and violence in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

More than a thousand people have been arrested in the country linked to the protests, said Cele, “but they were mainly the foot soldiers”.

Cele said he will make sure the 12 people identified will answer for the chaos they caused.

“It is time to zoom in on the masterminds. They run this social media war. The time has come to arrest the instigators and agitators of looting and violence in KwaZulu-Natal,” he said.

Also under investigation are tweets on violence posted by Zuma’s daughter Duduzile.

“When you break the law, it doesn't matter who you are. We are engaging different platforms to track and trace the origins of inflammatory posts and messages inciting violence and have requested that these be taken down with immediate effect,” Cele said.

Meanwhile, State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo said the violent and rampant looting and destruction could have been much worse if the government did not act on intelligence it received prior to the eruption.

She hit back at claims that the country’s intelligence “failed spectacularly” to move quickly on people who incited violence and started the civil unrest following former President Jacob Zuma’s arrest last week.

She said the State Security Agency received intelligence that some of its former senior members within the agency, who were supporters of Zuma, were key in orchestrating the violent unrests.

Dlodlo said they were “busy sorting fact from fiction” on that information.

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