What's behind the riots that shook South Africa?

A combination of the pandemic, harsh lockdowns and a troubled economic legacy has made the most industrialised nation in Africa a tinderbox. What will happen next?

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa says the unrest was an attempted insurrection
(Image credit: © Oupa Nkosi/AP/Shutterstock)

What’s happened?

The worst unrest since the end of apartheid left at least 330 people dead last month and shone a spotlight on the corruption, racial tensions and vicious political rivalries that plague South Africa – as well as its exceptional, entrenched economic inequality. In a wave of rioting and looting, about 40,000 businesses were vandalised, with the damage estimated at around $3.4bn.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.