Insurrection or Ethnic Mobilization? An Afrocentric Review of the 2021 KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng Looting Spree

Just as South Africa is not immune to unrest, looting sprees and various forms of violent acts, this paper critically reflects on the recent unrest that plagued both KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) and Gauteng provinces in South Africa. The paper questions if the 2021 Kwazulu-Natal and Gauteng looting sprees were triggered by insurrection or ethnic mobilization. Accordingly, both insurrection and ethnic mobilization are known factually to mean two different concepts, deriving from two different places of origin. However, we have seen various South African scholars, reactive analysts, government officials, ministers, and presidents become very much confused as to the description of what took place. This paper argues towards embracing insurrection (a violent uprising against an authority or government) and de-emphasizing ethnic mobilization (the process by which groups organize around some feature of ethnic identity in pursuit of collective ends) as more related and characterized the recent unrest which transmuted into a looting spree in different shopping malls both in KZN and Gauteng provinces. The invocation of the Afrocentric perspective as the principal theoretical lens in analyzing a subject of this nature is informed by the need to embrace more Africa-centered analytical tools in resolving Africa-centred problems. This paper has adopted a qualitative research approach, which took the form of document review.