Scores arrested in S. Africa for looting foreign shops

Early morning traffic was paralyzed and drivers forced to use alternative routes as violence broke out in several parts of Johannesburg in South Africa for the third day.

Despite the arrests of 91 people on Monday, the spate of violence and looting of foreign-owned shops continued to spread in the province of Gauteng.

It is still unclear what triggered the unrest with rumors ranging from the shooting of a taxi driver by drug dealers to the burning of a building in the central business district where three people died.

The violence started last week in the capital Pretoria, 53 kilometers north of Johannesburg, leaving a trail of destruction on several major streets that continued to spread as more foreign-owned shops were targeted.

The Gauteng provincial police spokesman, Colonel Lungelo Dlamini has described the perpetrators as criminal opportunists. He has announced that the police were on high alert and strong action would be taken against the perpetrators.

Those arrested face crimes including public violence, malicious damage to property and theft.

The Zambian government has issued a travel advisory warning its truck drivers to avoid traveling on South Africa's major routes, amid threats of violence in the haulage sector targeting foreigners.

Such violence breaks out sporadically in South Africa, where many nationals blame immigrants for high unemployment, particularly in manual labor, AFP reported.

Analysts believe that the sporadic attacks of foreign nationals in South Africa in recent years are indications of economic discontent among local people. South Africa's ambitious plans to push up foreign direct investments may be damaged.

"As long as South Africa's economic growth remains slow, desperate people will attack foreigners whom they perceive as getting more than they should from a broke government offering limited resources, it doesn't matter whether this is true or not," said Emmanuel Matambo from the University of Johannesburg.

The department of Statistics SA, a government agency, is expected to release the second-quarter GDP figures on Tuesday. It already announced that the construction, mining and trade sectors are in recession. The economy slumped sharply in the first three months, contracting by 3.2 percent.

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund lowered South Africa's projected GDP growth rate for 2019 from 1.4 percent to 1.2 percent, placing the country among the worst performers in sub-Saharan Africa.

The unemployment rate in the country also rose by 1.4 percent in the second quarter of this year to 29 percent in the previous period, according to latest government data. This means about 6.8 million South Africans are unemployed.

The country has the highest inequality rate in the world, with a World Bank report finding that 1 percent of the population own 70.9 percent of the country's wealth.