Police Minister Bheki Cele confirmed that there was heightened security around the country’s national key points including airports and electricity power stations. Cele told the media that reservoirs around KwaZulu-Natal were also being protected. In Joburg the post office had been attacked. There were also attempts to attack some health facilities including Bheki Mlangeni Hospital in Soweto.

“There are several names that are coming out it does look like a crime against the state so relevant structures will have to work in that kind of professionality to say people are attacking the state if they are organised for instance somebody sent information to say a person that is giving all the details of the pipeline from Durban to Joburg you not going to tell me what are you going to loot except causing damage and terrorising the nation,” Cele said. Cele said on social media there were several names that had been identified as instigating violence.

He said government was taking the issue quite seriously. “Those structures that deal with that have that component of state security and will be proactive and give us the product and work on it. The minister of state security was supposed to go to Durban and work on some of these names.” State Security Agency Deputy Minister Zizi Kodwa said there was a third force behind the attacks on business in and around the country. He said the aim of the looting was to destabilise the country and plunge the nation into a food and fuel crisis.

“There are people we are investigating that we know are planning this, they are using our circumstances because they know we young people are unemployed they are using us and we must refuse to destroy property. Truth will come they are sitting somewhere using children to achieve their ulterior motives,” Kodwa said. SA Reserve Bank spokesperson Thoraya Pandy said the bank had measures in place to ensure that the state key point is not infiltrated. The Reserve Bank headquarters and its cash centres are all regarded national key points.

“With any situation that may occur we have measures in place to make sure that all the protocols are in place when it comes to securing a national key point of course there would be high-end security at all our sites and especially our head office,” Pandy said. In Soweto some community members had gone as far as protecting the Maponya Mall themselves, reportedly the last standing mall in the township. The Star understands that some community members who had guns had had an altercation with criminals who wanted to storm into the mall on Tuesday night. It is said the group came in a minibus taxi without number plates.