The army was put on standby under the National Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure, a unified command that coordinates the nation’s police, military, and intelligence agencies for high-profile events, on Wednesday as authorities increased security by adding 3, 500 police officers.
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Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili, the deputy national commissioner for policing, informed reporters on Tuesday that the government was anticipating protests in Johannesburg and other significant cities.
She said, “We will permit that right to protest to be exercised.” However, within the law’s proper guidelines and restrictions.
Near the summit venue, an exhibition center next to South Africa’s largest football stadium, police said they have designated specific locations for protesters to gather near.
Leaders and top diplomats from more than 40 nations as well as from international organizations like the UN are expected to attend the two-day summit, which will take place on Saturday. However, America is boycotting.
Anti-capitalists, climate activists, women’s rights activists, anti-immigrant organizations, and other groups are expected to demonstrate their own issues with poverty and inequality.
By putting up billboards in Johannesburg that read “Welcome to the most RACE-REGULATED country in the world,” a trade union representing members of South Africa’s Afrikaner white minority has already stoked controversy.
The Afrikaner trade union, Solidarity, threatened legal action after one of the boards was removed by city authorities.
The billboards reference South Africa’s affirmative action laws, which promote opportunities for Black people and have become a result of US-South Africa’s diplomatic conflict.
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, will not be present at the G20 summit as a boycott because of his widely disproven claims that the country’s Black-led government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies and violently oppressing its Africann minority.
Trump’s claims have been largely disproven as being unsupported, but the US government’s boycott threatens to derail Africa’s first G20 summit.
Washington claimed its decision to boycott the G20 summit had lost its influence, so South Africa rejected a US request on Wednesday to have no leaders’ declaration issued following the G20 summit this weekend.
Government officials confirmed rumors that Washington would not participate in the summit had been reiterated by the US embassy over the weekend.
“For the wealthy”
On Friday, the summit’s eve, the advocacy group Women for Change wants a national shutdown. In protest of South Africa’s extremely high rates of femicide and violence against women, it is asking women to boycott their jobs on the day.
The G20 cannot talk of growth and progress, according to Women for Change, until South Africa stops burying women every 2.5 hours.
The leader of a South African anti-immigration group, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, said the country’s leader will launch a protest against the lack of employment and poverty there.
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Source: Aljazeera
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