‘Shock-and-awe’ campaign planned in Joburg inner city
Authorities plan to clear the city centre’s buildings of unauthorised occupants in a military-style campaign being considered by mayor Herman Mashaba
Johannesburg municipal authorities are planning to clear the city centre’s buildings of unauthorised occupants in a "shock-and-awe" campaign being considered by its mayor, Herman Mashaba, who has already drawn criticism for calling some undocumented migrants criminals. The plan to return "hijacked buildings" to their owners or have them forfeited to the state was discussed on February 6 at the municipality-convened Inner City Partnership Forum, according to a presentation by the city’s regulatory, compliance and special investigations unit seen by Bloomberg. Johannesburg’s forensic unit "will adopt the ‘shock and awe’ doctrine" based "on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular display of force to paralyse the enemy’s perception of the battlefield and destroy its will to fight," it said, adding that the strategy was used by US forces in Iraq. Targeting the centre of Johannesburg, home to 400,000 of the city’s 5-million people, according to municipal data from 2013, could ratche...
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