Dazed and shocked residents reeling from the anarchy that has reduced much of KwaZulu-Natal, including the Durban metro and the provincial capital city Pietermaritzburg to rubble in the past few days, woke up on Wednesday to face another stark reality: milk, bread and other basic foodstuffs have become impossibly scarce.

As reports circulated in local communities of mobs and sinister prowlers in cars without registration plates, of an increasing number of fires being started, with acts of sabotage on water pipes and electricity substations, anxious people swamped the entrances of the few intact grocery outlets spared destruction...

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