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South Africans ignore stay-at-home order imposed to tackle coronavirus

Thousands of South Africans have been ignoring the stay-at-home lockdown instructions imposed overnight by the government designed to stop the spread of coronavirus.

The country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, donned full combat fatigues and cap to address some of the 2,800 troops he deployed at midnight to help police keep the streets quiet, saying the troops must “wage war against an invisible enemy.” He added this is “the most important mission in the history of our country”.

On Friday, however, Johannesburg has been a tale of two cities. In the downtown and traditional suburban areas, there is strong enforcement of the lockdown. Police used tear gas to disperse crowds in the rundown downtown Hillbrow area.

Johannesburg's Sandton district often called the richest place in Africa, has been turned into a ghost town. The acknowledged epicenter, nearly all of the infections in South Africa are in people who have had the funds to recently travel abroad.

But in Johannesburg’s main townships of Soweto and Alexandra, home to an estimated 6 million people, local television ENCA reported earlier it’s “business as usual."  The channel showed busy streets thronged with people, with long queues. “It’s like a holiday," one Sowetan told Fox News.

One woman in Alexandra, standing in a line with hundreds of others to enter a supermarket, said the government didn’t plan the rollout of the lockdown correctly, as she like many others only got their monthly salary today, and she needed to buy groceries.

Police in their vehicles were seen driving past large crowds without stopping. The social distancing of three feet between people was not being practiced, with one shopper remarking that "because someone will steal my place in the queue.”