[American Thinker] A friend in South Africa has been keeping me updated about what’s going on there. According to him, it was "a well-planned attempt at provoking a civil uprising." What’s extraordinary, though, is that, wherever armed, law-abiding citizens have been able to make a stand against the violence and anarchy, the rioters are backing down. My friend forwarded to me a round-robin letter ("the Letter") that South Africans are sharing -- and that reflects his experiences. I’ve included excerpts from the Letter in the body of this post, but you can read the whole Letter here.The ostensible reason for the South African riots is the fact that Jacob Zuma, a former president, was finally arrested on corruption charges. However, according to the Letter, "nobody that I personally know, cares about freeing an ex-president from jail, under whose watch the country turned into a garbage dump."
The looting is comparable to what happened in American cities last year although on a much larger scale:
Skipping down a bit.
However, some regions of South Africa are completely untouched. That’s because armed citizens -- armed with guns and anything else they could find -- have drawn a line that the looters have not even tried to cross:
[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] 
[Spectator] This is a story about Nelson Mandela, and it begins on Robben Island in 1974. Prisoner number 466/64 is writing up his life story, working all night and sleeping all day. Finished pages go to trusted comrades who write comments and queries in the margins. The text is then passed to one Laloo Chiba, who transcribes it in ’microscopic’ letters on to sheets of paper which are later inserted into the binding of notebooks and carried off the island by Mac Maharaj when he is released in 1976.