The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has considered «unfortunate» the warning launched on Wednesday by the U.S. Embassy, which warned of a possible terrorist attack this weekend in the city of Johannesburg, and has defended that his government is working «around the clock» to contain the risks.
Ramaphosa, who appeared in Petroria accompanied by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, reproached the US Embassy for having made public the warning without having previously explained the details to the South African authorities.
After the dissemination of the alert, there was such contact at the initiative of South Africa, according to Ramaphosa, who considered it necessary to understand «precisely» questions such as the origin of the information that gave rise to the Embassy’s message.
The South African president pointed out that this kind of warnings provoke «a lot of panic» among the population, which should be able to be informed through what their own government tells them. In this sense, he pointed out that South African agencies monitor «very closely» any threat.
The American alert alluded to alleged plans to «perpetrate an attack on large concentrations of people at an unspecified location in the Sandton area,» one of Johannesburg’s most affluent neighborhoods. The Embassy did not clarify either the method or the target of these potential attacks.
Johannesburg has not suffered a major attack in recent decades, although the country is under threat from the Islamic State group, which has warned of possible attacks in retaliation for South African involvement in counter-terrorism operations in northern Mozambique.
