sounds like New Orleans.
The corruption sounds similar, but one important difference is that one of the things that the police tried to do in New Orleans was to confiscate legally-owned firearms from law-abiding citizens. In South Africa I don't believe that it's legal for anybody to own guns at all, so the citizens use other tools when the government fails them. Things become medieval very quickly in a society that doesn't provide people with basic protections and also refuses to allow them to protect themselves effectively.