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South African police and soldiers have used rubber bullets to enforce lockdown after hundreds of shoppers gathered outside a supermarket in Johannesburg.

The incident came on Saturday, the second day of the 21-day lockdown that was ordered last week by president Cyril Ramaphosa to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

South Africa’s total number of cases is the highest on the continent, though it also reflects much more extensive testing and tracing than elsewhere. There have so far been 3,924 cases in the continent, according to the  africa center for disease control though experts say the figures are a gross underestimate.

Most African countries have now imposed measures ranging from shutting schools and banning religious services, to strict lockdowns such as that in South Africa, where all but essential workers must stay home, with only trips to buy groceries or seek medical attention allowed.

All restaurants, fast-food outlets, pubs, bars and taverns will be shut and transportation of alcohol has been banned. Ports, land border crossings and airports are effectively shut to passenger traffic.

Zimbabwe is the latest country to impose a full lockdown, which will come into effect on Monday. The country’s limited healthcare system would be rapidly overwhelmed if the virus spread among a population already weakened by malnutrition and diseases such as tuberculosis. Drugs are already rare, with even paracetamol hard to find in Harare, the capital.

Though the new restrictions have been largely respected in South Africa, police and soldiers have adopted a muscular approach to defiance.

In the incident on Saturday, between 200 and 300 people had gathered in a tight-packed crowd outside a popular grocery store, Shoprite, in Yeoville, a crime-prone area in Johannesburg’s central business district.

Soldiers wearing face masks and gloves also patrolled Alexandra, a township in northern Johannesburg, and officials said 55 people had been arrested on Friday.

According to the agreement, the competent authorities for receiving, submitting and processing readmission requests, as well as those for transit, will be the Bosnian Security Ministry and the Ministry of Interior for Pakistan.

Readmission and reception of citizens of the two countries and the transit of foreigners will take place through the international airports in Sarajevo and Islamabad.

The issue of Pakistani migrants in Bosnia has been the source of problems between the two countries that escalated when Fahrudin Radoncic, the former Bosnian security minister, accused Islamabad in April this year of not wanting to work with Sarajevo on the illegal migration issue.

The dispute started when Radoncic ordered Bosnia’s Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, the SFA, to compile a list of an estimated 9,000 to 10,000 illegal migrants to be deported, excluding refugees from war-torn Syria.

He claimed that there are around 3,000 illegal migrants from Pakistan among them and that that Pakistani embassy didn’t want to co-operate on identifying them.

Radoncic went so far as to demand that the Pakistani ambassador to Sarajevo be declared persona non grata.

However, Radoncic did not receive the support of either state presidency chairman Sefik Dzaferovic or Bisera Turkovic, the Bosnian foreign minister, which is why he resigned in early June.

According to estimates by the International Organisation for Migration, Bosnian authorities and NGOs, there are currently about 10,000 illegal migrants in Bosnia, of whom a significant number are citizens of Pakistan.

In a show of hands, legislators voted in favor of a one-year mandate allowing the government to send troops to Azerbaijan, where they would observe possible violations of the truce from a joint Turkish-Russian monitoring center. The cease-fire ended six weeks of intense fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Erdogan's government would determine the number of troops to be sent and it wasn't immediately clear how many the country planned to deploy. The motion states that civilian personnel could also be deployed as part of the peacekeeping mission.

Last week, the defense ministers of Russia and Turkey signed a memorandum to create a joint monitoring center in Azerbaijan, although technical details of the mission are still being worked out.

Azerbaijan has been pressing for its ally Turkey, which has supported Baku in the conflict, to take an active role in the peace talks and was the first to announce its involvement in the monitoring of the cease-fire agreement.

Russian officials have said that Ankara's involvement will be limited to the work of the monitoring center on Azerbaijani soil, and Turkish peacekeepers wouldn't go to Nagorno-Karabakh. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the center will operate remotely, using drones and other technical means to monitor possible violations.

The mandate further extends Turkey's military engagements stretching from the Middle East to Africa. The country, which has been trying to craft itself a role as a regional power, has sent troops to Iraq and Syria to battle Kurdish militants and to Libya where its presence helped change the balance of a conflict there in favor of the Tripoli-based government. Ankara also maintains a military presence in Qatar, Somalia and on Cyprus and has peacekeepers in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Africa and the Balkans.

The motion for the deployment in Azerbaijan was backed by four out of five parties in Turkey's parliament. Erdogan's government said the Turkish peacekeepers were crucial for the region's peace and welfare and for Turkey's national interests.

"Turkey and Azerbaijan who regard themselves as one state and two people, will continue to struggle together for their independence and future," said Ismet Yilmaz, who heads the parliamentary defense committee. "It is our historic and strategic responsibility to ensure that (Turkish troops) take up duty at the joint center to maintain the cease-fire and prevent violations."

Journalists will reportedly hold nationwide protests on Thursday, November 26, for a 'day of anger' to demand the government implement a joint framework agreement on journalists' rights. The majority of the protests, which are being organized by the SNJT union, will begin at 11:00 (local time). In Tunis, protesters will gather at Government Square and then hold an additional rally after at the SNJT headquarters; the timings are yet to be announced. Reports state that the journalists will also hold a nationwide strike on December 10. 

Further protests cannot be ruled out over the near term. A heightened security presence and associated disruptions are likely in the vicinity of the protests.