Insurrection, rebellion, revolution

July 2021, South Africa: after Jacob Zuma was jailed, shopping malls, warehouses and factories were looted and burned across KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng. SASRIA, the state-owned insurer of unrest risks, paid out about 32 billion rand. The question the whole market asked in those weeks: riot, or insurrection? The word decides who pays. Insurrection, rebellion and revolution describe an organized uprising against the government in place, aimed at power: insurrection is the early stage, rebellion the sustained armed form, revolution the overthrow achieved or sought. All three sit in the war exclusion of property policies, next to civil war and usurped military power. They also sit, as a mirror image, in the list of covered events under political violence policies. Riot (SRCC, strikes, riots and civil commotion) is often bought back under property or picked up by a public scheme, and requires no aim at power. Hence the litigation: the same broken storefront is riot if the crowd is looting, insurrection if an organized movement is trying to bring down the state. The burden of proof generally rests on the insurer invoking the exclusion, and English case law looks for organization and a political objective, more than mass violence. In South Africa the SASRIA scheme absorbed the question, at the cost of a state recapitalization. Not to be confused with a coup d'etat, which comes from inside the state apparatus and not from a popular uprising, even though policies often put it on the same list.

• South African Presidency, address to the nation by Cyril Ramaphosa, 16 July 2021