THE speaker of the City of Joburg, Colleen Makhubele, is calling on the community of Naledi to remain calm, refrain from violence and allow investigations to unfold.
This after four children fell ill after eating allegedly poisonous biscuits they had allegedly bought from a nearby foreign-owned spaza shop on Sunday, 1 October. The incident resulted in the deaths of two boys while two remain in critical condition.
The community members were up in arms on Tuesday night, 3 October, after having a meeting discussing a way forward. They went out in numbers in an effort to shut down spaza shops owned by foreign nationals in their kasi.
Community leader Thobile Maoba said they called a meeting to try and prevent residents from closing the shops.
"We asked the community that they should allow the law to take its course while waiting for post-mortem results to confirm the cause of the death.
"However, people from nearby communities took over our meeting and we failed to address our people, put them at ease and give them a full detailed update that a post-mortem is still not out," said Thobile.
She said she is very angry with the Operation Dudula organisation for allegedly doing as they pleased in ward 20.
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Visiting the community of Naledi on Wednesday, 4 October, Makhubele said: "We're all deeply disturbed and calling for the investigation to be concluded speedily for us to get clarity on why and how the shop was able to operate and sell expired products to their community.
"We're also seeking answers from health inspectors, which has unraveled a deeper issue of monitoring of food that is sold in our townships and informal communities."
She said this shows inadequacy in terms of how foreign nationals that are setting up businesses in communities are managed.
Resident Mbali Thlapane said that all the stores needed to be closed.
Zandile Dabula, Operation Dudula’s president, said she is saddened that kids had to die like that.
"We've been crying out for help to our government to get rid of foreign-owned spaza shops because some of them are undocumented and we know that the food they're selling to the public is expired food. We have witnessed that," said Dabula.
She said they will make sure such spaza shops close, and the owners leave without any looting taking place.
"We don't want any damage to any property. We will do it peacefully and the community has written a petition that they no longer want these shops in their area," she said.
