A black mother from Soweto was busy looting say witnesses when her baby – who was strapped to her chest – died.
She said she did not notice there was anything wrong with him until neighbours alerted her.
The black mother, Zanele Majozi, 19, was allegedly running out of a vandalised shop in Kagiso with a bottle of cooldrink over the weekend when neighbours noticed blood on her top, where her one-month-old baby’s face was resting.
They said the baby’s tiny hand was facing the wrong way around. They told Majozi to unstrap him. When she did, they saw he was dead.
“She screamed, cried and collapsed. She would hold the baby to her chest crying and then fall on the ground, on top of the baby. She would get up, cry again then collapse on top of the baby again,” said a witness, Phindile Shabangu.
Shabangu, Gugu Maphumulo and a 22-year-old man who declined to give his name said they saw Majozi approach with the mob.
Shabangu said when the mob arrived at the shop, the men broke down the door. The women, some of them in their nighties, started screaming in excitement.
The baby against her chest, Majozi disappeared into the shop with the looting mob, they said.
Later, Maphumulo saw her running out of the shop. A few moments later, she saw Majozi crying and collapsing on top of her dead child.
The 22-year-old man said Majozi was aware that something was wrong with her baby’s arm. But it was his mother who noticed that the baby, bleeding from his nose and ears, was dead.
Shabangu said she and the other women followed Majozi to the clinic to beat her for being an irresponsible parent after they cleaned the shop and hid the remaining goods.
The xenophobic looting of foreign-owned shops appears to be spreading across Johannesburg with two men killed in Langlaagte on Sunday night and a spaza shop set alight in Alexandra this morning.
Ethnic tensions flared last week while looting spread across several townships following the shooting of 14-year-old Siphiwe Mahori in Snake Park, Soweto by a Muslim foreign national.