Tag: ethnic tension

Black taxi drivers torch George buses

Five Go George buses have been set alight by black taxi drivers in a protest action in George. The taxi drivers complain that the buses hamper their profits.

The first bus was set alight in front of the depot, and more were set alight near the N2 Garden Route Mall.

A heavy police presence was deployed in the mainly coloured area.

Police spokesperson Malcom Pojie said, “We are currently monitoring the situation, and have deployed a lot of police personal to make sure commuters are safe.”

Police said they are currently interrogating a number of people in connection to the burning of the buses.

Pojie said, “We have not arrested, nor have we charged anyone but we are talking to a numbers of suspects and have impounded two taxis in connection with the burning of the buses.”

“We are aware of tensions between the taxi operators and the bus system, but this came as a surprise as we thought the situation had been sorted out with the local government,” he added.

Xenophobia rules Soweto

The Mozambican man cowered, trying to protect his head, as the blows pounded his body on Tuesday.

The suspected thief, known only as Johannes, begged the growing crowd of angry residents of Snake Park, Soweto, to stop assaulting him.

But he and his alleged accomplice found no mercy from this impoverished community.

Its residents are “sick and tired of being victims” of crime.

“Today, we’re going to kill these Mozambican thieves,” said Sipho Ngwekazi licking his lips.

Almost to make his point, the unemployed 23-year-old pointed to a towering mine dump that looms over Block 1 in Snake Park.

“That’s where we’ll dump their bodies,” he vowed. “You’ll see what mob justice is all about.”

He and the rest of the mob were following as the two, the other called Petrus, were dragged to a house in Block 9, where they were believed to be hiding stolen TVs.

Their hands were tied with wire, their faces bloodied, as they were dragged for several kilometres in the searing heat.

“If you don’t give us the TVs, we’re going to burn you. That’s how we’ll kill you,” warned some residents.

“We have to take the law into our own hands. The police don’t care. They will just release them,” said Lindiwe Jonas, a resident of Block 2.

“Yes, we have to teach them a lesson… we will burn rope in the hands they used to steal from us,” said her friend, Esther Letswalo. “This is why we don’t want foreigners here in our community.”

A patrolling Dobsonville police van tried to follow the crowd through Snake Park’s dusty alleys.
Police back-up was called.

As the crowd bayed for his blood, Johannes, his shirt bloodied, and his one eye swollen and sealed shut, seemed to plead with the police to intervene as the crowd tried to get to him. The police then encircled him, probably because there were journalists present.

“We are taking them with us,” an armed policewoman informed the crowd. “We can’t allow mob justice.”
The police put the two men in their van and drove off.

The community roared, incensed.

“The law is useless,” spat one resident, who didn’t want to be named. “The police will just release them. They get away with it.”

Later a small group of residents threatened to burn the shacks of the men they suspected of being thieves.

Instead, they darted inside one of the men’s homes, where they were seen stealing jewellery.

Source: The Star

Looting black mother kills infant by falling on him

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.