Northern areas shopkeepers living in fear

Many shop owners in Nelson Mandela Bay’s northern areas have gone into hiding after widespread looting of shops.

Burglar bars and gates were the order of the day when a team from The Herald visited stores on Wednesday.

Many of the shopkeepers would not even open their doors.

Happy Mathews, 23, of Happy Shop in Aries Street, Chatty, said he and his elderly father had cleared stock out of their shop overnight after Tuesday’s looting.

“My father is old so we decided to go and pack our stock in town because we are fearing for our lives,” he said.

“The people around here told us we are safe, but we had to pack.

“Even now that it’s empty, I still am scared and I have locked myself inside.

Mzwandile Tanya said he had tried to protect Happy Shop and other informal shop owners in the area.

“Here they did not loot because we took a stand as a community to not allow anyone to loot.

“Now we are unfortunately going to struggle to find a place to buy,” he said.

Alicia Maronie, 22, who lives a few streets away from a Mpuko Street store, Zhenwang Trading Centre — which was looted on Tuesday — asked what hungry people should do.

Maronie was speaking at a dilapidated RDP house with no running water and illegally connected electricity.

“Though I know it is wrong I don’t regret the looting because we are hungry,” she said.

“Since the lockdown we can’t go out of our houses to do odd jobs.

“I, however, wish that the police could intervene in this thing and provide us with food because this is going to be troublesome.”

Maronie’s partner, Hendriech April, 27, said he had lost his job after the looting of the Zhewang Trading Centre.

“I had recently started working there as a packer because all construction jobs where I had been working had been halted,” April said.

Asked if the looters were genuinely hungry or they were just part of the criminal elements in the community, April said the crimes were rooted in a widespread drug problem.

“Criminals have stopped robbing the jikeleza taxis and people going to work because it is a lockdown.”

“They have found other victims, who are shopkeepers.” 

Witness Dlankomo, 44, said he still had to come to terms with what he had seen on Tuesday.

Dlankomo was also employed at the Zhewang Trading Centre.

“The people I saw there were young people only. I could not believe it.

I do not know if it is plain criminality or what.”

A caterer, Elsabe Williams, 36, said poverty was the cause of the looting.

“People here are hungry and they do not have work,” she said.

“The lockdown has made everything worse because even those who had temporary jobs can’t go to work.”

“If the government does not help those in need then they will help themselves.”

Police said on Wednesday that nine arrests relating to the looting had been made, starting on Tuesday morning.

“The suspects will all face charges relating to business robbery or housebreaking and theft,” Brigadier  Tembinkosi Kinana said in a statement.

“Additional charges of violating the regulations of the Disaster Management Act — not staying confined to their homes — will also be added.”

Provincial commissioner Lieutenant-General  Liziwe Ntshinga condemned the looting incidents, saying: “These acts are purely criminal and are condemned in the strongest possible terms.”