Foreign shop owners who have been staying in a safe zone after their shops were looted by angry mobs last month have until today to vacate the facility.
Foreign shop owners who have been staying in a safe zone after their shops were looted by angry mobs last month have until today to vacate the facility.
And although Makana Municipality has made it clear that they are not going to provide any start-up capital, they will not simply forget about them.
Earlier this week the municipality said it believed it was safe for the shop owners to return to their spaza shops and start operating – as many others had already done.
Speaking to Grocott’s Mail at the safe zone on Wednesday, Social Services Director, Mandisi Planga, said they had a meeting with the immigrant shopkeepers’ leadership.
“We are of the view that the time is right for them to reintegrate. They must go back to the community because the community is accepting them, and the situation is calm as far as we understand it,” he said on Wednesday 18 November.
The municipality says it can barely keep its own head above water, and can no longer afford to pay for the displaced residents’ accommodation.
Planga said they told the shop owners in the meeting that they could not accommodate them at the safe zone indefinitely.
“There has to be a time when they are going to vacate the place, because as the municipality we are footing the bill,” he said.
The meeting, according to Planga, came to an agreement that the shop owners would stay at the safe zone until today.
“We agreed that at least by Friday they should vacate the place. Provision of food is not suspended.”
Planga said most of them have got places to go to and almost all were staying at their shops before the attacks.
However, Planga says they are not just going to release them and just forget about them.
“From tomorrow (Thursday, 19 November) until Friday there will be an assessment and monitoring exercise just for us to ascertain how many will be affected and how many will not have places to go to,” he said.
Planga said they would assess the situation and put together a list of how many people do not have a place to stay.
He said they were meant to move out on Wednesday, but the municipality had arranged for them to remain until today.
Meanwhile the displaced residents still staying in the safe facility have made claims that food is not being fairly distributed.
A man who wanted to remain anonymous said there was no food in their rooms. He said they wanted to know where the food and donations had gone.
“We don’t have food here,” he said. “When we want to eat we have to out to town and go around asking people for money.”
Ethiopian national Tadasa Kefela said the municipality needed to intervene. He said now they were told to vacate that property and they had no other place to go and had no food to eat.
“We need money to start up our shops in the location. We are told that other guys have returned to their shops but all those have money to start their businesses.
“We have nothing here, we are starving and now we are told to go back to the location and start our businesses.
“Everything that we had was taken from us. The municipality should help us,” Kefela said.
They said they had no electricity and had to use gas stoves to cook.
Gas for the stoves was their responsibility, too, according to the group.
Red Cross Chairperson Annerie Wolmarans said she had bought food and a truck had delivered it on Tuesday 17 November.
“If there is no food now then I don’t know what happened when the food got here.
But there is no money now,” said Wolmarans. Meanwhile, the municipality has in no uncertain terms said that they are not prepared to provided money for the shop owners to re-open their businesses.
“We made our point quite clear on the fact that as a municipality we will not be able to provide start-up capital.
“There are certain expectations as a municipality that we will not be able meet. We won’t take responsibility for kick-start capital; neither are we going to take responsibility for the renovations of shops that were looted,” Planga said.
Planga also rubbished claims that the displaced residents went without food on some days during their stay at the safe zone.
“Mrs [Annerie] Wolmarans who works for the Red Cross was at the meeting and she reported to the meeting while there were foreign nationals present.
“Nobody disputed that there has been provision of food on a daily basis.
“Nobody has ever gone to bed on an empty stomach,” he said.
“We want to dispel that [rumour]. It is false. Red Cross has been providing food on a daily basis here.”
Planga went on to clarify that their families shouldn't have any uncooked food in their rooms.
“Food is meant to be in the kitchen. There shouldn’t be uncooked food in their rooms,” he said.
