JOHANNESBURG Some Johannesburg-based Zimbabweans were this week reminded of a tragedy that once befell them in their homeland, when the citys authorities descended on their backyard stalls in the wee hours of Monday. (Pictured: Shacks in Johannesburg)
Members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Johannesburg Metro Police drove into some of the citys densely-populated areas of Berea and Hillbrow, where they ordered the residents to empty their backyard stalls, popularly known here as Spaza shops, before they razed the structures to the ground using bulldozers. Some of the shacks were destroyed by security guards popularly known as the Red Ants, who are usually used to evict people from condemned flats and are notorious for their brutality and using live ammunition with very little or no provocation.
I woke up to a deafening sound of falling walls and iron sheets at about 5am and rushed to check what was happening, said Mqhele Ndlovu, who lives in Berea. I was shocked even further when I found all those police officers destroying nearby spazas with bulldozers while metro and police vehicles blocked all the nearby roads. When The Zimbabwean visited the areas, most busy roads were barricaded by police vehicles, while fallen walls had created an eyesore in the suburbs, reminding one of Operation Murambatsvina a more destructive crackdown on backyard shacks that was launched by President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwean cities in 2005.
I do not know what I am going to do now because this spaza shop has been my main source of livelihood, said Senzo Nkomo, an unemployed Zimbabwean who lives in Berea. They came here without giving us a warning and told us to remove all our belongings from the shop, which they wanted to destroy. At first I thought that it was just an empty threat and dilly-dallied, until I saw a bulldozer destroying a similar shop nearby. The backyard traders however, said that they had lost very little, as they were given time to remove most of their stock from the stalls. What I lost are just profits for today and the next few days, when I will be selling nothing and we will really struggle to pay rent this time around, said another Zimbabwean national, who requested not to be named.
Both the Metro police officers and the SAPS members who were destroying the shacks would not give authorised comment, saying that they had been warned against talking to the media.
They said that the operation was meant to restore order in the city and had been done from time to time, but people kept re-erecting the illegal structures.
Post published in: News