Niq Mhlongo: photo provided
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Driving along Chris Hani Road this Wednesday afternoon, three days after the looting of the Soweto shops by its community, my heart is filled with sadness, regret, fear, shame. The debris I see outside at the looted Thokoza Park Shell garage and the nearby Supa Store lies on the ground like an unbearable weight on the township. This is not the Soweto that I know.
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Driving along Chris Hani Road this Wednesday afternoon, three days after the looting of the Soweto shops by its community, my heart is filled with sadness, regret, fear, shame. The debris I see outside at the looted Thokoza Park Shell garage and the nearby Supa Store lies on the ground like an unbearable weight on the township. This is not the Soweto that I know.
I drive past here maybe two or three times a week. Just this past Sunday, on 11 July 2021 before the looting, this place felt like a city in its own right. It commanded some level of respect. Even though blighted by poverty, unemployment, drug addiction and crime, the Soweto I was familiar with was also modern, sophisticated and liveable.
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Before 1994, there wasn’t a single shopping mall in Soweto. This means we bought our clothes, furniture, groceries, medicines and other household items in the Johannesburg city centre. The city is located some 20 kilometres away from my home in Chiawelo. To someone like me who was born at the height of apartheid in 1973, Soweto before 1994 symbolised an unhappy birth and childhood, the politics of poverty and segregation, the struggle for democracy, and spiritual emptiness. Between 1994 and now, things have changed for the better.
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Before 1994, there wasn’t a single shopping mall in Soweto. This means we bought our clothes, furniture, groceries, medicines and other household items in the Johannesburg city centre. The city is located some 20 kilometres away from my home in Chiawelo. To someone like me who was born at the height of apartheid in 1973, Soweto before 1994 symbolised an unhappy birth and childhood, the politics of poverty and segregation, the struggle for democracy, and spiritual emptiness. Between 1994 and now, things have changed for the better. There are more than 30 malls in Soweto. I can walk to Protea Gardens Mall, or drive a short distance to Maponya Mall, Jabulani Mall, Ndofaya Mall, Diepkloof Square and so on to do my shopping.
Today, as I look at the locked gates of the Protea Gardens Mall, where debris of the Monday and Tuesday looting appears everywhere, it seems as if time has uncoiled and turned back upon itself. A disturbing memory is suddenly rising up inside me like a bubble.
The Soweto that I have witnessed grow over time has been blown up in a way I’m sure not one of us could ever have expected. The looting has left behind emptiness in me and the absence of everything that used to spell not just our lives in the township, but life itself. The empty shelves inside the destroyed shops have left us totally vulnerable, with no protection against the world of hunger, poverty and unemployment.
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This Soweto I see now represents the landscape of uncertainty.
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This Soweto I see now represents the landscape of uncertainty. The stores around this once booming township are closed. There is nowhere to buy basic stuff, such as toilet paper, sugar and bread. I can’t even buy airtime or data at the nearby spaza shop to be in touch with relatives and friends. All petrol stations are looted and closed. I’m told that there will be a shortage of petrol for days. Truck drivers who transport basic necessities are afraid to come to Soweto. On top of this, there is loadshedding, as well as lockdown restrictions, death and stress.
It is a pity that these destroyed businesses are owned by black businessmen who were trying to make a difference in our township. I’m ashamed that black people themselves have destroyed our hope. Now, we have to drive a long way just to buy a loaf of bread, just like we used to before 1994. Switching on the radio, it is very touching and depressing at the same time to hear businessman Mike Nkuna talk about the job losses at his looted Jabulani Mall and Protea Glen. According to him, Jabulani Mall alone had about 8 000 daily employees, who have now lost their jobs. At the Protea Glen Mall, about 5 000 employees will not be returning to work. Shoprite has just announced that it will not reopen most of their stores in Soweto. This means houses and cars will be repossessed, children will not afford schools and so on. For me, it seems that all things good about Soweto have begun to droop and die, succumbing to the dark forces of politics. In a country struggling with more than a 32% unemployment rate, a COVID-19 variant and corruption, things will take decades to come back to normal. Jobs and people’s securities are limping away out of reach. Even inside the destroyed buildings, there is nothing more to loot. All I hear in the streets are people who are trying to recount everything that might have happened or should have happened. The perpetrators are talking about what they have looted. Those who have missed out are having conversations about what they saw with their own eyes or on television. These include a man they have seen carrying a huge double-door fridge on his head, or a woman who lives in the informal settlement who has stolen a couch worth about R70 000. Others talk about vans they have seen lined up at the hardware stores to loot building materials.
What most people here agree on is that the looters have seemed to be possessed by some kind of evil force beyond their control during their looting sprees. The blame game is on, and Sowetans are pointing fingers at each other. Those who live in the formal part of the township blame those who live in informal settlements as the culprits. The Monday nation address by President Ramaphosa also pointed a finger at what he calls “ethnic mobilisation”. This also fuelled the mistrust among the Sowetans. On one hand, hostel dwellers are accused of organising the vans and taxis to loot the shops. Some people think this is an organised crime that was sparked by the former president Zuma faction, with the aim of bringing political and economic instability against President Ramaphosa. According to this narrative, the Zuma faction, which is predominantly Zulu speaking, infiltrated the Soweto community. On the other hand, this is seen as a revolt by the poor against the rich, which is long overdue. This line of argument contends that what is happening cannot be labelled as looting, but as “expropriation of goods without compensation”. This is what the Radical Economic Transformation is about, they argue. Malls are looted because they represent the so-called white monopoly capital. With the looted goods, people can now open spaza shops and businesses in the township and informal settlements.
Those in the township who are politically minded go even further to say that the ruling party has successfully eroded morals in our communities by encouraging the politics of the stomach. This group contends that “tenderpreneurship” has overtaken entrepreneurship in Soweto and South Africa. There is a culture of drinking expensive bottles of alcohol, wearing designer shoes and driving expensive German cars in the face of poverty. The recent sloganeering about economic freedom without providing jobs for the poor is now backfiring. Instead of building factories where poor people can work, the ANC is giving young, inexperienced people millions of rands through tenders. That wealth is flaunted on social media for everyone to see. Tenders are given only to relatives and people who are being fronted by the politicians. These people get a small percentage, and the rest goes back to the procurement managers and politicians. This causes too much suffering and anger for the majority of the people, and what we see today is the poor people who feel that they are not even given the crumbs.
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Most people, however, seem to agree that we are in this mess because of the ANC fighting itself. Some people are of the view that President Ramaphosa’s leadership style is questionable because he is not in touch with the ordinary people. According to this argument, the president likes to appear on television instead of going directly to the communities and talking to people.
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Most people, however, seem to agree that we are in this mess because of the ANC fighting itself. Some people are of the view that President Ramaphosa’s leadership style is questionable because he is not in touch with the ordinary people. According to this argument, the president likes to appear on television instead of going directly to the communities and talking to people.
They argue that when he talked on Monday on television after the looting, it was as if he wanted people to feel mercy for him, instead of putting his foot down. They feel like the damage would have been minimised if he had done that. It is also evident that the police are understaffed, because there were very few police cars at all the malls when the looting took place. Ramaphosa’s government, therefore, failed to react wisely according to the practical situations on the ground by not bringing soldiers in on time.
It is clear that the consequences of the looting of the shops have created a new world of violence, fear, deception and misery around us here in Soweto and elsewhere. There is no doubt that this is the result of political manipulations, greed and unfortunate economically desperate situations that people find themselves in. The question we should be asking ourselves is how to instil the flicker of hope in the people who have given up or resigned themselves to disappointment. For me, the hope is in the revival of the community policing forums, which will work hand in hand with the police and business people to root out the criminal elements in our townships. In the last few days, we have witnessed how these forums, in cooperation with the taxi organisations and police force, have been successful in salvaging whatever is left from the looting.
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SA bereik kantelpunt: "Cyril het die situasie totaal verkeerd gelees"
Seen elsewhere: Goodwill and compassion are stronger than the forces of destruction