A foreign national shop owner has appeared in the Sekhukhune Magistrate’s Court, outside Jane Furse, in Limpopo, on a murder charge. This follows the death of a 15-year-old boy at Schoonoord in the area.
The deceased, Tokologo Letageng is said to have been stabbed in the head allegedly by a foreign national shop owner on Friday.
It’s alleged that he fought with a shop owner over a stick of matches. Police have since been deployed to defuse the situation. The mother of the teenager, Christinah Letageng says that she was called to rush to a local spaza shop after the incident.
Lategang says when she arrived at the scene, her son was taking his last breath. “I was told, the kids asked for a match stick at the shop and the shop owner swear at them. They asked what is the problem and then the shop owner took a sharp steel object and stabbed my son and he was bleeding and his brains were out and he died.”
Following the incident, some locals in the Schoonoord area are saying they no longer want foreign nationals to operate in their communities.
“We want the foreign nationals to go, they are selling us expired goods and are killing our children and the police are not assisting us. They must go they are killing our kids and this is not on, we want them to leave at once,” a Resident explains.
A foreign national business owner, Anwar Safeer says that Friday night events have caused them financial losses.
“Many shops have been looted and broken, so many shops they have taken the stock and now we are staying here Schonoord next to a taxi rank so I left. We heard around 8 o’clock that they are looting so we tried calling the police and they didn’t come so they looted all our stock,” says Safeer.
Meanwhile, the Makhuduthamaga municipal authorities have called for calm.
“As a municipality, we are going to have a meeting with the community. The mayor is still busy we are not happy with how the community is treating foreign nationals, we can’t let the community or people burn shops of foreign nationals when these people are doing business,” Judy Mphelane-Nkgadima, Municipal speaker.
The looting of foreign-owned spaza shops has now spread into other parts like Jane Furse. Shop keepers there have since closed their shops. Meanwhile, police have been deployed in the area to monitor the situation.
VIDEO: Foreign nationals close their shops as tensions spread in parts of Jane Furse in Limpopo
