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Crackdown continues — Maile leads inspection of Soweto stores

Crackdown continues — Maile leads inspection of Soweto stores
Bheki C. Simelane
By Bheki C. Simelane
23 Dec 2024
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On Monday, the Gauteng Department of Economic Development and various authorities conducted a food safety blitz to inspect non-compliant food-handling businesses in Soweto.

The Gauteng Department of Economic Development’s operation, dubbed the food safety blitz, kicked off at the Dlamini Shoprite store in Soweto just before 10am. 

“I must say we are very disappointed because we expected that these shops will hold high standards of food and hygiene safety and that we will not find expired goods, but we did find expired foods,” Gauteng MEC for Economic Development Lebogang Maile said in Dlamini on Monday, 23 December 2024. 

“We are not just focusing on spaza shops but all food-handling businesses. Today we came to Shoprite Checkers, and we will also be going to Supa Store, and we will also visit the Maponya Pick n Pay,” said Maile.

At the Shoprite store, officials pointed out that they had been in the same store last Thursday and raised concerns about some food items, which were still on the shelves on Monday.

Several items were ordered off the shelves. Food items such as packaged grated carrots and cabbage at the Shoprite store were flagged by officials, who said the problem with the grated vegetables was that they had no labels. 

Some dairy items were also flagged because they were in filthy containers. The lids of milk and sour milk bottles were leaking. 

All the flagged food items were ordered off the shelves, but the Shoprite manager, Lumka Sikiti, asked some staff to wipe down the bottles. 

Some food items such as meat packages were also found to be non-compliant as they had no labels. The explanation from the manager was that the packets of chicken feet were freshly packaged and should not have been on the shelves.

Read more: Dearth of health inspectors in Soweto ‘jeopardises safety of our children’

Home Affairs was also part of the inspection team to enforce immigration laws. Eleven Shoprite employees were interviewed by Home Affairs official Janine Allens, who said all 11 were compliant. 

The province said the food safety blitz aimed to ensure that spaza shops and food outlets were not selling contaminated food and that health standards and regulations were complied with.

Registration


President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered all spaza shops in the country to register their businesses following the deaths of more than 20 children from suspected poisoning, allegedly linked to stores that sold toxic pesticides.

Concerns were also raised about a lack of adherence to health and safety standards and the sale of expired food products.

The deadline for registration was extended after many shop owners struggled to register their shops within the stipulated 21 days.

The deadline was extended from 17 December 2024 to 28 February 2025. Despite the extension, some foreign shop owners said this was still not sufficient because it took them months to obtain all the documents to fully establish their legal status in the country. 

Read more: Spaza shop registration extended — but owners still worried about February deadline

Operation Dudula


About five members of anti-immigrant group Operation Dudula also arrived at the Moroka Police Station for the blitz on Monday.

As the procession of cars was pulling out of the police station to inspect the stores, the Operation Dudula members walked into the police station. 

Police officers who were already in cars ready to leave for the operation said Operation Dudula members should be left behind as they might later claim to have received permission from the police to join the blitz. 

Members of the group say they have been at the Jabulani spaza registration centre to prevent foreigners from registering shops. 

Non-compliance


Community members who were doing their shopping at the Supa Store in Dlamini stopped MEC Maile and alerted him to several shops they said were not compliant in nearby Mofolo.

Maile promised that shops in Mofolo would also be visited to enforce compliance.

The MEC also raised concerns about the non-availability of insect-control measures at the butcheries in the stores visited. 

At Supa Store in Dlamini, the team of inspectors also picked up from the shelves a tin of Pot O’ Gold littered with rodent droppings on the lid.

Daily Maverick asked Maile what pest control measures the Supa Store was using. Maile said they contracted a company which did the cleaning for them.

Maile reiterated that there were not enough inspectors, but said they were targeting priority stores to ensure that available resources were not overstretched. 

Maile said he did not believe that shops intended to be non-compliant. 

“I just think that they dropped the ball,” he said. 

On what measures were in place to ensure that police were sufficiently resourced to effectively conduct the inspections, Maile said the Moroka police had been given enough resources and that they were making good use of them. 

Maile said that despite being non-compliant, the transgressions during the blitz were not enough to close the stores.

Gauteng Department of Economic Development consumer investigator Zukisani Ndleleni said some stores visited had items on the shelves with no expiry dates, or were long past their sell-by date. 

“We asked that these items be removed from the shelves,” said Ndleleni. 

Asked what penalties would be meted on no-compliant stores, Ndleleni responded, “There are notices that have been issued by the Department of Health for non-compliance.”

Maile said, “There will be follow-ups from inspectors as we found some expired items on the shelves, and if those are still there when we come back, we will close the stores.” DM

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