Spaza shop shooting — residents paint different picture to Operation Dudula as tensions simmer

6 Sep 2024

Operation Dudula tried to use the shooting of a young man in Soweto, allegedly by a migrant shopkeeper, to close foreign-owned shops. Many people in White City didn’t take the bait.

There are conflicting versions of the events leading up to the shooting of 22-year-old Lusanda Ngcobo at a spaza shop in White City, Soweto, on 7 August 2024.

In one version, he was simply buying a cold drink on his way home from work and was shot by a migrant shopkeeper for loitering around the store. In the other, he was drunk and abusive and pulled out a knife when asked to pay for a cold drink before the shopkeeper retrieved a gun and shot him.

While the police are still investigating, the shooting ignited anti-migrant sentiment in White City and led to calls to close foreign-owned spaza shops, while South African property owners were pressured to stop leasing to migrants.

The situation, one of the latest in the ongoing environment of populist anti-migrant rhetoric during a law and order crisis and the failure of the Home Affairs Department to effectively manage immigration, underscores the socio-economic challenges and complex dynamics within township economies.

Shooting in White City

According to Victor Nkosi, a member of the White City Committee on Safety, which was established by the community, Ngcobo walked into the spaza shop drunk and took a cold drink without paying for it, despite his friends advising him to pay.

He is said to have told the shop owner he was not going to pay because South Africa didn’t need foreigners in the country. He allegedly then produced a knife, and the shop owner shot him twice in the stomach.

Nkosi said he and the local councillor tried to piece together what happened after the shooting. They went to Ngcobo’s home, but the young man’s mother wasn’t there.

“We were told that she left with some Pakistanis to talk about the incident,” Nkosi said.

The shop owner’s origin is unclear and “Pakistani” is a generic term often used to describe immigrants from South Asia.

“While we were at the shooting victim’s home, his mother then called and said she wasn’t feeling safe because many more Pakistani men were joining their discussion, and she was asking for my protection as a leader on safety in the community, and that I must call the police,” Nkosi said.

“We went over with the councillor and found many Pakistani men. I told the Pakistanis one thing, that they must bring the person who shot the boy, and that they will not operate their stores if they do not do that.”

Nkosi said some of the shop owners’ associates got in a car and tried to leave, but he pulled out his gun and stopped them. He said the police then intervened and warned him against producing his firearm in public.

“We then spoke, and thereafter the mother and her brother left,” Nkosi said.

It’s unclear what was discussed in the meeting before Nkosi arrived.

Read more: Community outrage as another Soweto spaza shop owner accused of shooting local man

In contrast to Nkosi’s version, in the days after the event, Ngcobo’s mother Phumzile Mnisi told Daily Maverick that her son was shot for hanging around the shop after the shopkeepers had asked him to leave.

Mnisi said her son had gone to the store to buy a cold drink after knocking off from work. She did not mention whether her son had a knife or if he refused to pay for his drink.

Following the shooting, a devastated Mnisi said her son had undergone multiple operations to remove the bullets. She described Ngcobo as a lovely and warm person.

When approached for clarity this week, Mnisi refused to speak. Without elaborating, she said the situation had landed her in trouble.

“I am not going to speak because that has landed me in trouble. I am in hospital and I need a break,” Mnisi told Daily Maverick on Monday, 2 September 2024.

On Thursday, Mnisi confirmed to Daily Maverick that Ngcobo was still in hospital

“It’s been hard, but he is getting better,” Mnisi said.

According to Moroka police station commander Brigadier Shiburi, the shop owner who shot Ngcobo was a wanted suspect and would be charged with attempted murder if found.

“It has been difficult to phone the suspect as his phone was taken away from him by community members,” Shiburi said, as some members of the community allegedly took the man’s phone to prevent him from fleeing.

While there were reports of looting in the area following the shooting, Shiburi said: “According to my records, no looting took place as I deployed police officers in White City and Mofolo.”

When asked if the police had reached out to her regarding the status of the police investigation, Mnisi said the police had not been in touch with her.

Enter Operation Dudula

Following the shooting, the anti-migrant group Operation Dudula, which has led vigilante raids on migrants it accuses of criminality, said it wanted to close foreign-owned spaza shops in White City.

“We won't allow people from other countries to come to our country and do as they please. They shot a young man here last week. What gives them the courage to gun down a local?” News24 quoted Operation Dudula’s Johannesburg chairperson Simphiwe Shabangu as saying.

Nkosi said Operation Dudula arrived in White City last month on a Wednesday, without speaking to community leaders, and claimed that they had come to shut down foreigners’ shops.

“I tried to engage Operation Dudula but they called me a ‘bunch of leadership’, and said they do not speak to a bunch of leaders.

“That is when I toughened up and told them if they were not going to respect me in my ward, they would not close any store,” Nkosi said.

“I called the police. No shop was closed and they left only for us to find that they were going to mobilise and come back on a Saturday. I told them the same thing I told them on Wednesday, that they will not close any foreigners’ store,” he said.

“That remains my viewpoint,” added Nkosi.

“The government let foreigners into the country a long time ago. Nobody stood up and protested that, but today everyone has an opinion on foreigners,” said Nkosi.

Daily Maverick reached out to Operation Dudula, but the organisation’s president, Zandile Dabula, said she was on the road and there was no further communication.

Nceba Stokwe, a White City resident, told Daily Maverick there was tension within the community after Operation Dudula pressured landowners not to lease shops to foreigners.

“A fight broke out between community members, Operation Dudula and the landlords because the landlords feel that by kicking out foreign shop owners, Operation Dudula is taking away their source of income.

“The foreign shop owners are everything to the community and people are now protecting them regardless of the laws they break,” Stokwe claimed.

Nkosi said the tensions were caused by some community members telling landowners what they could and couldn’t do with their properties.

“Firstly, as community members we must learn to respect other people’s properties and homes and remember that every person who buys a home is not buying it for the community,” he said.

“The community merely thinks they own other people’s homes.”

Landlords

Daily Maverick also spoke to some landlords, who asked to remain anonymous.

“The very person who wants the foreign shop owners gone will be the first to gossip and laugh at me when I’m hungry and asking them for a bowl of mealie meal,” one landlord said.

“What then do you think drives such people? It’s not genuine concern. They are full of hatred and envy, and that’s why they don’t take into consideration that some of these shop owners are here legally,” she said.

“I am making a living out of leasing my premises and I will continue to do so as long as it benefits me and my family, as it currently does,” she added.

Another landlord said that while he understood that there was an immigration crisis in the country, it was not of his making and that he would not tolerate people telling him who he could lease his premises to.

“This is my home. The immigration crisis in the country is not my problem, it’s the government’s problem. Why should I suffer because of envious neighbours? They must also lease their premises and leave those who choose to do so alone,” he said.

Local businesses cry foul

In Soweto, migrant-owned spaza shops are popular as they’re cheap, readily offer credit and have made provision for using bank cards to swipe and conveniently facilitate cashback. But the prevalence of migrants in the industry has long drawn the ire of rival locally owned businesses.

Ward 37 Councillor Papi Chetsang said: “In relation to the shop owners and the residents, I feel that there’s division between the landlords accommodating the foreign owners and local shop owners as they feel that they are being cheated of business in their homeland, so it’s a question of survival in that case.

“The shooting was unfortunate and there’s been a few incidents of such nature, and we continue to condemn such occurrences. We should be building each other and not trying to take each other’s lives,” Chetsang said.

The deputy president of the Soweto Business Forum, Palesa Kambule, said: “Foreign nationals arrived with buying power. We did not know how they attained that buying power, so we called them together and said to them let us work together and hire young people from that street where the store is located, but it didn’t happen.

“These people’s money, including that purportedly brought in by the big shops and supermarkets in Soweto, does not circulate. We do not know where it ends up. Our township kids do not even have playgrounds,” she claimed.

“This issue is bigger than all of us. We have been dealing with this issue in Soweto for almost a decade now,” said Kambule.

However, writing in 2020 in response to Gauteng’s proposed law reserving township spaza shops and other businesses for South African citizens, Vanya Gastrow from the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Law and Society, dismissed the idea that foreign-run spaza shops were detached from their communities.

“Rather than being economically parasitic and threatening, foreign entrepreneurialism is a vital force in township economies. Shopkeepers pay rent to landlords, service customers, introduce new business know-how, and benefit connected economies.

“Excising them from township landscapes will not create greater economic fortunes for local residents, but will instead pose significant economic danger. It would be wiser to leverage and build on foreign ingenuity — as many South Africans already have — rather than attempt to sever their activities from which many South Africans benefit, and have come to rely on,” said Gastrow.

‘Hatred and envy’

Professor Loren Landau, from the African Centre for Migration and Society at Wits University, says the tensions are endemic and that they often exist within a particular political context.

“It is important to view such tensions within the communities’ prevailing political machinations. Where we’ve seen conflicts like this emerge, it is usually as a result of tensions between South African associations or leaders seeking to use migration issues to gain the upper hand,” said Landau.

“Over the past week we’ve seen this in Marcus Garvey (in Cape Town), where threats against foreigners were the result of one protection racket seeking to extort funds from foreign traders while denying other gangsters access to income. Elsewhere, politicians or other ‘leaders’ use promises of resources (houses, booty, pay) to mobilise residents against outsiders.”

Read more: 5 xenophobic myths about immigrants in South Africa debunked by researchers

Keith Duarte from the Gauteng Housing Crisis Committee said: “Whether you agree or not, the stark reality is that communities in the townships depend on these spaza shops.

“The question which comes to my mind is that when you close these spaza shops, they must not have been compliant – they are not employing locals, and they would not have their own electricity box and (are) selling expired food. Only these qualify as grounds for the closure of foreign-owned shops.

“At the moment, there is nothing tangible, which says they are not compliant to (the) above. We are saying that we are anti-xenophobic and anti-Afrophobic, so we are not going to categorise other human beings simply because they are from another country,” added Duarte.

Dr Vusumuzi Sibanda from the African Diaspora Network said the tensions in communities were fuelled by a hatred of black migrants that was driven by certain groups.

“Tensions have been brewing for a while now and perpetuated by some Afrophobic groups, individuals and even officials in government. It’s a concerted effort to fight the migrant community and make them uncomfortable, and we have taken note of that,” said Sibanda.

“What we are clear about is that there has been a blatant dislike for black foreign nationals. A number of the shop owners are documented. They are not being fought because they are non-South Africans, the attacks are driven by hatred and envy.” DM

Categories:

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

South Africa

Shooting in White City

Enter Operation Dudula

Landlords

Local businesses cry foul

‘Hatred and envy’