Cape Town - In a desperate attempt to escape looters pounding at her door, Save September jumped from the window of her first-floor flat
She then turned to catch a six-month-old baby who, for safety sake, was tossed out of the window by her mother.
September and six other people had locked themselves in a room to avoid assault from protesters on the rampage in Marikana in Philippi. Locking themselves in and barring the door was not enough to keep out looters.
Amid a heavy police presence, the looting continued for a second day on Wednesday and spread to the Better Life informal settlement next to Marikana, where two more foreign-owned shops were looted.
On Wednesday, several foreign shop owners, including September and her husband, had closed up shop and fled the settlement. They said they no longer felt safe doing business in the area.
“The people who looted our shops had no respect for life. I heard that two people were shot dead and I was not going to let them kill me or my baby,” said September, a South African citizen who married shop owner Abed Nduwimana, who came from Burundi four years ago.
Since then, she has been ostracised and physically assaulted by residents who called her a traitor because she had married a foreigner. The couple would seek refuge with family members in Blackheath, September said.
Police spokesman Andre Traut said on Wednesday that 11 people were arrested for public violence.
One person was shot dead and another wounded – allegedly by foreign shop keepers as residents looted foreign-owned shops. Traut said no one had been arrested for the shootings.
Nduwimana’s brother, James, owns a shop nearby. On Wednesday he packed all his belongings and a few food items into his vehicle. He would seek refuge in Mitchells Plain, he said. On Tuesday he had watched the front of his shop go up in flames as protesters rolled burning tyres at his business.
Responding to allegations that the attacks were xenophobic and that Ses’Khona People’s Rights Movement members were responsible, movement leader Loyiso Nkohla rejected the accusations and said the attacks were the actions of a handful of criminals in the area.
He condemned the incidents and urged the community to report attacks on foreign nationals to police.
Abdulkadir Ali, spokesman for Save Somali Community said he believed the attacks were xenophobic like recent attacks in Soweto.
“I believe it is spreading. Can’t they understand that we are African brothers?”
Cape Times