Johannesburg - A Soweto teenager who was allegedly looting when her baby – who was strapped to her chest – died said she did not notice there was anything wrong with him until neighbours alerted her.
Looting across several townships began last week following the shooting of 14-year-old Siphiwe Mahori in Snake Park, Soweto.
Zanele Majozi, 19, was allegedly running out of a vandalised shop in Kagiso with a bottle of cooldrink over the weekend when neighbours noticed blood on her top, where her one-month-old baby’s face was resting.
They said the baby’s tiny hand was facing the wrong way around.
They told Majozi to unstrap him. When she did, they saw he was dead.
“She screamed, cried and collapsed. She would hold the baby to her chest crying and then fall on the ground, on top of the baby. She would get up, cry again then collapse on top of the baby again,” said a witness, Phindile Shabangu.
Majozi’s family denied that she was part of the looting.
She was returning from a clinic, they said, when a looter running from the police tripped her.
Her grandmother, Beauty, said Majozi had tried to get up, but other looters had trampled her as they fled. That was how the baby died, she said.
However,
Shabangu, Gugu Maphumulo and a 22-year-old man who declined to give his name said they saw Majozi approach with the mob.
Shabangu said when the mob arrived at the shop, the men broke down the door. The women, some of them in their nighties, started screaming in excitement.
The baby against her chest, Majozi disappeared into the shop with the looting mob, they said.
Later, Maphumulo saw her running out of the shop. A few moments later, she saw Majozi crying and collapsing on top of her dead child.
The 22-year-old man said Majozi was aware that something was wrong with her baby’s arm. But it was his mother who noticed that the baby, bleeding from his nose and ears, was dead.
Shabangu said she and the other women followed Majozi to the clinic to beat her for being an irresponsible parent after they cleaned the shop and hid the remaining goods.
The security guards locked them out.
The looting of foreign-owned shops appears to be spreading across Johannesburg with two men killed in Langlaagte on Sunday night and a spaza shop set alight in Alexandra this morning.
The police have been deployed to Alexandra to monitor the situation.
On Sunday night at about 7.30, a group of people went to a shop owned by a Somali in Langlaagte and looted it. An engineering firm next to the shop was set alight.
Police spokesman Lieutenant-General Solomon Mokgale said during the commotion, two men were killed.
“It appears the looters fired the shots, but police are investigating a case of arson and murder,” he said.
At 2.40 this morning, the police were called out to Alexandra where people were trying to loot a foreign-owned spaza shop.
“When police arrived, they fled the scene empty-handed. Shortly thereafter, we were told of another spaza shop that was set alight in another part of Alexandra. We will have the police there today to keep a check on the situation,” he said.
The Star