Johannesburg - It is Africa Day, but George Djedje has nothing to celebrate – only looming financial ruin.
A month ago, the Mozambican had a flourishing panelbeating and spraypainting business in Joburg’s CBD until the neighbouring Zulu hostel rose up in xenophobic madness.
Djedje literally saw his business go up in flames as the mob torched his clients’ vehicles.
Now those clients want him to pay them R200 000 for their cars which were uninsured, plus he needs to find R950 every month to go home to get treatment for his skin cancer.
President Jacob Zuma on Wednesday formally apologised to his Mozambican counterpart President Filipe Nyusi for the death of Mozambicans during the recent wave of xenophobia.
On Sunday, Zuma led the Africa Day celebrations at the University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi West campus, calling for unity among Africans. He denied that South Africans were xenophobic and blamed criminal elements for the recent xenophobic outbreaks.
But it’s scant comfort for Djedje.
“Sometimes, I am too scared to answer my phone when I see it’s my customers calling, because I know they want money and I don’t have it. They say they need their cars. When I tell them that I don’t have money, they say I must make a plan,” the 39-year-old says.
After 17 years in South Africa, Djedje had managed to build himself a small business and amassed a small clientele.
But, in the early hours of April 16, he received a call about trouble at his workshop in Jeppestown.
He rushed there to find chaos. People had broken into his workshop, pushed three cars outside and set them alight.
The mob also got into the workshop and vandalised other vehicles, before setting the building on fire and taking Djedje’s tools.
With a sense of disbelief, Djedje called his clients. When the clients arrived at the scene to find the cars they had saved for so long to buy going up in flames, they cried.
A case was opened at the nearby Jeppe police station.
Djedje said the events of that night have destroyed his life.
He lost his clientele and prospective customers as no one wants to do business with him anymore.
Once in a while when he gets a client, he asks his uncle to lend him his tools and space to work in.
But customers who lost their cars in the fire are constantly on his mind.
“When their calls come, I just become miserable. I don’t know what to say to them anymore.
“One of my lady customers whose car was also burnt, came with her three brothers who asked me when I am going to pay. I don’t know what I am going to do. I have to start from scratch and it is not easy,” Djedje said.
Provincial police spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini said some people had been arrested for the violence in that area. But he could not confirm whether the people who destroyed Djedje’s business were among them.
A lawyer said the first obvious recourse for Djedje would be to claim damages from the people who destroyed his business, if they were caught. But the chances were that the perpetrators probably did not have money.
The second course of action involved suing the government and the minister of police for failing to protect foreigners and their property by not nipping the xenophobic violence in the bud immediately after it erupted.
“It is possible to sue, but it is a very difficult case as he would have to ask himself whether the police or the government could be held responsible. He would have to show a causal link between the police failing to protect him and his business and the hooligans destroying it,” he said.
The Star