Provocation or sheer madness? Two sides of the tragedy
● Dr Samir Saha has had nothing but love for his patients and the two South African assistants he employs.
“Those patients who come to me are like my family. For the past 10 years I have listened to them, consoled them and counselled them. The majority of my patients are South African. South Africans and foreigners, I saw everyone and anyone who needed help. I would turn no-one away, even if they could not pay.”
Yet on Sunday night it was South Africans — angered over foreigners allegedly stealing their jobs and homes — that turned on Saha’s Malvern practice in Johannesburg in a threeday orgy of violence that turned sections of the inner city and surrounding areas into nogo zones and left about 11 people dead.
Days after the violence, which saw looters stealing his sonar machine, medication, money, a microwave oven and computers, Saha, a Bangladeshi national, says the violence has destroyed his livelihood.
“The only thing I can say is thank God I am not dead. Thank God when I got that call on Sunday night to say my rooms were being looted I didn’t go out.”
Saha, who has lived in SA for 24 years, 10 of them in Johannesburg, said the reasons for the looting were illogical.
“I have never experienced anything like this before. I am a doctor. I don’t run a spaza or barber shop and even if I did, how would me running such shops rob South Africans of jobs? Saying that I steal South Africans’ jobs is madness. In fact it is the opposite. I employ two South Africans, one as a secretary and the other as my medical assistant.
“I don’t know how I am going to be able to carry on because I have nothing left. I don’t think any of us who were affected by the violence will be able to pick up the pieces.”
Looters, armed with guns and self-made weapons, stormed through a 2km stretch of Jules Street burning cars, torching buildings, ransacking businesses and terrorising people on Sunday night and throughout the week. In Alexandra, Crosby, Slovo Park, Coronationville, KwaThema and Katlehong, looters turned on foreign-owned shops.
For Henny Mathe, who lives in Crosby’s poverty-stricken Slovo Park informal settlement, the looting was justified. “They killed two of us. It was only right that we went to the Somali and Pakistani shops and took what was theirs. When they killed Karabo [Ditire], who was washing his clothes, we had not done anything to them yet.
“We just wanted them out. We were not burning or stealing their stuff. They were just told to get out because Slovo Park does not need foreigners here. We waited until the cops were gone. We took groceries, colddrinks and Red Bulls. We took for revenge, not because we were hungry. They provoked us by killing our people.”
Mathe claims that Isaac Sebako, a South African who was killed in Coronationville, was shot when he was caught looting.
“I was with him. He had two crates of stuff which he took. He was taking the stuff because of what had happened to Karabo. That Somali shop-owner should not have shot him. That was not right.”
Abdi Kadir, the Somali Association of SA’s deputy national director, said: “It’s clear both sides are wrong. To say you can steal because you are hungry and to say that you can loot because someone killed another person is ridiculous. It is clear people think they can do things to foreigners without consequences.”