Volunteers, workers roll up sleeves after malls, streets left in shambles

Looted communities in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng have slowly started picking up the broken pieces of what was left of shops and malls after looters destroyed many places over the past week.

Yesterday, members of the community met at Mams Mall in Mamelodi East, Pretoria, with brooms and refuse bags to clean up the pieces of broken glass and damaged parts of furniture and appliances scattered in the parking area by looters in their trail of destruction on Monday evening.

On the other side of the mall, contract workers were busy welding the fence back together to safeguard the premises. One of the workers said they were initially contracted to renovate shops in the mall but now have to help fix and clean the mall before their other work can continue.

At the mall entrance, members of the community were waiting to be let into the parking area to continue to clean up where they started the previous day.

Even though the atmosphere was still tense in the streets by yesterday, the group of women were happy to talk. There was a heavy police presence in the area with members of the Tshwane Metro Police Department patrolling while a helicopter circled in the air.

“We are going to suffer, this has affected us. We rely on this mall for shopping and everything,” one of the women said.

The group of women confirmed they were members of the community who started cleaning around the mall on Wednesday.

Andrias Mathios, from Marshall Security and Community Support, said there were various groups slowly starting to clean up in parts of Durban, but they were scared of looters returning.

Mathios said when he visited the Macro in Springfield Park, some looters returned to see what else they could steal from the damaged buildings such as scrap metal, copper pipes and geysers.

He said the looted Pick n Pay warehouse in Pinetown and the Macro in Springfield Park also had a lot of cleaning up to do. He said out of all the areas affected, Cornubia Mall in Durban was an “absolute disaster”.

“It looks like a bomb exploded there,” he said.

Mathios said Queen Nandi Drive in Durban was also in a bad state.

“There are a lot of people out there praying and cleaning,” Mathios said.

“I’m glad to see the community uniting,” he said.

Democratic Alliance ward councillor Jeffrey Mogaladi said he was very disappointed in the people who conducted themselves in a bad way and looted malls.

“We have to pick up the pieces because life goes on. We cannot be seen not doing anything,” Mogaladi said.

Meanwhile, in Meer En See in KwaZulu-Natal, resident Johan Meeding said when they saw what happened in Empangeni, the town’s residents stood together to secure their area.

“We cleared the roads which were scattered with rocks and tree branches,” Meeding said.

Nirvash Ramishwar, store manager for Gauteng Car Sound and Security in Malvern in Johannesburg, said the streets were left in shambles.

“One of our colleagues started a group to get people from surrounding areas to help clean up the streets,” Ramishwar said.

The group grew to 15 organisers with a total of about 250 volunteers from the surrounding areas who came to help clean up the area on Wednesday and yesterday.

“We started in Jules Street and worked our way up to Madison Street and back again,” Ramishwar said.

Burnt tyres, rocks, rubble, rubbish, plastic bottles and metal parts were among the items that were cleared. Ramishwar said when the looters came around, it created more chaos because they tossed rubbish bags on the streets and cars had been driving over them.

Gift of the Givers founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman said the organisation would support communities to clean up.

“We are going to be overwhelmed with other responsibilities,” he said.

– marizkac@citizen.co.za