Whites warned: South Road ‘hostage’ house vandalised again
Lapa set alight during night as bank attempts to repair riot damages during day.
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The house that was looted and vandalised during the recent Princess riots after the female owner, René Scheepers and her three children were held hostage first and then had to flee, has been targeted again.
This while the bank is in the process of repairing the damages caused on the night of 18 January. The bank has employed a security guard to patrol the property during the evening but on the night of 12 February a small mob again attacked the house in South Road.
The security guard, being outnumbered, had to flee the scene and the mob set the lapa area alight, burning it to the ground. This also caused some of the newly fitted windows to crack.
The Record spoke to Scheepers.
“I am lost for words,” she says. “This clearly is a racist message.” She then relates an incident that took place on the day that she gathered her last belongings to move.
“My brother-in-law brought me to the house. As we were standing outside, four men in an orange Polo pulled up and one told us within earshot of the JMPD officers on the scene that ‘you white people do not belong here. If you come back we will kill you’. The JMPD officers did nothing.
“I now have to live with family in a one bedroom flat with my mother and three children. I daily have to travel 80km to drop off and fetch my three children from the three different schools they are in. I have found a tenant to rent the house but white people will not move back to the area.
“They want the whites out.”