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File Photo: A spaza shop in South Africa.
Residents of KwaMashu, north of Durban, are calling for the closure of local spaza shops after teachers at a school in the area discovered capsules inside a sealed packet of chips bought by children.
Several cases of food contamination have been reported in KwaZulu-Natal since last month. In one incident, an oThongathi family became ill after consuming cold drinks purchased from a spaza shop.
Following numerous food poisoning incidents allegedly linked to snacks from spaza shops, a school in KwaMashu has adopted a proactive approach by inspecting all snacks brought into the school by learners.
Teachers from the school say this is how they found several capsules inside a packet of chips. It’s alleged that the learner bought the chips on his way to school.
One of the community members, Linda Zulu says they want spaza shops owned by foreign nationals to be closed.
“These shops should be closed down. I’m happy that the child survived, fortunately. She is about 13 years old. Surely my two-year-old was going to eat those snacks, and I don’t know what was going to happen to her, I want these shops to close down.”
Another resident Scelo Mamle is blaming the government for not doing enough to regulate spaza shops. “South Africa is lawless, there is no law that protects locals. Law is protecting foreign nationals. This has been going on for a very long time. We heard that health officials are checking, and have found out that there are irregularities but no steps are taken. These shops should have been closed down a long time ago, the perpetrators would have been penalised. Unfortunately, there is no law that give police a right to arrest these people.”
Stricter regulations
Mamle wants government to be stricter in enforcing health regulations at spaza shops. “As South Africans, we don’t know why the government is not taking drastic steps against this. A number of children have died after consuming these foods, this has been happening for a very long time, concerns have been raised about hygiene in these shops some is the products sold in these shops are counterfeit goods, the first of d is not good for human consumption, but the government is not doing enough to stop this.”
Police spokesperson Robert Netshiunda says some of the capsules have been taken for forensic tests. “Unfortunately as the police, we cannot jump the gun and just open a case for the sake of opening a case. The matter was registered in our occurrence book and as things stand we await the results of the Lab which will tell us what are those capsules, what are they, if there is anything illegal, and if there is a case to be opened, we will open a case.”
The owner of the shop closed the business until an investigation into the incident is concluded.
