House breakings and robberies in our community are giving us sleepless nights.
Christinah Mogobye
Local community members of Sefikile village are struggling to get jobs at the mines around our village, the mine decides to hire strangers whose aims are to destroy our community. Sefikile village has many unemployed matriculants and graduates, but 70% of them are unemployed and jobs are given to people who rob villagers at night and shoot them for their belongings. They bring drugs to local taverns. This is affecting everyone in the community, and we fear for our kids and their future.
In the week hours of 4th May 2024, tsotsis (thugs) stormed into a local tavern and ordered all the patrons and everyone at the tavern to lie down, while they took their belongings at knife and gunpoint. This left many villagers with injuries, trauma, and shock. My cousin was one of the victims, he said they were sitting and drinking when 8 men came in a taxi and stormed into the tavern. He was shocked and trembling when he narrated the story to me. He was a DJ there and lost his equipment. This happened around 3 am and taverns are supposed to close at 02:00 am, but it seems as if the tavern owner didn’t comply. When I made him aware of the risks of allowing the tavern to operate until that time, he lied about the time that the robbers came. He said that they came before noon, but 80% of patrons who were there confirmed that it was in the wee hours of 3 am when the incident happened.
The police arrived as early as 5 am and called an ambulance for those who got injured. Two men refused to hand their belongings to the robbers, and they got shot. I wish I had been present when the police were there so that I could hear what they were being told and the time that they claimed the incident happened. We wish to live in a crime-free community. The only solution is to report any tavern opening after 02:00 am and arrange crime prevention, and drug and substance abuse campaigns with the councillor and the SAPS.
