Almost 100 children have fallen sick after eating suspected poisoned food and snacks in the country in the past month, with some dying painfully and others spending days in intensive care.
The majority have been falling sick in groups who have eaten from the same vendor across the country’s townships, which are home to almost 12 million people.
The youngest to have died were mere toddlers from a township in Soweto, where, like many townships, the reliance on tuck shops and their owners is heavy.
Known for their generosity, for lower than normal prices, and for allowing their clientele the advantage of buying goods on credit, they have become a mainstay, keeping communities alive where the government and big business have little or no reach.
This has been the underlying factor for residents reliant on township spaza shops to come out in defence of the mostly foreign owned shops.
“What will we eat?” one elderly woman cried at the threat of closure of a tuck shop down her street. “Not only does he (the owner) sell me goods in the right amount and size, but he also allows me to buy on credit. I pay him when I get my grant,” the woman said.
“And this is just one of thousands, or millions, of people whose livelihoods depend on the corner shop,” economist Sandra Bopela said. Many communities are home to unemployed guardians of children who must eat, she said.
Saying when, three years ago, they conducted a survey into the viability of spaza shops in ensuring a vibrant township economy, they found that that was where a lot of money was spent by dwellers.
“That is where they buy their bread, their eggs, small packets of mealie meal, soap, and toothpaste, without the added expense of taking public transport to get to a mall or shopping centre.”
Bopela said not only did this mean spending less money but it also spoke to convenience, as it served even those who did get out of the township to the city for work.
“They are open at the crack of dawn and close late at night. They reduce the need to carry plastic bags of groceries in the taxi, and the shopkeepers form bonds with their customers; they know each of them by name and understand their needs, to the extent not only of giving them goods on credit but extending their hand to giving free goods and assisting during crises times like funerals,” their findings indicated.
Said one Mr Ibrahim, a foreign national who runs a Cash and Carry in the Mandela township of Mamelodi: “As much as we are known not to follow the so-called regulations, we actually care about our clients. As people and not because they keep our doors open.”
On the issue of selling poisonous snacks to small children, he said: “We buy in bulk, bulk across many of our outlets, so we do sell cheap snacks, so that children do not need an allowance to buy from us; a R1 can get them chips, sweets, biscuits, you name it.”
He said hygiene was a big issue in their storage rooms: “...but would the poisoning not be in bigger numbers and all year round? Would it not be children and their parents who end up sick? Taxi drivers buy from us, as do people on their way to and from work in the city.
“It is easier to point the finger at us, but has anyone checked where else snacks are bought?” he asked.
Bopela and her compatriots have asked, amid the loud and ongoing national calls both for stringent regulation and closure of tuck shops, what they would gain from killing off their lifeline.
She said afrophobia was the issue. “And, as some, including government officials and community leaders, have come out to say someone local is killing off South African children, knowing attention would immediately focus on the outcast.
“Communities know, and unfortunately our government is rather reactive in how they handle the issue. This panic reaction of sending inspectors to pick out goods past their sell by dates instead of digging a little deeper to find out where the tainted goods come from, who is killing children and why, because a third force is at play here, causing trouble by targeting the most vulnerable and most precious of society.”
By Friday nothing toxic had been found in tested goods taken from tuck shops, and cases of children falling sick both in school and playing in the streets rose.