Even though the recent ANC NEC meeting which concluded its business at Birchwood Hotel on Monday did not discuss the issue of spaza shops in detail, party secretary-general Fikile Mbalula said the party was concerned about illegal foreigners dominating the township economy.
Mbalula, who addressed the media during a briefing at Luthuli House on yesterday, was responding to a question on the matter.
His address coincided with new reports that two children had died in Vredefort, Free State, after allegedly eating snacks bought at a local spaza shop.
Residents allege that the shop sold snacks to the children on Sunday.
This comes just two weeks after four children in Naledi, Soweto, and another two died on the West Rand under similar circumstances.
These two incidents were confirmed by the Gauteng Department of Health (GDoH), which a few days later announced that two toddlers had lost their lives following a food poisoning incident on the West Rand.
Last week, The Star reported that competition between foreign nationals from two countries exposed a fake food production house in Swaneville, west of Joburg, where fake food supplies were being allegedly manufactured without following health safety and food handling protocols.
“With the issue of spaza shops, we had a brief discussion because the minister of small enterprises together with the minister of labour did not feature on the agenda of this NEC meeting. They are going to feature because as the ANC, we want to embark on a massive drive of doing away with illegal immigrants in our townships running spaza shops. We are going to join communities, not in the form of Operation Dudula and do it illegally,” Mbalula said.
He said the current situation could not be tolerated any longer as it was putting lives of South Africans at risk.
“Obviously, the illegal immigrants who are here, are here illegally and it is criminal. People must be arrested. That is the authority of the state and it can’t be that if communities are exposing that, they are called xenophobic. The ANC must lend a hand and join the communities. We must join our people in those struggles. It has got nothing to do with xenophobia,” he said.
“We must close these spaza shops. If the ANC does not do that, the people are going to do that for themselves. We have legislation on this matter and I spoke to Minister Stella Ndabeni, because if we do not act, the people are going to take the law into their own hands,” he said.
Mbalula added that South Africans were the ones hiring out shops and backyard rooms to undocumented immigrants.
“You know what happens, it is our people who hire out these spaza shops. It is a sad story. Our people are recipients of RDP houses and they have rented these houses to illegal foreigners,” he said.