A high profile victim of looting and vandalism is retired soccer star, former Orlando Pirates Captain, Lucky Lekgwathi, whose new restaurant at Klipton in Soweto, which is barely three months old, has been targeted.
Black South African-owned black businesses, which are located at shopping malls and smaller centres in Gauteng and Kwazulu Natal Provinces, have lost their modest assets – invaluable equipment and stock – in the indiscriminate looting and burning. Some, if not the majority of the owners of these businesses, struggled to raise capital to establish themselves.
A high profile victim of looting and vandalism is retired soccer star, former Orlando Pirates Captain, Lucky Lekgwathi, whose new restaurant at Klipton in Soweto, which is barely three months old, has been targeted. In a video on his Instagram account, Lekgwathi shows the gutted inside of the restaurant with tables, chairs and appliances stolen. After seeing his investment reduced to a shell, haplessly, Lekgwathi only evokes divine intervention: “I leave everything to the Almighty God.”
Lekgwathi’s restaurant employed people from Kiptown and surround areas, and its destruction has rendered them jobless.
If Lekgwathi is strong enough to share with the public, some are suffering in silence, plunged in a sea of sorrow, as one sobbing butchery owner, visibly, distraught, told Transform SA Online: “I am as good as done. It is all I had…Mmmy lifetime’ savings.”
Making matters worse is that, due to their shoestring financial means, most small businesses, which have lost assets, could not afford insurance cover unlike big tenants at shopping malls. Sadly, some, if at all, will have to start afresh.
Judging from the trajectory of events so far, some would argue that it is possible the anarchy may have brought to attention the plight of the black majority, who feel marginalised. Nonetheless, economically, there is a colossal cost to pay. Ironically, in the process of violently raising awareness about the lack of opportunities, black-owned fledgling small and micro businesses have been made the sacrificial lamb, counting the cost with no one but themselves to bear.