A Zimbabwean foreigner has been accused by the Section A3 crime-prevention community patrollers in Mamelodi West of having paid three youths in the area to burn down rival spaza shops owned by local South African citizens at the Mamelodi West hostel.
According to the leader of Section A3 community crime-prevention patrollers Sipho Mohaule, the Zimbabwean foreigner, known as Orlando, has admitted his guilt and has even signed an affidavit in front of community leaders in this regard.
Mohaule told Tshwane Talks that three youths approached him last week as the leader of the crime prevention patrollers in Section A3, and confessed how Zimbabwean man Orlando, who is an owner of several business entities at the hostel including a spaza shop, gave them money to burn down spaza shops and businesses belonging to his rivals.
Mohaule said the three youths admitted upfront that they had accepted the said money but used it for their own purposes and never burnt down the said spaza shops and businesses as instructed by foreigner Orlando.
“As crime-prevention patrollers we then confronted Orlando and summonsed him to a meeting attended by the hostel ward Councillor and several members of the community, and in that meeting, Orlando admitted to the accusations of paying money to the said youths to burn down rival spaza shops in the hostel,” explained Mohaule.
“Orlando even signed an affidavit wherein he admitted his criminal plans to use the youths to burn down rival spaza shops in the Mamelodi West hostel,” explained Mohaule.
“We then took a decision to expel Orlando from the hostel, but some residents put forward mitigating factors on his behalf, namely that he has a wife and five children who would be rendered homeless if Orlando was to be expelled from the hostel,” said Mohaule.
“We then called the police, but they failed to show up, so we took the law into our own hands and burnt down some of Orlando’s shacks which he used for his business activities, this as a way of curbing his greed and forcing him to own only one shack for his business actvities like many other business owners at the hostel,” he said.
Mohaule said Orlando had up to now owned up to four or five shacks wherein he ran various kinds of businesses including selling cigarettes, cooked meals, fat cakes, bread and local Mamelodi bunny chow called “sphatlho.”
According to Mohaule, Orlando’s nefarious plans to have spaza shops of his competitors burnt down stems from the fact that his competitors were outshining him and attracting more customers to their spaza shops than him.
Mohaule said Orlando admitted to having lost lots of money in consulting numerous witchdoctors in an effort to rescue his dwindling business entities and to destroy rival spaza shop businesses.
Mohaule added that the confessing youths also told him that Orlando has a snake which helps him bring in lots and lots of money while in the process destroying rival businesses.
Mohaule warned everyone in the community, including Orlando the foreigner, to stop using youths by paying them money to commit criminal activities, or else they would face the might of Section A3 patrollers.
He pointed out that people like Orlando pay money to youths because some of the parents of these youths are unemployed and can’t afford to give their children any money that they ask of them.
In response to the accusations levelled at him, Orlando told Tshwane Talks that he admitted to the accusations and signed the aforesaid affidavit only because he was afraid of being assaulted or killed by the people who had summonsed him to the said meeting.
He denied that he had a snake which harmed his business rivals and also dismissed as a lie rumours that he had set up a plan to kill his business rivals and burn down their spaza shops.
But 36-year-old Mohaule Maseko, who is a resident of Section A3 Mamelodi which is situated next to the said hostel, told Tshwane Talks that Orlando is a liar; that he ( Orlando) actually approached him and his younger brother together with their friend and paid them only a R100 to go and burn down the spaza shop belonging to a Mr Molefe and also that of a woman who had previously been employed by Orlando, but had now opened up her own business which was doing better than that of Orlando.
The woman had quit Orlando’s employ because of false salary promises, whereby Orlando would promise to pay her R500 a week but come end of the week Orlando would pay her only R400 a week.
Maseko said after failing to burn down the said spaza shops as instructed by Orlando, the Zimbabwean man threatened the three of them that he would now hire other people to kill them as they had failed to carry out his instructions and that’s why they saw it fit to report the matter to the A3 patrollers for protection.
Maseko revealed that though he is presently addicted to smoking drugs, he doesn’t want to get involved in criminal activities anymore as he has just been recently released from prison after spending a total of seven years there; three on trial and four in actual custody after being found guilty of numerous counts of shoplifting.