Handmade furniture destroyed
Three Afrikaans speaking men damaged furniture worth R9 100 belonging to a Malawian carpenter on Sunday morning 14 September.
Rodney Mpanga arrived in Middelburg a little more than a week ago. His furniture was moved here by a truck from Malawi, en-route to Gauteng to buy groceries before returning home.
He sells his goods, with the required permit, from the park next to Lilian Ngoyi Road and Kees Taljaard stadium.
“I have many of his furniture pieces in my house. He has been comming to Middelburg for years” a woman who stopped to give Mr Mpanga measurements for custom made baskets, said on Monday.
In the early hours of Sunday morning Mr Mpanga had to flee for his life and watch helplessly as a group of men, presumably under the influence of alcohol, smashed into his handmade furniture before loading some of it on the back of their vehicle and driving off.
“When they stopped they were calling for me, saying that they wanted to buy something. I told them that I cannot sell so late at picked out furniture to load.”
The men threw the furniture from the vehicle as far as they went. Some of it were found behind the Tosca Centre. They were driving a bakkie with a trailer.
On Sunday morning Mr Mpanga walked and picked up the smaller pieces of furniture. A concerned resident stopped and offered her assistance to retrieve the bigger pieces.
Mr Mpanga says that he did not want to go to the police because of an incident that happened in 2010.
“A man took some furniture from me on loan and promised to pay me at the end of the month. When I phoned him to ask for my money, he started swearing and yelling. He refused to return the furniture.”
The man threatened to kill Mr Mpanga if he acted on his threat to go to the police.
A description fitting the one given by Mr Mapanga put three of the men at a nearby bar on Sunday night. The bar and the people who work there asked not to be named.
“They were looking for trouble,” a woman working on Sunday night said.
The men were rowdy and made rude remarks but left the bar without incident. The vehicle description, a maroon pick-up pulling a trailer, was exactly the same.
The Middelburg Observer is in the process of contacting the men but could not do so before deadline.
