Metro leaves hawker unconcious

Hawkers again raised their concerns regarding what they described as the Tshwane metro police brutality against them.

Frustrated hawkers said something needs to be done to bring back their dignity and stop harassment by metro police who ‘abuse power’.

Helpless informal traders raised their concerns after metro police allegedly sprayed pepper spray and hit an informal trader, Luish Mahlangu, against a metro police vehicle. He fell to the ground leaving him unconscious on the side of the street on the corner of Johannes Ramokhoase (Proes) and Thabo Sehume (Andries) streets last Thursday.

An eyewitness who preferred to remain anonymous said the confrontation started when Mahlangu was trying to get to the metro police vehicle where his stock was loaded after being confiscated.

“There was confrontation between him and the metro police resulting in a fight.”

The eyewitness said he saw metro police hitting Mahlangu against the vehicle and the ground while spraying him with pepper spray.

Paramedics found Mahlangu unconscious on the side of the street and took him to the Tshwane District Hospital.

Mahlangu counts himself lucky to still be alive after regaining consciousness only late that evening on the day and was discharged the following day.

Emmanuel Langa, a friend of Mahlangu, said his friend was attacked while trying to take his money and cell phone from the stock that was in the back of the metro police vehicle.

Langa claimed when he went to the metro police offices to collect Mahlangu’s stock there were no money or his cell phone, believing that it had been stolen.

“We have to open cases against the metro police,” Langa said.

Langa confirmed that Mahlangu did not have a trading licence.

“The metro police confiscated our trading licences, including his,” he said.

Shoes Maloka, a leader of Tshwane Barekisi Forum, said the incident was an evidence of how metro police harass hawkers daily in the city centre.

“It is a miracle that Mahlangu did not die in the altercation with the metro police,” Maloka said.

He said they cannot forget that one of the informal traders died in an almost similar incident earlier this year.

Maloka said Forster Rivombo was gunned down while stopping the metro police from confiscating his stock.

Blessing Manale said Tshwane Barekisi Forum, which had been in the forefront of threatening to mobilise thousands of informal traders countrywide and make the city ungovernable unless action was taken against those responsible for Rivombo’s death, was in fact not a recognised representative organisation of informal traders in Pretoria.

He said recognised informal traders’ organisations were those that had been cooperating with the metro, such as Tshwane Informal Traders’ Forum, Tshwane Informal Trader’s Council, Tshwane Nafcoc and Tshwane Micro Entrepreneurs’ League.

He said they had, however, responding to most of the issues as raised by Barekisi, members of the public, business chambers and other informal trader’s forums through various programmes aimed at dressing various issues including harassment by members of the metro police, corruption with the issuing of trading permits and subletting of stalls to foreigners.