The leader of the Tshwane Barekisi Forum, Shoes Maloka, is recovering in hospital after he was shot in the north of Pretoria on Thursday evening.
Maloka said he caught a taxi from the city centre to his home in Atteridgeville when an unknown man got in and sat next to him.
“I recognised the man from the day before. I saw him in my neighbourhood.”
Maloka said he heard gun shots after he got off the taxi, one of which hit him in the chest. “I started running and I fell. I got up and continued running to my house.”
He said he never lost consciousness. “I remember everything clearly. From the time I got into a taxi until I got to the hospital.”
In October last year, the forum’s secretary, Eliot Nkadimeng, spent more than two months in hospital after he was shot four times after a taxi from the city centre had dropped him off near his home in Nellmapius.
The forum believed the shooting was an attempt to stop the Tshwane Barekisi Forum from representing informal traders in the city centre. “It is clear the attacks on our leaders are not just random crimes, but a plot to kill them,” said one of the forum leaders.
He said the shooting of Maloka happened while the forum and the metro were engaged in successful discussions to address the hawkers’ problems.
The forum said the Tshwane mayor had agreed on their suggestion of holding elections among hawkers in the area to establish a body representing them in the city centre.
The forum also saw the latest attack as an attempt to frustrate them and delay the elections.
Police could not yet comment on the incident.
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