The Eldorado Park community is actively reclaiming the local trading economy after undocumented foreign nationals were requested to return to their countries of origin.

Ward councillors Dwain Ponsonby and Juwairia Kaldine defused tensions between undocumented foreign nationals and the community at Shoprite, Ext 5, Eldorado Park, where foreign hawkers were prevented from operating on July 1.

The foreigners were initially resistant and allegedly threatened to damage infrastructure before eventually leaving the trading area.

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Akashifa Williams, elected chairperson of the vendors trading at Shoprite Ext 5, said the issue dates back three years when the JMPD, officials from the City of Johannesburg and the Department of Health informed traders that they were operating illegally on city-owned land.

“We then got permission from our councillor’s office with a letter stating that we are given permission to trade,” said Williams.

She said foreign nationals were instructed to return to their countries or approach their embassies to obtain the legal documentation required to trade in Johannesburg.

“They were given all the documentation. They were given all the information. Unfortunately, none of them took it. None of them went forward, and none of them went to do their documentation,” she said.

Williams alleged that some traders lacked passports, while others used passports that had expired many years earlier.

She said local residents have repeatedly asked the foreign traders to regularise their documentation over the past three years.

“We have asked them numerous times, guys, please get your documents in order. It’s three years later now,” she said.

According to Williams, the community believes local residents have been unable to access trading opportunities because of the large number of foreign traders operating at the site.

“The actual community of Eldorado Park can’t even trade here because of the overload of foreigners trading here,” she said.

Williams said when traders arrived at the market on the morning of the operation, some foreign nationals refused to leave.

“They put up a fight. They said if they must leave, then they’re going to break our infrastructure. They said they’re going to destroy us,” she alleged.

She claimed that she had received threats after informing undocumented traders that they would have to leave.

“The illegal traders were even threatening my family and me. One trader told me he would show me. He said he would have my name and my family’s heads on a plate,” she alleged.

Williams said many residents in Eldorado Park remain unemployed and believes the trading spaces should benefit local communities.

“This is our chance for our community to come back and take back what belongs to them,” she said.

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Community member and hawker Gershin Hokai told Urban News that he has known many of the foreign traders for more than 27 years, adding that the action was not motivated by hatred.

“When foreigners started coming here decades ago, there was no problem, but now there are too many of them, and our children have to compete with them for opportunities,” he said.

“It’s not to say we hate them or we are fighting with them.”

“But at the end of the day, we must also think about our kids,” he said.

He said unemployment among young South Africans is a growing concern and believes the issue needs intervention.

While addressing the traders, Ponsonby noted that the community could no longer allow undocumented foreign nationals to continue trading and said it was time for the township economy to benefit local residents.

He said foreign nationals who were undocumented had been given a three-year period to regularise their status after being provided with information on where and how to obtain the necessary documentation.

“We are all under instruction. The instruction is simple. Undocumented foreigners, yesterday was the deadline.”

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“You need to go back to your country, fix your papers, get a work permit, get a business visa, and then we can welcome you back,” he said.

Ponsonby said only the Department of Home Affairs could verify whether a person’s documents were valid and that community leaders were not authorised to make that determination.

He urged South Africans not to take the law into their own hands.

Foreign traders refused to speak to the publication while others expressed fear of being attacked.