Lawrence Tseye knew there was nothing he could do to prevent looters from making off with whatever they wanted when one of them pulled out a knife on him amid the chaos.
“All I could do was simply keep quiet and walk out of the store,” said Tseye.
Chicken and Chips Xpress, is one of hundreds of shops that were vandalised and looted at Protea Glen Mall last Monday.
Tseye said he had no idea how long it would take to get the business up and running again.
“The losses we suffered run into their millions. We have insurance, but considering how many shops have been destroyed in SA, I don't know when they’ll be able to process our claim. There is a lot of paperwork to do, plus we have to wait for the mall to give us the go ahead to reopen once they are done assessing the damage,” he said.
“I got a call from one of the customers who was driving past the mall. He said the mall had been invaded by people and he feared that our shop was also being targeted. I came here as quickly as I could, but found that 80% of the store was already damaged and people were still taking things,” he said.
He said he attempted to stop them, but was quickly deterred from this action when one of the looters drew a knife and told him to shut up.
“I stood on the side and watched them take everything. They took four 55 inch TVs, fryers, warmers, display fridges, benches – they broke whatever they could not carry out of the store. It's millions of rand worth of damages that they cost us,” he said.
Tseye and his staff were cleaning the store, mopping up, and discarding items that could not be salvaged on Saturday.
On the day of the incident, Tseye recalled how members of the Johannesburg Metro Police Department went from store to store, instructing them to close their operations for the day because their safety would not be guaranteed.
“We had been here for about an hour when the police arrived at around 9am. They warned us that things were getting ugly and we needed to close. We left everything here – the food and everything and we thought we would close for a couple of hours and return later to resume operations. How wrong we were,” he said.
Tseye said as far as this year was concerned, he had thrown in the towel.
“It's tough, we have nine staff members here including the manager. What is going to happen to their income because we can't open until we sort out everything? It's going to be tough,” he said.
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