Thato Segoni and her brother Keletso used their life's savings to open a Village Fish ’n Chips franchise eatery at Chris Hani Mall in Vosloorus, Ekurhuleni.
The risk paid off almost immediately as the shop gave birth to two other shops at Bara Taxi Rank in Soweto and at the Phumula Shopping Centre on the East Rand. This was 10 years ago.
The Covid-19 lockdown severely slowed down their three businesses, forcing them to abandon their insurance as they could no longer afford the premiums. However, everything crumbled last week when all three shops were broken into, looted and vandalised.
All the three shopping centres they operated in were affected by the recent rampant looting that saw malls being targeted.
"We lost money that was in the safe at the Phumula shop, almost everything else was damaged, including display fridges, surveillance cameras and stock worth more that R110,000," Thato said.
At the Phumula Shopping Centre shop, looters even had the time to grind open the safe and stole all the cash that had been in it with stock valued at more than R50,000 also being looted.
At the Chris Hani Mall, the big shopfront glass was broken, cash registers damaged and stock worth around R90,000 taken. The Bara shop, which was slightly smaller, had stock worth around R30,000.
The siblings are now facing an uncertain future as they need in excess of R100,000 to return to business and they are trying to get back in business as soon as possible.
"Due to the lockdown, we found ourselves owing on rentals, so we had to cut costs while trying to recover so we couldn't continue with the insurances we had," Segoni said
The Segonis are trying all means to return as quickly as possible to also ensure that their dozen employees are back at work.
"We need to replace all the equipment and stock that has been taken to be able to start all over again," Thato said.
This weekend they had appointed contractors to replace the shopfront glass as the mall management will only fix damages done to the actual building
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