Karabo Rammutla
Hawkers at Mamelodi Crossing outside Tshwane say they have had enough of the Tshwane Metro Police.
They accuse them of abusing their power to get free lunch at least three times a week.
And the metro cops don’t eat just any meat. They take beef, including cow heads, and pork trotters with pap.
According to hawkers the police visit their stalls and demand to see their permits. When they fail to produce them, the men and women in uniform confiscate the food.
The latest incident was on Wednesday around lunch time when the metro cops pounced on the hawkers and confiscated cooked food, sweets and fruit from the helpless hawkers.
Some tried to run away with their stock, but those who sell food couldn’t run away with hot food in big pots.
A hawker, Mishack Lekgeu, said metro cops are greedy and they don’t want to pay for lunch.
“We know their tactics. They send one van to check if the food is cooked and once they are ready we just see many metro cops out of nowhere. They take all our food to eat at their offices behind the mall,” Lekgeu said.
He said although they don’t have trading licences the metro cops have no right to take their stock.
“When our licences expired last year, they told us that we couldn’t renew them because their database department is corrupt and they were still rooting out corruption. They should give us a grace period while they’re busy cleaning their system of corruption,” he said.
Another hawker, Mmaneo Mokhethi, said it was clear the metro cops were delaying renewing their licences so they could continue to have free lunches.
“When we go to their offices to pay a fine so that we can get our pots back, we find the pots empty and some cops eating. This happens every week and it has to stop,” she said.
She said metro cops don’t like chicken but they can’t cook only chicken.
“They’ve never taken chicken. Ideally we should cook only chicken but our customers like different kinds of meat and should we stop trading here they will sell our spots,” she said.
Tshwane Metro Police spokesperson, Senior Superintendent Isaac Mahamba, said it is not true that their database is corrupt.
“There could have been a backlog in renewals but it can’t happen that traders are turned back and told that our system is corrupted,” he said.
Mahamba said they will investigate the traders’ claims.
