Ammunition has been discovered in one of the foreign-owned spaza shops in Dobsonville, Soweto, where various stakeholders from the City of Johannesburg were conducting inspections at spaza shops as part of enforcing the new regulations. Three illegal immigrants have since been arrested during the inspections.

NO ACCOUNTABILITY

City of Johannesburg councillor ,Siyabonga Zwane, said the shop owner denied knowledge of the ammunition found. "They say they don't know it because they say after every six months there's new people. They said they have never cleaned the premises and never checked the premises. That was the response from the owner," Zwane said. He added that when they went to the spaza shop, they found meat with an offish smell inside the fridges. "The smell and even the colour of the meat was not normal; it looked greenish, showing that it has expired. When we asked the gentleman, he said that they don't have power, so he claimed the meat was affected by the fact that they sometimes don't have electricity, but now why do they keep the food know if they know it is affected. It shows that they don't care about people," said Zwane. He added, "Right now another child has been rushed to the hospital; this is a recurring crisis and I don't know how long we should carry on like this? Can all these shops be closed down because we have a lot of people dying?" he remarked.

NOTHING IN ORDER

A food inspector said when they arrived at one of the shops, they found the shopkeeper and not the owner. "We asked him for his documents, but he indicated that he does not have them. So we called the shop owner to come and while waiting for him, we moved to the back of the shop that is where we discovered it was being used as a bedroom. We found ammunition, which the police said is an R5,' she said. The inspector expressed concern over bottles of children's medication with an expiry date of 2025. She said she wondered why they stored the medication at the back. "We asked them why and they said they also found a bucket of atchaar at the back underneath the shelves. You keep these at the back when you have a proper shop where you can place and sell them, so that when your customers come to buy they find them correctly placed where they are supposed to be placed. She said they also found a bucket of atchaar at the back underneath the shelves.The atchaar was covered with mould and with spoons inside. What I know is that once atchaar has mould on it, the minute you stir it disappears covered by the oil and spices, so I believe they were selling it hence there were spoons inside the bucket.'