Ethiopian shopkeeper shot dead in Cape Town

SMASHED windows, broken burglar bars, looted shops, anger, terror and a grieving family of a 62-yearold taxi owner hit by a stray bullet. These were the scenes of devastation that littered the streets of Kagiso yesterday.

The ongoing unrest in the townships that began on Monday spread to the West Rand with police battling to keep pace with the mobs of youngsters pillaging foreign-owned shops. Meanwhile, in Cape Town an Ethiopian shopkeeper was shot dead yesterday morning in Khayelitsha.

The 30-year-old was shot and killed during a robbery in iLitha Park, but police spokesman Frederick van Wyk said the circumstances surrounding the shooting were under investigation, and it was not yet clear whether the murder was linked to the looting and violence in Gauteng.

Three people have been killed in the violent unrest there, which was sparked by the shooting of 14-yearold Siphiwe Mahori, allegedly by a Somali shopowner. The shopowner, Senosi Yusuf, is expected to appear in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on a charge of murder on Monday.

Some Soweto residents claimed the mayhem was because of frustration that foreign shopowners – mostly Somali, Pakistani and Bangladeshi – were not creating jobs for locals.

In Swaneville, the family of another victim, taxi owner Hendrik Zamani Manye, 62, wept inconsolably after he was killed by a stray bullet apparently fired by Somali shopowners from across the street where he lived with his partner Adelaide Tsotetsi.

Tsotetsi said the most painful part of Manye’s death was that he was still alive when police arrived on the scene on Thursday night. Instead, she charged, they had “rushed to rescue the Somali shopowners and escorted them from the mob”.

“The government must do something about the illegal guns, or else the Somalis will finish us all.”