Spaza food poisoning: what is to be done?

Lately, there has been a debate about the dominance of foreign nationals in the tuck shop sector. Some migrant outlets dabble with cash card and airtime transactions as authorised retailers. Yet most are operated by illegal immigrants. This exposes the complicity of banks and cellphone companies in the violation of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA).

The debate comes at the time when there has been a slew of deaths involving children. Unsurprisingly, food poisoning is at the centre of these deaths with self-packaged foodstuff suspected to have been contaminated by a chemical agent commonly used to kill rats.

What is to be done? Needless to say the interest groups have been calling for government to audit all tuck shops with a view to ring-fence such a model business as the preserve of citizens.

But the courts elected to uphold the status quo, even though the free-for-all gap in legislation is compromising the interests of children who have become the face of the tragic narrative in society. Not only do these learned justices know no justice, but they are completely indifferent to the pleas of communities and aloof to safeguard the children’s quality of health.

They are way too complacent to care that these outlets sell unwholesome stock sourced from a cartel that supplies wholesalers mostly owned by their brethren and keep no record of sales or returns.

Worse, migrant hawkers still cook up delicacies with products purchased from a flea market dominated by foreign nationals. No wonder the health inspectors are unable to track and trace the origin of the food poisoning under investigation. The blame-shifting stirred enraged citizens to loot and burn down migrant shops. That is bound to spiral out of control because we’re misled by the judiciary which assigned itself illegitimate powers to govern this country.

Morgan Phaahla | Ekurhuleni

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media or IOL.

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