On November 3, Lesedi Mulaudzi, a 10-year-old girl from Alexandra, a sprawling township in Johannesburg, South Africa, passed away from suspected food poisoning after eating snacks bought at a “spaza shop” – a type of informal convenience store that emerged in Black communities during the apartheid era.
According to the provincial Gauteng Department of Health, Lesedi died at the Alexandra Community Health Centre, where she was admitted to the emergency department in a critical condition. Her mother and four-year-old brother, who had also consumed the same snacks, were hospitalised but eventually recovered.
After Lesedi’s death, her father recalled the traumatic events of the day, saying the victims started to experience extreme pain and discomfort roughly one hour after consuming the snacks.
“My daughter came from a toilet complaining about chest pains, we took her to Masakhane clinic and on the way, she was unable to breathe. When we got to the clinic, I dropped her off in the emergency room. We were called after some minutes to be informed of her passing.”
Lesedi’s unfortunate demise took place amid a succession of similar occurrences associated with spaza shops across the province and the country as a whole, sparking widespread outrage.
Speaking at a press conference on November 10, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi announced that the province recorded 441 instances of food poisoning, resulting in 23 fatalities, a significant number of which transpired within schools and local communities, mainly among children between the ages of six and nine. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa made an official declaration on November 15, indicating that it is mandatory for all spaza shops and food handling facilities to register with the municipalities where they are located within 21 days.
In mid-October, six children died after eating snacks from a spaza shop in Naledi, Soweto. A special task force charged with investigating the cause of their deaths, headed by the Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, revealed on October 28 that all six children died from ingesting a restricted pesticide, an organophosphate called Terbufos.
Classified as a highly hazardous chemical, Terbufos is primarily utilised in agricultural environments. However, in South Africa’s townships, it is also illegally sold as a “street pesticide”, and is commonly used to try and control rat infestations.
Terbufos and other illicit pesticides like it contain restricted agricultural chemicals that pose serious health threats when used in homes and other public places.
Notably, while the special taskforce has identified Terbufos as the agent that caused the deaths of six children in Naledi, it has not succeeded in tracing the primary source of the contamination.
In July 2001, the government of Gauteng, led by the African National Congress (ANC), South Africa’s largest party, had acknowledged the existence of a rat infestation in the province but said that the duty of addressing the rodent issue lay with its own ANC-run municipalities. Evidently, 23 years later, insufficient progress has been made in eliminating the rat problem in the province, a shortfall that goes hand in hand with the myriad problems linked to spaza shops.
On November 7, Fikile Mbalula, the secretary-general of the ANC, called on the government to implement a nationwide closure of spaza shops, followed by a re-registration process that includes rigorous evaluations of compliance matters and immigration permits. Migrants – mostly from Somalia, Ethiopia, Pakistan and Bangladesh – run approximately 90 percent of the spaza shops in the country, and some have been found to be undocumented.
Currently, there are more than 150,000 spaza shops in South Africa. They make up a significant part of the South African economy, with approximately 80 percent of the population visiting these shops daily. Nearly 40 percent of South Africa’s total food expenditure goes to these shops, which puts their collective estimated value at R178 billion ($9.8bn), a sum that exceeds the market capitalisation of Shoprite, the country’s leading retailer. Despite their widespread popularity, they pose a variety of critical problems.
A significant portion of these small enterprises do not register themselves with local municipalities and tax authorities. Many sell expired food items kept under unhygienic conditions, while others exhibit a tendency to procure fake or substandard products from unregistered manufacturers – underground “factories” that do not adhere to manufacturing regulations.
Alarmingly, many spaza shops are also known to be selling several controlled medicines, which should only be sold by authorised pharmacies under South African law. There have even been reports that some of these illegally sold medicines are expired or otherwise contaminated.
Without proper regulation, spaza shops are doing whatever they can to increase their profits, and as a result, end up posing a grave threat to the welfare of the marginalised communities they are supposed to serve.
This, unfortunately, is not an anomaly, but just one of the many shortcomings in the provision of essential services to South Africa’s poorest communities.
Thirty years after the official end of apartheid in 1994, residents of South Africa’s townships still have to endure a plethora of infrastructural and service-related deficiencies.
In contrast, suburban regions – historically the home of the white minority and now witnessing the growth of an emerging Black middle class – enjoy enhanced amenities and efficient service delivery, including fairly effective oversight of food outlets.
Johannesburg has only 221 health inspectors – professionals tasked with enforcing compliance with the country’s health and safety laws – creating a ratio of one inspector for 27,000 people. This is far fewer than the one health inspector for every 10,000 members of the population recommended by the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, Tshwane, the capital of South Africa, is even more under-resourced, with just 77 health inspectors, which equates to one inspector for every 60,000 residents in the city of four million residents.
In Gauteng, the lack of health inspectors is seemingly encouraging the use of so-called “street pesticides” within the townships – including by owners of spaza shops.
Furthermore, the failure of authorities to address the rat infestation in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, a challenge intensified by ineffective waste disposal and unattended sewage spills, has exacerbated the rising use of dangerous and illegal substances in Gauteng.
Dr Aslam Dasoo, a medical doctor representing the Progressive Health Forum – a national health advocacy network – has expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of re-registering spaza shops as a means to tackle the food poisoning crisis, arguing that this approach fails to consider the paramount need to eliminate rat infestations in townships.
Last year, a retrospective descriptive study of children hospitalised at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto revealed that between January 2016 to December 2021 2,652 children were treated for pesticide poisoning in that hospital alone.
Hence, the crisis we are witnessing now is, in essence, just a continuation of a long-existing problem nurtured by countless systemic failings of municipalities and state authorities.
For several weeks now, government authorities have been rigorously addressing the issue of non-compliant spaza shops, with multidisciplinary teams engaged in conducting compliance evaluations in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, and Limpopo.
Additionally, on November 7, the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), Velenkosini Hlabisa, gazetted a new by-law for the township economy. Among others, the by-law mandates that all business activities in the township align with public health and safety regulations.
This is a commendable development.
Nonetheless, the absence of relevant legislation may be one of the lesser challenges facing South Africa, as the widespread inability to consistently enforce established business, health and environmental regulations in the townships has significantly worsened the current crises.
Indeed, the children of Soweto and Alexandra should receive the same level of systemic protection as their peers residing in Gauteng’s affluent neighbourhoods, regardless of their socioeconomic status.
Had the authorities responded in a timely manner to the rat infestations, eliminated the illegal trade of restricted pesticides, and regulated spaza shops, the life of Lesedi and many others like her could have been saved.
It is high time South Africa truly leaves behind the apartheid economy, and starts working to ensure the wellbeing of all its residents equally.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.