Valhalla Park looting: Police fear pillaging of shops will continue [video]

The Bishop Lavis Community Policing Forum (CPF) has indicated that the recent Valhalla Park looting incident was only just the beginning of a concerted attack on foreign-owned shops in the Cape Flats suburb.

Valhalla Park looting: What’s the latest?

It appears that the looting of foreign-owned shops we first saw in some parts of Gauteng, has since spread to the Western Cape. The first wave of violence against foreign-owned shops broke out in Samora Machel, earlier in September.

A total of 30 rioters were arrested after township locals looted foreign-owned businesses. The carnage resulted in the death of two people.

While law and order has since been restored in the township that is situated near Phillippi, scenes of anarchy broke out in Valhalla Park earlier this week.

Video footage, that has since gone viral, showed scores of rioters looting a foreign-owned butchery that, according to Bishop Lavic CPF’s Graham Lindhorst, has been servicing the suburb for many years.

Looters could be seen in the video running off with carcasses and freezers filled with meat packs.

Butchery looted in Valhalla Park, Cape Town. WATCH pic.twitter.com/MLsZS95K8T

— Yusuf Abramjee (@Abramjee) September 24, 2019

How many arrests have been made

The police were seen driving by and not batting an eyelash towards the violence. Quoted in a recently published EWN article, Lindhorst confirmed that the Valhalla Park police were ‘investigating the looting’.

At this time, there have been no arrests made and police are nowhere near in tracking down the suspects seen, in the video, running off with stolen items

“This is just the beginning” – Bishop Lavis CPF

Lindhorst warned that, while the looting has not continued on Wednesday, this was far from over.

“We’re disappointed in that community because that shop has been there for many years, and it has served that community for many years for them to destroy it in one day. Our concern now is, and I’ve spoken to the brigadier, that that can be the start of a bigger that we can go into that area because we know what Valhalla Park is like,” he said.

Lindhorst condemned the violence, stating that this goes beyond being about xenophobia. At this rate, it was blatant acts of criminality that need to be addressed immediately.

“It’s not xenophobia, it’s pure criminality. We condemn whatever happened there. There’s no way it can be acceptable for people just to go into a shop of someone who has worked very hard and someone just takes it over,” he said.