The department of basic education (DBE) has hailed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s order late last year that all spaza shops in the country be registered, saying it helped prevent further loss of lives after at least 22 school-going children died across SA after consuming snacks bought from spaza shops.
By December 2024 there were at least 890 incidents of food-borne illnesses reported across all provinces, with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal the worst affected, while Limpopo, Free State and Mpumalanga recorded dozens of incidents.
In his address to the nation on November 15, Ramaphosa called on all spaza shops to be registered by December 17, though the deadline was subsequently extended to February 28 2025.
Ramaphosa ordered the immediate closure of all spaza shops implicated in the deaths of children linked to food poisoning after an unusually high number of children and adults died after ingesting food from spaza shops across the country. The government has since classified the health crisis as a national disaster.
DBE national spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga told Business Day on Monday: “The announcement by the president that all spaza shops must register assisted. The closure of implicated spaza shops helped a lot. Schools were also closed for the December holidays. That helped.”
Mhlanga said the department was monitoring the situation now that schools had been reopened. “We used the time [December holidays] to plan and embark on an awareness campaign as this matter needs various stakeholders to play their part,” he said.
“We hope the messages arising from the awareness campaign will help galvanise communities to act and prevent further harm.”
The government allocated R15m for rapid testing of suspected contaminated food products and setting up a R500m fund to support spaza shops and other businesses in the townships and rural areas.
Co-operative governance and traditional affairs minister Velenkosini Hlabisa could not immediately be reached for comment.
In a media briefing last year, Hlabisa said: “Those who have registered their businesses and have duly received their acknowledgment of registration still need to undertake a further process to obtain their trading licences.”
He said environmental health practitioners and “other regulatory authorities” would still inspect the registered food-related trading businesses to ensure that their businesses were eligible to trade.
By December in Gauteng, 733 shop operators had been registered out of a 2,605 applications, while in KwaZulu-Natal only 749 applications were registered out of 7,187 applications. The highest number of registrations were in Mpumalanga, with 7,263 registrations processed out of 9,283 applications. This was followed by Limpopo, where 4,223 shop operators were registered out of 5,504 applications.
“After registration there must be a verification process such as to check where it is operating. It will be visited to check if it complies with all requirements and health standards,” Hlabisa said previously.
“Once verification is done and application [is] approved and they find that you don’t comply and some of the information was incorrect, you will be forced to shut down. If it is health matters, it will be shut down immediately.”
With Thando Maeko
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