Motsoaledi confirms four arrests linked to food poisoning cases
ANC NEC member and Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi on Friday confirmed four arrests in connection with food poisoning incidents in Naledi, Soweto.
Motsoaledi made the announcement during a media briefing held alongside the ANC national executive committee meeting in Boksburg on Friday.
Motsoaledi's confirmation follows the deaths of six children in Soweto, who allegedly ate contaminated snacks purchased from a spaza shop.
This incident has sparked outrage, with local communities accusing foreign-owned spaza shops in townships of selling expired and unsafe food products.
The outcry has led to incidents of looting, forcing many spaza shops to shut down in areas such as the Vaal and Naledi in Soweto.
Between February and September, Gauteng reported 207 cases of food poisoning, raising alarm over food safety standards in township shops.
He said the arrests followed information from spaza shop owners, who pointed authorities to a supplier believed to be selling a chemical suspected to have contaminated the food.
"They did confess that there is an illegal chemical, which they buy from their mall, 27 officials visited that mall and they confiscated 1456 gram of that chemical.
"Four people were arrested, one man and three women, two of them in terms of the laws of the country where given bail of R2000. The others are still in custody.
"The confiscated chemical is in Johannesburg Central prison," said Motsoaledi.
He acknowledged pressure from the public and the concern that the government is doing nothing.
"I know that we are under pressure that we are doing nothing while people are dying, but we can't just rush and make conclusions.
"So we have a team on the ground doing investigations, forensic pathologists are there, epidemiologists are there, and some clinicians who specialise in symptoms of somebody who has been chemically poisoned.
"They have these swaps of children that have been taken, and the files of these children, they are scrutinising all those things and the postmortem results to try and make out exactly what we are dealing with."
Motsoaledi also ruled out school nutrition programmes as the possible cause of the food poisoning.
"They bought food at the gate, for now, we don't think the food they eat at school has got anything to do with this," he said.
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