Business booming around Dewani court

A thirst for justice and a hunger to hear UK businessman Shrien Dewani's version of events leading to the murder of his wife has had an unexpected knock-on effect.

Small businesses in the vicinity of the Western Cape High Court are making big bucks selling cool drinks and snacks.

In a scenario reminiscent of the Oscar Pistorius trial, throngs of local and foreign journalists scrambled to get into the court on Monday to get a picture of the Briton and to cover the first day of his much talked about trial.

Dewani is accused of hiring hitmen to kill Anni during their honeymoon in Cape Town on November 13, 2010 in an alleged staged hijacking. His trial continues today.

Castello's Coffee Shop opposite the court was bursting at the seams. Owner Alec Grove said his shop ran out of cool drinks and other food supplies.

“It was the first time I have been this busy,” said Grove, who has been running the shop since March. “There were a lot of local and international journalists here. Some set up their workstations inside the shop. We had more than 200 orders and we ran out of soft drinks and other stuff.”

Waitress Carol-Ann Samuels said: “The journalists bought a lot of food, coffee and water. They gave us really good tips”.

Around the corner is Yours Truly coffee shop. Manager Armand Wessels said he made 50 sales more than he does on a normal day.

“It not always good to be near the court because a lot of protests end up here and that stops our customers from coming. But Monday was really good for business. One photographer had to buy coffee for a group of photographers because he was the only one who got a picture of Dewani and in doing so the stood in the way of everybody else.”

But Rachmat Dawood, the owner of Mountain View Takeaways, was not impressed with the turnout. Dawood has ran the shop for 31 years and said the Najwa Petersen murder trial in 2008 and had brought more business than the Dewani case had so far.

“We thought we would see more people coming to attend the case but that didn’t happen. People don’t even the buy the newspapers carrying the story, they just look at the headlines and leave,” said Dawood.