Alex’s beloved Freedom Supermarket resumes place at centre of community life

Freedom Supermarket is one of Alexandra township's best-loved stores. Its convenient location, just a few metres from the Pan Africa shopping centre, is another reason for its popularity.

The supermarket’s reasonable prices and rich history serving residents of the township for 30 years have customers coming back for more. But when the July unrest occurred and Pan Africa shopping centre was attacked by looters, Freedom Supermarket was not spared.

“If you take a look at the Pan Africa centre or you take a look at Freedom Supermarket, these are very viable distances,” said supermarket and Freedom Corner representative Nick Obel.

Looters took everything they could from the store and burnt it to the ground, along with other shops next to it.

“The damage was huge. Half the building was burnt and it is not just Freedom — it’s Pep, various butchers, our longstanding tenants who have been in the building. The local laundry that has been there for about 15 to 20 years was burnt down and other premises,” Obel said.

He said the roof of the store was burnt off and every aspect of the business was completely destroyed. Thousands of stock items were burnt to ashes.

Stock is usually bought in bulk to allow customers to benefit from the affordable prices the store is known for. “They [residents] rely on Freedom because of its buying power. When the looters came through, it wasn’t just what you saw in the supermarket, there were huge stocks in the storerooms that were looted and burnt,” Obel said.

“The looting was one thing, but it was the malicious damage which came as a surprise. It was tons of stock left there burnt, not even taken, that was the sad thing.”

Obel says it was a small fraction of the community that was involved in looting, but many residents had to bear the brunt of what happened.

“If there were a thousand looters coming out of Alex, what is that percentage? It is a small fraction, then everyone suffers. There was huge damage,” he said.

When the riots ended, the store and other shops in the centre remained closed. It took about five months to open the doors again.

Obel said the owners of other businesses were desperate to open and the community wanted the supermarket to start operating again.

“The community wanted Freedom open. The community was pleading as to when the supermarket will open because of the loss to people, and things [groceries and necessities] were costing more. There were various stokvels which had purchased pending the Christmas season and Freedom was holding their stock and Freedom needed to honour these stokvels — the drive to open was huge,” he said

Obel said there was relief in the community when the store finally reopened towards the end of November last year.

He said it was understandable that Alexandra is often at the forefront of social unrest. When there are service delivery protests or issues of xenophobic violence, Alexandra is the first township to endure the agony, usually because of its history and location.

“Complexity around Alex always puts it in the forefront of whatever social aspects are happening, particularly in the SA context of poverty and under-delivery [of services], and yet Freedom market is in this unusual position whereby it is part of the community.”

Obel admitted there would always be challenges, but one needed to be a brave businessperson to trade in such places.

“You take the good and the bad,” he said. 

Obel doesn’t believe Alexandra residents were driven to loot in protest against the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma.

“This was driven by hunger, in my opinion. It was looting and hunger. When the dust settled it turned out that yes, there had been huge losses incurred by property owners, but the tragedy was equally in the hands of the man in the streets, because now the places to purchase had been burnt,” he said.

“Because of the loyalty factor and the importance of Freedom, and because Freedom was unable to service the community, it was a tragedy.”

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