Inanda resident recounts 'traumatic' encounter in Phoenix during July unrest
An Inanda resident on Tuesday told the South African Human Rights Commission's hearings into the civil unrest that his experiences have traumatised him and left him feeling hateful.
Chis Biyela says on his way home from a clinic in July, he was stopped by a group while driving through Phoenix.
"They harshly asked me to come out. They straight away they grabbed the keys. They pulled me with my jacket and I was out and they started opening the doors, looking under the seats.
"They opened the boot. During the search they were banging the car with their hands and bat sticks. One of them said, 'I know this guy, lets let him go'. That is how I escaped."
He says the group hurled racial slurs and other derogatory words at him.
Biyela, who lives in an informal settlement in nearby Bhambayi, says once he reached home, neighbours asked him if he'd seen two other fellow residents who'd gone to Phoenix to look for fuel. He hadn't.
He says the following day, he identified one of the missing neighbour's burnt car in a video doing the rounds.
Biyela chose to use a translator when describing this event.
"When then started panicking since there were messages coming through that Indians were killing Black people so so we were now all in panic. We then started searching, everyone went out for a search, but the problem was that we could not go to Phoenix. We then phoned police, we also could not reach them."
He says the missing neighbours were eventually tracked down to two separate hospitals, badly wounded.
