It was 14 April 2015. They were sitting in groups near the hostel, on all the roads, everywhere. They were toyi-toying in front of the hostel, burning tyres, stoning cars. They were holding pangas, knives, sticks, knobkerries, hammers. A lot of people, jumping up and down, dancing, shouting, screaming. Shirts were off. It was a whole commotion.

I had guards in the place before that – two security in the day and two security at night. But I went to the station commander that day and he said, ‘I advise you take these guys out. They can't sleep here. If they sleep, they're gonna kill them.’ I felt to myself: You know what? Just imagine these guards die for a few thousand or million rands’ worth of articles? I can always replace something but I cannot replace a human life. How would I explain to their families if they had died in my building, protecting my assets for some stupid little toyi-toying? So I decided to withdraw the guys.

Later on, when I went to go close the building, the people from the hostel – they stoned my car. I drove to my building, locked up and put the alarm on. In the middle of the night I came back and was checking what's going on and saw they were burning tyres. The next night they broke into other shops. Took some cars out and burnt them. They even burnt the one shop – went inside and put down petrol bombs and burnt it down.