A group of women say they were kicked out of a larney guest house in Langebaan in the middle of the night because they broke a TV.
Videos of the owner and his companions removing the women’s bags from the guesthouse surfaced on Facebook, where one of the women lambasted the men for allegedly calling them “coloured tiewe”.
Florencia Engelbrecht from Langa says she and her four girlfriends booked the guest house for the weekend at Oppiekoppie in Langebaan but were kicked out around 4am on Saturday morning because one of the women was drunk and accidentally slipped and a bottle went against the TV, causing it to crack.
“We arrived on Friday and were drinking and partying when the incident happened,” she explains.
“We immediately phoned the owner (at 4am) and told her what happened and that we were prepared to pay for the damages of the TV.”
Engelbrecht says they had paid R3000 for a three-day stay as well as a R500 damages fee.
“We asked if we could continue our stay for the weekend and the owner said we should leave immediately. The husband told us to ‘fuck out’ of his property and we are ‘coloured tiewe’ and we told them you white people think you can rule everything, this is not Apartheid,” she says.
“We asked for the Saturday’s money back so we can organise transport home but they did not want to understand anything and just wanted us to leave the property. We said we are not leaving because where are we supposed to go at that time of the morning, it is still dark.”
She says eventually the owners agreed to let them stay on but later the Saturday morning the man brought his ‘white friends in 4x4 bakkies’ to ridicule them.
“He called the police to kick us out but they said they can’t do anything.
“He even got security guards to kick us out and when that did not work, he got his friends who sprayed us with teargas and threw our bags out. My friend’s phone’s LCD is broken.”
She says the videos were taken on Saturday morning.
“We had to fetch our bags from outside the gates where they dumped it. We decided to stay because we had nowhere else to go and we used public transport to get there. We missed our 2pm bus home the Sunday because we had to go to Langebaan police station to lay a charge.”
She says on Sunday morning they still cleaned up the place and called the owners to check.
“They were suddenly very nice, we were shocked. Hy wou ons half dood maak die vorige dag en skielik was hy vriendelik.”
Despite this they decided to lay charges and Langebaan police later drove them home.
“We are okay now and made it home safely but my chest hurts from the teargas, I could not even go work.”
Police spokesman Warrant Officer Joseph Swartbooi says the circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.
“We can confirm that Langebaan police are investigating cases of assault with the intention to cause grievous bodily harm, malicious damage to property and crimen injuria.
“This office confirms that no one has been arrested.”
The owner of Oppikoppie, Natasha Rentzke, said due to there being a police investigation underway into the matter, they cannot comment at this stage.
marsha.dean@inl.co.za