Cape Town - Five girlfriends from Cape Town who booked a guest house for the weekend in Langebaan have lodged a criminal complaint with police after they were kicked out by the owner for accidentally breaking the flat-screen TV.
Florencia Engelbrecht from Langa said she and her four friends paid R3 000 for their stay from Friday to Sunday at Oppikoppie Langebaan, and paid a R500 damage fee.
But at 4am on Saturday, they were told to leave because one of the women slipped and a bottle hit against the TV, which caused it to crack.
“We arrived on Friday and were drinking and partying when the incident happened. We phoned the owner and told her what happened and that we are prepared to pay for the damage to the TV because we take responsibility.
“We asked if we could continue our stay for the weekend and the owner said we should leave immediately. The husband told us to ‘f out’ of his property and we are ‘Coloured b ****** ’ and we told them ‘you white people think you can rule everything, this is not apartheid. He called the police to kick us out but they said they could not do anything.
“He even got security to kick us out. 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.
“We asked for the Saturday’s money back so we could 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.”
Numerous videos of the incident have surfaced on Facebook, with one showing a man picking up and removing their belongings from the property, without the womens’ permission.
Engelbrecht said they were eventually allowed to stay as they had nowhere else to go and did not have transport.
She said owner of the property then kept pestering them and bringing people to “ridicule” them.
“We are okay now and made it home safely but my chest hurts from the teargas, I could not even go to work.”
The owner of Oppikoppie Langebaan, Natasha Rentzke, said there was a police investigation underway and they could not comment at this stage.
Police spokesperson, Joseph Swartbooi, said their investigation continued and no one was arrested. “An argument between the women and some males took place in the early hours of Saturday, August 31,” he said.
“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.”
Cape Argus